Spending his days under the bright Mexican desert sun, Arthur felt like he hadn't fully realized how glum Beaver Hollow had been in the fall until now, the foggy damp autumn twilight in the mountains. Felt like the sun had been going down on all of them to look back on all of it, miserable and scared and all the best days and mood of the gang evaporated like that missing sunshine. Perhaps Pearson and Susan had thought ahead when they set up camp, pitching tents outside of the cave, so they could maintain that last sliver of pretense that they hadn't descended fully into savagery to the point of living in a cave and being ready to fight over the smallest thing like folks presumably had so long ago. Making the distinction between living inside or outside of that cave felt like a pedantic argument at best, but when there was no hope and no real future, those little distinctions had mattered intensely.
The gang had started off 1899 pretending they were the smart ones, those who could see clearly through all the bullshit of America to some deeper truth, but as the year wore on, they were pushed further and further into being the things they swore they weren't, erasing lines they'd thought they'd never cross. Killers, savage and merciless. No pretending otherwise.
That meant even as the sun felt good, so warm and bright, there was something cold and troubled within him that wouldn't dislodge, like a shard of ice. Sadie had hauled him away from where he'd thought to die, they'd made it down from Ambarino, all the way over the border to a new country. But some things couldn't be so easily left behind.
As was, though, he tried his best to shove all that from his mind where he could. Too easy to dwell on dark thoughts when he didn't have the release of keeping himself busy to the point of exhaustion as he had for months and months. That must have been the only way he'd survived the ordeal since Blackwater with only going about half crazy rather than doing it fully. He hadn't had much time to think, but whenever he did, damn, had it caught up with him and knocked him around brutally, made him doubt and worry. All to the good in the end, given that Hosea had been right on yet another thing in the end. He'd needed to start thinking for himself, making his own way. But given there wasn't much he could do with himself for the next few months, he wasn't sure he could bear all the weight of it if he let it in.
Any distraction at all in these slow, maddeningly idle days became a welcome thing. Learning Spanish certainly fit the bill, not to mention trying to learn it took all his effort and attention. He had Welsh from his parents, as rusty and buried as it was, but he'd learned that naturally as English, being too young to realize it. Trying to consciously learn another language as a grown man was no mean feat. He could understand it more each day, especially if it was written and he could see it rather than it twisting elusively away like often it did when he tried to listen, but yet another point hit home of exactly how much out of his depth he was here, and how little he knew. How ill-suited he was for this world.
Jesus, what an idiot. He'd known Javier Escuella for five years, and he hadn't asked the man about learning any Spanish in all that time. Why? Fear of calling up bad memories of Mexico, of making him dwell in what he'd left behind even as he tried so hard to make himself so thoroughly American? Arthur could sympathize with that, given he'd done the same. Or had he only been afraid to look stupid himself by admitting how little he knew, and how much he'd maybe struggle in learning? Or maybe just the American's casual contempt for a language that wasn't English? He'd spent decades pretending he didn't know Welsh, after all.
Well, whatever the cause, he certainly showed his stupidity now. He pitied Sister Juanita and Pedro Estevez, the two poor fools who'd patiently undertaken for the past two weeks to teach him Spanish for two hours a day up here on the roof of Las Hermanas. Garcia sighed that Arthur insisted on dragging himself up there given his strict limits on time out of bed, but he'd wryly agreed that with his and Sadie's room on the second floor, it was actually an easier trip to the roof than to the courtyard, let alone the outhouse. Plus it was quiet up here. Most TB patients tended to go for the courtyard for the cool shade while enjoying the sunlight. He'd rather directly soak up as much sun as he could, and hope it chased the lingering chill from his bones.
Pedro shrugged, his near-black eyes bright with amusement, a smile playing about his lips that a bushy dark mustache couldn't quite hide. He was about Arthur's own age, a farm laborer from here in Nuevo Paraiso who'd become one of Las Hermanas' TB cases. Been here about a year and a half, he said. Considering he looked almost like a normal man again, bronze skin glowing with health and cheeks filled out rather than hollow, Arthur felt like that was some cause for hope. "So, now you try it again. Yo quiero." Arthur was supposed to be helping the two of them refine their English while he was at it, but he suspected that was more Garcia salving his pride by pretending Arthur was doing something useful. As far as he saw, their English was already pretty damn good.
Like a good parrot, he echoed it. "Yo quiero. That's--'I want', yeah?"
I want. He wasn't sure he'd get much use from that phrase. Not much good ever came for him in wanting things, let alone saying so openly. He doubted that had changed.
"Yes, very good," Juanita said. She smiled, showing white teeth with a charming slight gap between the front two. That, and the lines of a woman who'd smiled often in her thirty-odd years, gave her face some character that he liked, despite being framed by the severe black and white lines of that nun's wimple. "Bueno."
This made for a strange school with trying to learn Spanish while lying on a cot flat on his back, head turned towards the man and a woman sitting there beside him on their chairs. But Pedro had been there himself not so long ago, and Juanita had seen her share of lungers like this, so that made a lot of the awkwardness pass. They were kind. Everyone here was pretty kind. They had to be, to make this whole notion of the lost and dying into something more than a place without light or hope. He still wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. He wasn't sure he had any place at all in it. Kindness? He didn't have it in him, except when spurred on by the grim specter of death. Easier to be good when trying to close out accounts.
Something nudged his ribs then, and he lifted his head and glanced down to see a little tar-black ball of fur making itself cozy alongside him, after having jumped up from the ground.
Sadie told him that Sister Ursula, who ran the kitchens, kept around her fair share of cats, to keep any rats at bay. He had the suspicion after having met the woman that she was also a soft touch underneath it. Besides, folks here didn't seem to mind a cat fearlessly taking a mind to come up and say hello. Shut away from the rest of the world as they were, a cat became a novelty. Well, except to the few poor bastards who ended up sneezing, which was hell on already battered lungs. Arthur counted himself fortunate to not be among that number.
This was one of the kittens from whichever cat's apparent latest litter, a tiny thing that was all too-big paws and fearless curiosity. Reminded him a bit of Copper with that attitude. It settled in comfortably right against his side, and he reached down, stroking the silky-soft fur, feeling the little thing arch into the caress, its green eyes sliding partly shut in delight, raising its chin for him to get a finger beneath it to pet her there. "You bored and saying 'hi', huh?"
"Ah, good," Juanita said. "Here we have another opportunity to learn. What's 'the cat' again?"
This one he remembered, given he'd heard it said often enough, usually in delight by someone pleased to see one of the convent cats coming to pay them a social call. "El gato."
"Good. Except this one's a girl. So then it becomes la gata." All right, the female cat. He could handle that. He'd have to write all this down later, back in the room he shared with Sadie, when he headed in for the afternoon. Only so much sun he or anyone could take, and the mid-afternoon nap--siesta--wasn't only for folks hacking their lungs up. Sounded like pretty much everyone did it to avoided the fiercest and hottest part of the day. Wise, as far as he was concerned.
Pedro grinned. "La gata negra." He silently translated that: the black female cat
Juanita chuckled too, playfully bantering back at Pedro. "La gatita negrita." There the words went again, twisted and transformed into something he couldn't quite follow. He gave up. It was almost understandable, but too far out of reach.
He could barely make sense of English, and here came this language where everything was all male or female whether it was alive or not, the actual sex of something could change it all entirely, and then adjectives all changed for matching that business. He couldn't help but despair at ever being able to handle it. He groaned. "Mierda." Yeah, that one he knew well enough. "Look, you two? I give up." He raised his hands in mock surrender. "You might as well drag me out back and leave me for the coyotes. Even if the TB don't get me, I ain't gonna ever make enough sense of Spanish to survive in Mexico."
Juanita kept laughing, shaking her head at his words with a fond smile, like he was a silly schoolboy rather than a man who could have killed her in a moment. "You're making good progress. You've only been at it two weeks, Arthur."
"Come on now, it's better than getting stuck by El Cactus," Pedro joked flippantly. Arthur had to agree with that. He'd walked shakily out of Garcia's office after his first encounter with the Garcia's lung-punching apparatus, Sadie insisting on watching the whole thing with horrified fascination, then got another session yesterday to jab his chest with the needles again and keep that part of his left lung deflated during one of Garcia's daily visits here to Las Hermanas for that purpose. Doing several of them each day here at the convent, one after another, which made for a strange brotherhood indeed. They'd been sitting, or lying there for the newer ones, waiting their turns, men and women, brown and black and white skin all together there united in their shared ordeal, wryly joking about appointments for getting stuck by The Cactus. Watching the bellows of the machine at work, filling him with that nitrogen gas, Arthur had the feeling of being something like a very demented accordion himself these days, worked and pushed and squeezed until he awkwardly squawked. Breathing came shallower and harder, given he was currently relying upon a lung and a half at best, but he had to admit Garcia's insane-sounding procedure seemed to have some effect. He'd felt a bit less pain, coughed up less. So maybe that thing did him some good. The barest scratch on the whole thing, but it was the first sign of something better rather than rapidly and steadily worse, so he'd take it.
"Just about. Ask me again in a month which I'd find preferable." That was about as much as he'd concede.
Juanita shook her head, not bothering to hide her continued grin. "Enough Spanish for today? Seems you've made a new friend," she nodded to the demanding ball of fur currently making herself at home, now rubbing up against his side eagerly. Thankfully it was his right side, the one not left sore from recent Cactus punctures. "We should let you enjoy that. There's time enough to learn. We can pick it up again tomorrow morning."
He'd take that opportunity to rest his aching brain. He would have picked up a book, hopefully finished "A Tale of Two Cities", though he had a strange suspicion he knew exactly what Sydney Carton planned to do with his sad, worthless life, and he couldn't help but approve. He'd had his own Charles Darnay in John, hadn't he? But the kitten decided apparently his ribs weren't a good enough place, and clambered up onto his chest, settling down again and staking her claim there, eyes half-shut and peering at him. She started up a happy rumbling purr, and he felt the gentle vibrations of that right down into his chest. A far more pleasant sensation than the horrible Cactus' wheezing pressure, or the pain of coughing. He stared down at her. "Making yourself at home, Princess? We wasn't even properly introduced before you went and invited yourself here. Being that familiar with a fella? Scandalous." It looked like he wouldn't be reading, given he'd have ordinarily propped the book up on his chest right where she'd lain down.
So he felt himself dozing off into that part-lucid sleepy state, feeling like one of those lazy alligators in the bayou lying there soaking up the heat, one hand resting gently on the kitten. She shouldn't be here, trusting him like that. It wasn't like he had much of an impressive record towards protecting small and fragile things. He wondered where Jack was right now, somewhere far away from Beaver Hollow. How much would he remember of all this in the future, one little four-year-old boy with his still-innocent eyes? Would he remember fishing and songs around the campfire, or the violence and terror that they finally hadn't been able to hide from him in the end? If there was a God, maybe he'd be merciful enough that they boy would forget it all.
Then he heard someone say, "Buenas dias, Señor Griffith," coming out onto the roof from the stairs. A woman's voice, and he welcomed the interruption. Being left alone with himself and his thoughts for too long with nothing to do never ended up too pretty, and of late, it seemed like all he could do was dig himself into an even more miserable endless black hole. "I thought I should come see how you're doing. Mother Superior Miguela told me that you're new--"
Pulling himself out of that hole, he recognized the voice at the same time she must have recognized him, even with the dark blue kerchief covering the lower half of his face as it did. Instinctively, he sat up, keeping hold of the startled kitten with one hand, avoiding a wince as she dug tiny claws into his shirt and his chest to keep her balance, then settling her down beside him. She didn't run off, which was a wonder. He'd sat up too quickly and for a moment his head swam, and he forced himself to breath slowly deeply, trying to not start coughing.
"Hello again, Mr. Morgan," Sister Calderón said, standing there, one hand resting on the adobe wall to apparently brace herself against the shock of recognition, looking at him with wide, surprised eyes.
He managed, "Hey there, Sister." She took a good look at him, not saying anything else just yet. He thought back. About three weeks before it all came to an end, so perhaps six weeks since he'd seen her at Emerald Station? Two weeks here of mind-numbing frustrating rest had helped, but he still looked far worse than he did then, no question. Good thing you wasn't there a few weeks ago when Sadie had me pass for dead no problem, and I couldn't even sit up without help. You'd look at me even more shocked than you are. He cleared his throat, wishing desperately for some water. "I suppose this means you made it to your mission in Mexico?"
"I've been traveling around Perdido and Punta Orgullo the last few weeks, yes, gathering donations and familiarizing myself with the people." She gestured to the other side of his cot, away from the kitten. "Do you and your little friend mind if I sit?"
He waved a hand in invitation. He couldn't quite forget their last conversation, and he felt like she ought to know that. As she settled in, he figured it was best to have at it. "The things you said last time I seen you. They was...that was a hard time for me, trying to know what to do with myself. It...it helped me. More than you know, maybe."
"I'm glad." He envied her that calm certainty she seemed to possess no matter what. It was that dignity of wisdom, of choosing to face the world and its people with serenity and gentleness, but deliberately and cleared eyed all the same, not any kind of naivete. She and Rains Fall, even Hamish, seemed to take such strength from knowing what their place was in things despite all the bad. "How are you doing, Mr. Mor--Griffith?" He heard a sort of amusement in her voice at his new name.
"I might survive, so they say. All this rest ain't doing what little brains I have many favors, I fear. But at least," he gestured to the kerchief, "I'm used to covering up my face to mark me as a dangerous man who could kill you." Though he still felt curiously vulnerable, almost naked, without his guns all the same. He couldn't help an awkward grin, even knowing she couldn't see it beneath the fabric. "I must be a lucky fella. Walking around with a mask and constantly looking like the nasty piece of work I am, and you're the first to look twice." It still caught him aback that nobody saw it.
"Well, I'm not sure many people are looking for a dead man. According to what I read in the Nuevo Paraiso Herald, you died in a blaze of gunfire and curses several weeks ago facing down numerous Pinkerton agents."
He managed a low, dark chuckle at that, leaning forward to rest his arms on his knees. His lungs gave a bit of a grouchy hitch at it. "Newsmen are a different breed of confidence men and liars, that's all. Anyway, I'm sure Death's got to be a woman, Sister, cause it seems even she won't have me."
He meant it to be funny, glib, and turn aside the awkwardness by it. But he saw the grave look on her face, and it got through his thick skull that she'd read that ridiculously overwrought article, truly thought he died, and she'd been saddened by it. She'd mourned him, even in passing. He felt that funny feeling in his chest again at that, a tightness that combined some strange mix of guilt and hope. "What actually happened?" she finally asked, settling down a bit more, hands folded in her lap.
He'd already told her far too much at the train station. No point in holding back now. She knew exactly who and what he was, knew how vulnerable he'd been. "Been trying as much I could to get folk to leave, save themselves. I came back to deal with the bastard who'd helped steer it there. Always trying to make anything more ruthless, more violent, and it worked. Our leader, Dutch, he got to the point he'd only listen to Micah. And then I find out he'd sold us out to save his own skin besides. The Pinkertons came in just then. We ran, this one fella and me. My friend. My...brother. Getting chased by both Pinkertons and our former friends. John, he has a wife," because Abigail was that in truth if not by law, and not like a man on the run could easily do much of anything involving the law, including truly give a woman his name, "and a little boy. He had something to live for right there. I was pretty much done. Couldn't keep going, and it felt like the best thing I could do was buy him time to get away, go to them. I told him to live a good life, to leave all of this far behind him. That it would...make me happy, knowing I done that for them."
He couldn't ever have any of those good things for himself, but at least knowing John had made it, that Abigail and Jack were safe and happy, that would have been enough. Besides, looking out for his little brother, that was what an older brother did. What he'd always tried to do, even if he often couldn't openly admit it. Doing that had felt like he and John had finally made peace, come to an understanding after years of anger. "Micah showed up again. He attacked me. I couldn't…" He shook his head, looking off towards the east, still hating the fact that Micah was out there somewhere, knowing it would cost more people in the end. "We fought. Just wasn't enough left in me to win. Not even strong enough to get to my feet one more time. So he, and my mentor, this man I'd called my father all these years?" Goddamn blind fool that I was. "They both walked away and left me there to finish my business of dying." He heard the bitterness in his tone, but he couldn't help it.
He felt the light touch of her hand on his arm, like an anchor keeping him from drifting away into all that pain and anger and sadness. He managed a deep breath at that, and kept going. "I think...even if I could have gotten up again, seeing that would have finished me anyway." Dutch had hesitated enough to turn away from Micah, true, but seeing him walk away and leave him there to die, and die alone, had broken what was left of his heart. One last tiny spark of hope finally guttered out. He'd truly wanted to die in that moment, somehow both calm and forlorn all at once.
It felt so odd. Dutch hadn't died. He'd lived, and walked away, and he was out there somewhere presumably being just fine. But something in Arthur felt broken just the same. Dutch was dead, in a way. Not the man's body, but the Dutch that he had held in his mind and heart for twenty-two years, the man he'd loved and feared and obeyed and needed. That Dutch was dead and gone, and he couldn't help but feel sorrow all the same. He'd lost someone so dear to him, and the gaping wound of it was real. But he wasn't sure what to do with the reality of a living Dutch who was nothing like that image. How could he call this feeling grief when it was like that? Compared to Sadie, missing Jake after watching him be murdered, compared to the people he'd loved who he'd seen killed before his very eyes, claiming Dutch was a loss to mourn as well would have felt offensive to the dead.
"You saw him for what he truly was. And yet, here you are, and I don't think you walked away on your own." Calderón's voice was thoughtful, gentle, soothing his wounded soul like a balm. "So he failed you by concealing himself for all those years, and then failed you at the end. But someone else didn't fail you."
"No. The woman who's here with me--Sadie--she came back. Figured to bury me, and found me just about fit for that, but not quite yet. She kept me alive, then got me all the way here." He found himself smiling a bit again at the thought of her, stubborn and fierce. "You'd probably like her. She's had a hell of a year, watched a bunch of bandits kill her husband. But she's tough as nails, and kind on top of that." The sort of person who'd done some hard things since, but that couldn't carve that essential goodness out of her. She had enough in her to be horrified in the end by what she'd done, to turn away from it. She'd done so much to save people too.
Calderón nodded at that, turned a bit more to better face him, rather than giving him a good view of her face half-hidden by her wimple. "After all of that, here you are. You have a great deal of time on your hands, and you seem like a man who can't help but think about things far too much."
"Me, Sister? I never was much of a thinking man." She shot him a sharp, stern glance that reminded him a bit of Susan, who'd always had a way of making him feel like a little boy guiltily caught out with just such a look.
"I don't believe that for a moment. So, how are you feeling?"
Now he understood her well enough. She wasn't politely asking after his health. She meant something deeper, closer to the truth. He looked down at his hands. She'd asked, hadn't she? She'd been the one who helped make sense of things before, turned his path into something clear and sensible. "I..." How was he feeling? Feeling too many things, and that was the truth. "I was ready. Ready to die, I mean. To make what I could out of my last days, and do something finer with my death than I ever did in all my living. I did some good things in the end, I tried, and maybe I was almost good, for a little while. But that's a standard I can't keep, for years and years. And I'll look at what I done for one month of my life and know that was the best of me, and I ain't never gonna be anything close to that again. Cause decent folk died, and I didn't, and that means I've got to live and make something of myself. But I don't know there's anything in me that can do that. I don't..." He closed his eyes.
She sighed, soft and low. "You worry so much about who you are."
"Seems that's been my whole life. Being one poor foolish bastard who never could figure who and what he was. So how am I feeling? I guess I'm still afraid." He could admit that to her, at least. He couldn't say it to Sadie, or any of it, and sound so ungrateful for everything she'd done for him. "Afraid of living one long useless existence with my eyes opened now, knowing exactly what I can't be. Knowing that there's no place in this world for me. Cause there ain't no turning shit into gold, Sister."
He'd said it. The thought of living terrified him. Being here at Las Hermanas terrified him, and not the TB aspect of it. All he'd known in his life, all he'd been, was violence and theft, power carved out by overwhelming other people. The sort of man who could rob and fight and kill, and earned his place by it. Now here he was in a world that held no value on any of that. He couldn't punch his way out of this. He couldn't intimidate it. He couldn't outwit it. He couldn't outrun it. He had to be here in this place that asked him to be something else entirely, to be good and kind and gentle and patient, to endure, to learn, to change, to be one of them for months and months and earn their regard and liking and trust. And he wasn't sure he was remotely capable of any of that. He couldn't be anything like he'd been, that was for certain. But he wasn't sure of who he could become, and if there was any hope to make himself into someone worthy of Sadie's hopes for him, and all the efforts of Dr. Garcia and the nuns here.
The kitten, curious as ever, jumped her way across his lap to go to the nun, settling in, and Calderón reached down, stroking her. Smart cat, knowing who the kind and reliable one was in this scenario. "Do you know, Mr. Griffith, this is only my second assignment since I took my vows? I spent over twenty years serving in St. Denis Parish. I saw so many children in need in all those years. Abandoned. Alone. Afraid. Angry. So many of them died young. Most of the girls learned that the only worth they had was the price that someone would pay for their bodies, whether in a bed or endless drudgery. The boys? Oh, I knew too many lost, scared, angry boys who became lost, scared, angry men. Some I'd see in a prison wagon headed for Sisika. Some I saw hanged in Guiteau Square. Some died in fights with lawmen. But I never saw you before that day we met on the steps of the church, so you weren't a child abandoned on the streets of St. Denis. So if I can ask you another question, which city was it?"
Now he could only turn to stare at her, stunned into panicked silence. It was like she'd pulled one of Trelawny's magic tricks, produced some secret of his with casual ease like a rabbit from a hat. He blurted out, "You always knew that?" But then his anxiousness settled, and things focused. No wonder she'd been able to talk to him so easily, cut right through to what mattered and say it in a way that made sense to him. Strangely enough, it rapidly changed from a moment of horror at being that exposed to something almost like a comfort. To not have to hide it, or struggle to explain, suddenly felt like a gift the more he thought about it, because he'd seen how she cared about those smart-mouthed sullen little bastards in St. Denis. Trying to help them, save them from themselves, and apparently she couldn't quit that, even when the street brat in question was a grown man twenty years further down on the road to hell.
A small, almost sad smile crossed her face. "As I said, I've seen plenty of orphaned children over the years. I know the look of one."
Something hurt at that for a moment, ashamed that he was so visibly a mess that she could see it at a glance. But then, he'd never been able to lie to himself on some things. Some of that terrified and furious pickpocket struggling to survive, knowing the only worth he had was in what he could do rather than in himself, had always stayed with him. "It was San Francisco. I was eleven. Good at pickpocketing already, thanks to my daddy. It was three years, just about. The two leaders of the gang I ended up in found me there when I was fourteen."
"Yes, Dutch van der Linde and Hosea Matthews, wasn't it?"
"You're pretty well versed on outlaw gangs for a nun."
She grinned mischievously at him, suddenly looking years younger. "It makes for terribly interesting reading, and we all need some excitement. Did your mentors teach you about some of the past gangs, though?"
"Some of them, yeah. They had me learning about them when I was young. Obviously the ones still out there, we had to know them in case we ended up in a fight. The ones that was gone and destroyed already? They was always saying we could learn lessons from them, both good and bad."
"Did you ever hear of the Tres Julios?"
This conversation was taking a strange turn, but he'd humor it. He would trust she'd come to a point. It took him a second, but then he placed the name. "Sure. We weren't folk who looked down on Mexicans or colored folk, any of that. One of the few actual virtues we had, I guess. The Julios, that was...Texas in the ''60's and 70's? Three fellas named Julio riding together, so that was how they got the name. Dutch admired them. Said they had sound ideals. Pushing back against white folks for all the crap they was doing to the Mexicans, and doing it with style."
"We weren't wrong that the injustice was there. Americans coming in, taking our land, beating and hanging our men, stealing our horses, raping our women, and knowing they could do it because the law would support them. But we made our anger into our excuse for any number of things."
We, she said, and our. That had been deliberate. Now he looked her over carefully. He'd seen pictures of a few of the Julios, but that was so long ago, given they'd been broken and destroyed back around 1876, when he'd still been on the streets of San Francisco. And he'd been more interested in the gang as a whole, and Dutch's praise of them, than the specifics of its people. He'd so idolized Dutch that he'd hardly needed to find other outlaws to worship. It seemed Sister Calderón had secrets of her own. But she was showing her cards to him now, and he couldn't help but laugh, shaking his head. "So you rode with them?"
"I was Beatriz Lopez de Morales then. Julio Morales was my husband, and Julio del Toro and Julio Carillo were my brothers. I was married at sixteen, riding as an outlaw by twenty. My father was dead. My mother was both appalled and proud of our fighting back." There was a sudden roguish twinkle in her eyes. "Banks and stagecoaches were a bit easier to rob then, I suppose, but I was rather good at it."
"Well, how about that." Two old reprobates sitting there together reminiscing about things, and suddenly for a moment, everything didn't seem so terrible. He looked at her and suddenly he could roll back her years and wrinkles and imagine her younger, dark eyes flashing fire, brandishing a repeater at some poor bank teller, all proud and fierce and fearless. "Didn't end so well for the Julios, though."
"No. We'd been on the run for almost a year already, since Carillo was shot and killed when we tried to rob a load of silver. It was all bad after that. Running and hiding. The marshals cornered us near Durango in '76. Nacoma--del Toro's wife--was a Comanche, so it was her country. She knew the ways out of the canyons, so a few of us made it out with her leading the way. Most didn't. My Julio didn't. Nacoma's Julio didn't. My son, Manuel, was one of the first to die. Fifteen years old. He was a boy trying to be a man on the wrong day." She looked away at that, though not before he saw the old pain lingering there in her eyes.
He could imagine it all too well, even if it had been set in sun-baked southern canyons rather than the rolling tree-covered hills of Roanoke Ridge. The tension of being hunted hard for so long, the growing bickering and mistrust and then finally, one last explosive eruption of violence as the law closed in. This time, he was the one who reached out, putting an awkward hand on her shoulder. She reached out, put a hand over his for a moment, giving it an quick pat of acknowledgment, and then they both let go. "I'm sorry." At least he hadn't lost someone so close as a wife or child at Beaver Hollow.
She nodded. "I don't talk about it much."
"I understand that."
"Your son. That is, you're of an age that perhaps he was..."
"No, no, that was all long before this year. His momma and me, we was always kind enough towards one another. But it was one night of us being young, drunk, and stupid, that's all. She raised Isaac mostly by herself. Didn't want him near my life. Smart woman, I can't blame her for that. Eliza was her name. Eliza McCready. They lived out near Cheyenne. I would drop by when I could, and we got on that way pretending she had a husband for the folk in town."
"What happened?"
"I came back to visit and found their graves. Fresh ones. They'd been robbed and killed a few days before. That was nine years ago this past May. Isaac, he'd just turned four." He laughed to himself, short and sharp in a way that hurt like hell, but it felt like it should. "He looked so much like her. That boy got nothing from me. Her grey eyes, her dark hair, her name. Her life, the way she wanted to raise him away from my life. And I was glad of that, you know? But they got caught by my life all the same. My trying to do right by them with money I robbed from other folk, killing people as I did sometimes for it, had its price. Don't it make some kind of sense that my robbing and killing would come back on them? Damn fool that I am, I didn't see it. Pretended I could live both lives and it would be fine. But nothing good comes from me, and the way they died made me see it."
Eliza had the good sense to not want to live as an outlaw, to not raise Isaac as one. But it hadn't been nearly enough. He wished she'd had enough sense to close her door to him forever and tell him to go to hell, to claim that the boy was hers alone and none of his. He wished he hadn't been young and stupid and lonely and hurting from Mary to begin. He wished he hadn't been tipsy enough already to be brave enough to talk to her that night. He wished Eliza hadn't been lonely herself and somehow charmed by an idiot, and taken him up on the drinks he'd bought her after her shift was done. He wished he'd been sweeter to her that night than he must have been, gone to her bed out of love for the fine woman she was, rather than as a sad whiskey-sodden longing for a girl he could never have, a girl who hadn't wanted him.
He wished a hell of a lot of things, so much weight of so many years and so many acts to regret. The trouble was that there was no mending any of it that he could see. No way to make any of it right. He couldn't take back the killings and robberies or any of it. She finally said, "I think you're very hard on yourself."
He felt something in him slip its leash, running out of control, something all wild and angry and terrified that he'd done his best to contain these past few weeks ever since Sadie told him he'd better decide whether he meant to live or kill himself right there. Was she trying to offer him absolution? As if he could stand that, undeserving as he was. "Am I, Sister? Am I really too rough on myself? You know how many folks I've killed in the last six months while everything went to shit? Far more than I killed in all my life before that. No question some of them was bad men, even worse than me, men who deserved to die so they'd stop hurting decent folk. But my God, plenty of them was probably just decent folk seeing us maniacs shooting up their town, and trying to put a stop to it. That TB I got? I told you I got it beating a man for a few bucks owed. Right before I laid into him, I told that fella it didn't matter what he had to do to get the money for his debt. 'Sell your wife, sell your son if you have to, I don't care', I said to him, 'but you owe and it's gonna get paid'. I cursed his family, I swear. The wife ends up selling herself on the streets and catching something unmentionable, kid selling himself to work in the Annesburg mines. And when I seen that, I tried to help them, to make some amends, but the damage, it's done. It's done. I can't bring Thomas Downes back. I can't give that boy back his father. I can't give that woman back her husband and her pride and her health. And that's only one family I ruined. Too many more to count, I expect. I was sent roughing people up to collect debts for this unpleasant little Austrian weasel of a loan shark, but I never did see the truth until far too late. There are debts in this life that ain't able to be paid. Cause some things, some sins, you just can't make right. There's so much that's good in this world, Sister, good people in it, but there ain't much goodness in me. Not near enough to make a life of it. I want there to be, but...wishing it don't make it so."
He couldn't help but be thankful that she took that in sober silence, thinking it over, rather than firing right back with some kind of protest. All she said after what seemed like an eternity was one question. "Do you want to be saved, Arthur?"
He noticed her using his first name, and the solemn weight and intimacy of that hit hard. Not to mention it was too big a question, cutting right to things he couldn't bear to look at directly. So he deflected it, not looking at her, looking over over the edge of the rooftop to the rolling ridges of the pale desert sands beyond. He hadn't ever read the Bible in his life. Swanson was the only one in camp with any real use for one. He'd figured it was best to skip a book that told him what he already knew full well, that he was damned. "I ain't much of a man for God, Sister."
"I didn't mean religiously."
"I told you, there's not much in me worth keeping around."
"I didn't ask whether you thought you deserved to be saved either. None of us deserve it. We all sin. We all hurt people. We all have hate and anger." She got one hand on his shoulder, the other reaching up and tugging down the kerchief from his face, pulling it back down around his neck. Her hand touched his cheek, palm warm and callused. He almost flinched back from it, her so casually touching a diseased man like this, given the clinic's fairly strict rules about contagion. She looked him right in the eyes. "Do you want to be saved?"
In that moment he felt an echo of that same power Dutch had woven into his words, the power of conviction. This little brown-skinned woman, former bandit queen and current nun, fighting for street brats, somehow didn't want to let him go that easily. Not a question of deserving, only of wanting, and if he could be honest with himself, in his tired and aching heart, wasn't this all he'd ever wanted? Someone to reach out and say there was some way out of the nightmare, something that didn't involve shaming him until he felt about two inches tall, and tell him that they believed in him to make it. He'd thought he'd had that in San Francisco those long years gone, but had he been just Dutch's best and most versatile tool all along? It felt that way, humiliating as it was to admit. "Yeah." He barely managed it above a whisper, and then it was all too much, and everything overwhelmed him.
All the running, the fighting, the killing, the doubts and self-loathing, the graves dug and people he'd loved left buried for the empty and grandiose dreams of a man who'd set himself up as their own personal messiah. Finding the lost, the angry, the lonely, binding them to him with gilded words and empty promises. He'd been just fourteen, a child who'd already seen far too much, desperate and scared and so willing to believe in any way out of barely scraping by, knowing he wouldn't last that next winter given he'd once again been left all alone. He pitied that poor sad boy who fell for empty lies so utterly for all these years. So many lives lost or destroyed, all for nothing.
Face in his hands, trying to get hold of his unruly emotions and hide a few sudden helpless tears from her, he didn't realize he'd lost it totally all the way to rough and painful choked sobs until he felt Calderón's arm around his shoulders, holding on tight. He felt that damn silly kitten had come back onto his lap and was purring, trying her best to cheer him up, and he couldn't help but laugh at that, some sweet little innocent thing trying to be kind to him. Then it was all a big damn helpless mess of laughing, crying, coughing all at once, but he couldn't stop, not for anything. Hosea, Lenny, Sean, Kieran, Molly, Susan, Jenny, Mac, Davey, Eagle Flies, Eliza, Isaac, his ma, the man he'd thought Dutch was, all the things he wished so much he could have been, all the lives he'd taken, all the lives he'd damaged or destroyed, a lifetime's worth of all kinds of grief now all rolled up out of him at once in painful waves. He'd learned young not to cry courtesy of his father's heavy hand, known that all it got him was ridicule at best, a beating at worst. But as much of a burden as it was on his aching lungs, it lessened the ache in his heart so much, as if he'd been carrying all of it around for so long that he couldn't even imagine what it was like to let go of any of it. It was still there, but it was a dull emptiness now, like the wound had been lanced and a lot of the poison let out.
As he finally got himself under control again, she patted him on the shoulder. "I shouldn't be surprised you can't be kind to yourself. The world never showed you that you were worth accepting kindness, I suppose." He sat there, fingers sunk into the kitten's plush fur, at least willing to listen, hoping she could show him some way forward. "I felt the same, you know," she told him, her voice still gentle. "How much I hated myself after Durango. How much I believed I deserved all the pain I felt. How I dwelt endlessly on everything bad that I'd ever done. That led me to God eventually, and from there, to the children who needed me. I couldn't help my Manuel, but I could help other children who needed love and kindness. I found my path in time. I have to believe you'll find yours."
It all sounded pretty and reassuring. He wanted to believe it, but he couldn't help the wariness in him. He'd been a fool to believe too readily and totally before. "I ain't quite sure what that might be. Fighting and riding and shooting and killing and running, that's about all I can do."
"I'd bet there's far more to you than that."
"We'll see." He almost wanted to ask if she was inclined to place a bet, but shut up before the sarcasm escaped him. He didn't want to meet her kindness with that kind of jackass remark.
"You know, I read in the newspaper that Arthur Morgan is dead. That seems to be true, in a way. I feel as though Beatriz Lopez de Morales died in Durango Canyon. We take another name when our life changes, and we become someone new, don't we? Women do it on marrying. Priests and nuns take a new name after swearing religious vows."
He nodded, acknowledging the truth of that, sensing where she was going. "Some of the Indian tribes do it after some big event or act in their life." Charles had taught him that.
"So, you're a new man. And you have to ask yourself now, 'who do I want Arthur Griffith to be'?"
"Sister, if I could answer that question here and now, things would be a hell of a lot easier. TB aside, I ain't some young fella with all the time in the world to figure it all out."
"It's not easy to begin again. I was a child when I married Julio, and his path became my life, and then I was thirty-two when that old life was destroyed. I was so afraid I was too old, too damaged to make a life of my own. You were a child when Dutch van der Linde found you, and you've been what he made you. But it's not too late."
So she did understand it, and that comforted him again. She went on, "Perhaps Jesus redeems our sins in the end, but here on earth, I think we still have to choose to redeem ourselves where we can and be worthy of that love. So you'll save yourself. You'll choose every day the kind of man you want to be. And I've seen you choosing goodness, and love, and kindness, because to be that man made you happy. Believe in the world, Arthur, and believe in people, but you must also learn to believe in yourself."
Swanson had sobbed in shameful resignation by the side of those railroad tracks near Flatneck Station, Oh, how I wish I was different. That had hit home, all right, prodding that painful place within him that had always longed for something different. He'd owed so much to Dutch and Hosea that he felt like he could never have left, not for Eliza and Isaac, not for anything. He'd wanted a life where he could be worthy of Mary. He'd wanted to be different. Maybe he could be, and it actually helped to have her say so bluntly that it wasn't some magical, immediate thing. It was going to be hard work, much like dealing with the TB. But perhaps it could happen. Perhaps there was some hope, and some actual direction now.
Still, the weight of having his own life in his hands felt both like a blessing and a curse. Whatever happened now, his life was one of his own making, and he bore all the responsibility of that. But she told him he needed to believe in himself, and that wouldn't be easy. "Easier said than done, Sister."
"Oh, you're on your way. You believe in love now. You've tried to give so much of yourself for those who needed you. You tried to lay down your life for those you love. You're loved by others."
He put up a hand to stop her at that, incredulous. "Don't go crazy on me, now. There ain't nobody who loves me like that." Mary had made sure to tell him unequivocally in that letter that this time it was over. He couldn't blame her for it. She'd been right, as painful as she obviously found it to write that thing, as painful as he'd found it to read.
"What about the woman who brought you here?"
He could only shake his head, smiling at her naivete. "Yeah, we was claiming to be married cause it let us travel without folk giving it much thought, and seems we decided it was earlier to keep up the charade here so she could stay. But my God, it ain't like that between us! Sadie, she's a decent woman, and she just lost her husband besides."
"I doubt it was 'like that' between you and the man you tried to die for given you said he was your brother," and now she really was poking fun at him but somehow that was all right, "because there's far more than one kind of love. She loved you enough to come look for your body to bury you. When she found you alive, she did her best to keep you that way and get you here. I imagine there were others who helped you along the way. You are loved, even if you can't see it. You should learn to accept that love."
He might not be the brightest, but eventually he figured out when to shut up and listen to someone with a vast advantage of knowledge and good sense. "Maybe. I don't know." Maybe she was right. Dutch, that was a subject he couldn't approach yet. But Hosea had cared so deeply, hadn't he?
She pressed his hand with her shoulder one more time, and pushed up to her feet. "Don't be afraid. You're far stronger than you believe. But right now, your body isn't, so you should rest. You've been sitting up longer than Dr. Garcia would probably like." She smiled at him, as warm and encouraging as ever. "But it's always good to talk with you, Mr. Griffith. I'm not due to leave on another journey around the state for a few months, so I hope we can keep talking."
"I...wouldn't mind that." She seemed to help make sense of things that felt too big to wrestle, and if this was his life now, all the credit or blame of it, he'd better take what help he could get from someone else he knew he could trust. He could hardly ask more of Sadie than he already had.
She left him there stretching out on the cot again, resting his now-aching lungs, the kitten stubbornly sticking with him. A lot of thoughts to ponder made a fierce whirlwind in his mind, but for once the weight of it all wasn't all he could see. There were possibilities now too.