Sorry Ma, I'm an Outlaw

The word carries farther than a shout.

Below it, a face.

Ink can’t hold a man. It tries anyway. Hard lines. A jaw cut from dry earth. Eyes shaded over, as if the artist feared what might happen if they were left uncovered. The boy studies those shadows longest. Wonders if they hid the eyes because they were cruel, or because they weren’t.

He only knows his father like this.

Not from memory. Not from touch.

From paper.

From a list.

Robbery. Assault. Murder.

He sounds the words out under his breath, careful with them, like they might bite. They sit heavy in his mouth, stones he cannot swallow.

He tries to fit them to the face.

Tries to imagine the man moving.

Does he walk loud, like thunder, so people know to run? Or quiet, like something that doesn’t want to be seen? Does he look back when he rides, or keep his eyes forward, like nothing in this world could catch him?

The poster says he is vicious.

The boy turns that word over.

Vi-cious.

It feels sharp.

He wonders if vicious men laugh.

Not the mean kind. Not the brittle kind he hears when the older boys gather near the trough and shove each other, glancing his way.

Don’t know who your pa is, do you?

Ask your ma. Oh wait—she won’t tell you which one.

Bet he ain’t even real.

A fly lands on the paper, drags its legs across the printed reward, then lifts away. The boy watches it go, squinting into the white spill of afternoon.

He wonders if his father is out there now.

Not as a drawing.

As something breathing.

Running, maybe.

He’s seen coyotes cut across the hills at dusk, thin and fast, always looking back. There’s a kind of fear in them that never settles, just lives under the skin like a second heartbeat. He wonders if it’s the same. If his father sleeps light. If every snapped twig pulls him awake. If he eats quick, never truly enjoying a meal.

Are you lonely, Pa?

The thought comes softer than the rest. It startles him.

Because he knows what lonely is.

Lonely is the way other children look at him and then look away, like they’ve seen something they shouldn’t have. Lonely is wanting to ask and knowing the asking will only close another door. They tip-toe around their own curiosity but he knows what they want to ask--what's it like being an outlaw's son?

He presses his thumb to the edge of the poster, not quite touching the face.

Don’t stare.

Ma's voice comes back the way it always does, even when she isn’t there. Low. Firm. Tired.

It’s best not to wonder, she had said.

Best not to ask.

He had asked anyway. Once. Twice. More than that.

Is he as bad as they say?

She hadn’t answered. Just set her jaw and turned back to the stove, firelight breaking across her in flickers. For a moment he thought she might speak. Thought something might slip loose between them.

But it didn’t.

Silence, and being told not to wonder, only gave the wondering teeth.

It gnaws at him now, standing in the heat, staring at a man who is and isn’t his.

A breeze slips down the street, thin and sudden. The paper shivers under his hand. One corner lifts, then falls. Lifts again.

He watches it.

The nail gives a small, tired creak.

Then, quiet as a decision, the poster tears.

Not all at once. Just enough. The face splits through one eye.

He reaches out. His other hand presses the paper flat, careful, as if it might feel. He holds it there a moment, palm spread over the break, as if he could keep the man from coming apart, as if he could keep something of him from being taken by the wind--taken away from him.

He took a chair, one rung missing, and tipped its back against the wall. 

The desert dimmed. Shadows gathered in the corners of the room. The wind slipped through the broken window and whispered across the floorboards.

Then came the men.

They rode in hard and dismounted quick, their movements sharp with purpose. Boots struck the porch. Leather creaked. Voices dropped low, then lower still, as if silence might grant them advantage.

Tripp did not move.

He’d left enough behind the last three days for any half-decent tracker to follow.

The door burst wide and the first outlaw crossed the threshold. The shot crashed through the house, sudden and terrible. 

Tripp answered with a shot that drove the man back over the threshold, dead before he hit the dirt 

The others surged in behind him, guns flashing, curses breaking the stillness. The room filled with smoke and splintering wood. But Tripp moved with a cold precision that was born of hard years and harder lessons. He gave ground once, then no more. His gun spoke again and again, each report finding its mark.

Men fell.

One staggered against the wall and slid down it, a streak of red followed. Another dropped his weapon and reached for something that was no longer there. A third turned as if to flee, but the door that had promised escape gave him none.

Then it was over.

The echoes faded, leaving only the wind and two men who remained alive.

They stood apart from one another, drawn by fate into the same narrow space between living and dying. Their eyes fixed on Tripp, and in them lay an understanding that came too late.

He leveled his revolver with his left hand, his right producing a book, cover worn, from his satchel.

“Y'all know who wrote this book?”

The men glanced at each other in confusion, the question strange and out of place among the dead.

Tripp cocked the hammer, “None of you?”

“L-Lucas Ward, sure. Everybody know that.”

“It's a fine book.” The other responded.

“Which of y’all can write?”

Another odd question.

One man lifted his hand, slow and uncertain.

The other opened his mouth.

Tripp fired.

The second man fell.

“Sit,” Tripp said.

The man obeyed.

From the book, Tripp tore a page–one side blank– from its back and laid it upon the table a pencil from his satchel followed.

“Write,” he said.

The man’s hand trembled as he took up the pencil, “Write what?”

“The words I'm gonna tell ya. Starting now: Dear Mr. Lucas Ward,” Tripp began, watching over the man’s shoulders as he scribed letters Tripp recognized but could not name.

“I am a man who once rode with the infamous Bridger-Keppler Gang.”

The pencil scratched rough against the paper.

“I got plenty good stories. The badges they wear now ain't right so I want their wrongs on record and my name cleared.”

Outside, the last light slipped behind the hills, leaving the desert in a hush of gathering night.

“I promise to be honest and true in my account.”

The man paused, then continued, a brow raised in interest at the words before him.

“Please meet me at Cholla Springs on the fifteen of June at half past six, evening.”

The wind stirred again, lifting the edge of the page.

“I think you will want to hear the things I have to say, no doubt your audience will. Signed, T.H”

When the writing ceased, Tripp turned the book and showed the man the address stamped within its cover.

“This is where I want it sent,” he said.

The man copied it with care born of fear.

“Now read it. The whole thing.”

The man did so, his voice low and uneven, yet the words were true to what was dictated.

When he finished, he looked up.

For a long moment Tripp regarded him. There was no anger in his face, nor mercy. Only a hardness that had been shaped by things long past.

He took the letter and folded it.

“That’ll do,” he said.

The shot came swift and final.

The man slumped where he sat, and the house, as if satisfied, returned to its silence.

Tripp stepped outside into the cooling night. The stars had begun to show, cold and distant over the wide land. He mounted his horse and turned toward the dark line of road that led away from the place.

Some miles off there stood a post office, a small outpost against the vastness.

Tripp rode that way.

The desert kept its silence behind him.

Ahead, a letter waited to be delivered.