Aaron Cargill draped his hand over the butt of his pistol and hung his thumb just above the hammer. His fingers flowed in a gentle wave of motion, as though currents of water were washing over them, pushing them toward and away from his palm. He had adapted this behavior from his father, Jared Cargill, himself not a shootist, but still pretty handy with irons.
Handy enough to have survived a “duel” with a disgruntled patron back in ‘53. The “weak-eyed patron”, as he had come to be known in local lore, had accused Jared of cheating him in the purchase of a mule. “The mule was poorly-bred, and weak in the knees,” the man had said, in the presence of other customers. Jared, acutely sensitive to the effect that this accusation would have on his mule-breeding business, took exception. Some obscenities were exchanged, and the patron, much confident in his abilities with a pistol, and much unaware of his own short-sightedness, both of the optical and existential varieties, challenged Jared to a duel, only to discover that either form of myopia was a significant disadvantage when standing fifteen feet away from a man experienced with pistols.
Aaron flexed his fingers and narrowed his eyes. He stared at the man, the fool, mirroring him at the other end of the alley. Aaron imagined the moments ahead. He envisioned the fingers of his right hand wrapping around his Colt, embracing the stock, the fingers on his left hand fanning the hammer, his right pointer finger squeezing the trigger, with his right arm locked in the direction of his opponent’s chest. He imagined his arm to be a beam of sunlight, straight as a rail, extended through the alley and through the man’s flesh, bone and heart, breaking through his spine and shining through the skin on his back.
Aaron considered this situation carefully, as any man must when facing what could be his last moments of life. He had not walked into this alley unthinking, as the weak-eyed patron had walked into his own demise. Aaron had arrived only after serious deliberation, and after exhausting all other possibilities. His opponent had refused to listen to reason, as Aaron’s father had tried to train his son to do. His opponent was drunk, not with liquor, but with the jealous rage of a lover scorned.
Aaron had tried to explain, had tried to provide clarity to the man, “I am sorry to say that she doesn’t love you, sir. In fact, she is not a woman who can be loved. She is the type of woman who lacks the emotions you and I expect of a sister, mother, or wife. She has been overheated by the Tennessee sun, one must suppose, by the lack of a family perhaps, and her love has been cooked right out of her. She did not take company with me out of spite for you, but simply as a deer must find water, this woman desires a man, and nothing will keep her from such a thing. That is no offense to you, sir, so be kind enough and strong enough to set your temper, and your fists, down.”
That, in the mind of Aaron Cargill, was a glowing edifice of reason as perfectly shaped as any man could mould. But, in the mind of the man facing him, “them’s was fightin’ words.” The man had grabbed Aaron by the collar of his cotton shirt, and pulled him so close to his face that Aaron could feel every minuscule drop of spittle that ushered from his mouth as he hissed, “I’m ginna sheet ye down like a werthless cuyoat. I don’t knows yer name, ‘sir’, but I weren’t need to onces I blows ye to the kingdom of heeven.”
As Aaron was held there by this man’s dirty fists, he found himself surprised with his own anger. For even though Aaron was not an exceptionally well-educated man, he had read a few books, Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans”, he had read more than once as a boy, and it was this self-imposed education, he supposed, that caused his ire to be raised, not this man’s jealous territorialism... but greatly more his relentless assault on the English language, and his sheer stupidity. Aaron imagined himself an evolutionary force, performing a much needed service for the world and the human species by preventing this man from passing his stupidity to future children. That’s a cause that could bring Aaron Cargill to battle.
The man cracked the knuckles of his thumbs and wrists, drawing Aaron back to the present. “Ye ready to die, raypist?” the man called out. Aaron shook his head. “I’m afraid you’ve read this story all wrong, Mister.” “That so?” the man retorted. “It is,” Aaron replied. “This woman that you’ve imagined as your betrothed, she came a’calling after me, and not the other way ‘round. I can promise you that. And now, you’ve brought yourself to the brink... about to enter through the gates of hell, over a woman that don’t even know your name.”
If this duel hadn’t yet been assured, it was dead set now. Aaron could see the rage build from his opponent’s stiffening legs up through his heaving chest and into the veins on his neck and forehead. “Now that’s it! Get ye reedy, ya sunofabeetch! You’re ‘bout to eet my bullet and sheet leed!”
Aaron Cargill was ready. Ready to draw down on this foul ignorant, ready to shoot him dead, and ready to be shot dead, if luck should abandon him. He fixed his eyes like steel, knowing that one blink or twitch could cost him the fight.
Adolfo shook his hands, trying to keep the blood flowing, afraid he might tense up with rage while staring at the loathsome devil in his view. He cracked his knuckles, and wiped his face with his ragged shirt sleeve. His hand drifted lower by an almost imperceptible measure, slightly closer to his revolver, but the devil saw it, and twitched.
Adolfo jerked his hand upward, away from the pistol and shook his head, furious with himself. He had to concentrate, stop his face from revealing his internal criticism to his opponent. “A fight with a man is all in th’head,” his daddy had told him. “It don’t matter how much better a man he is, or how skilled him is. If ye can beat him up in thar, you can beat him at anything.”
Adolfo could almost feel the tap of his father’s fingers against his ten-year-old temple. His father’s green fingernails digging into his skin... the memory, even if it were of an unpleasant feeling... at a more convenient time, might have been welcome, if only for the image of his father. But, like all memories of his father, Adolfo found his mind carried away by a flood of other thoughts and feelings. Anger at the belt that his father wore about his waist. Jealousy, of sorts, at the bottle that his father never loosed from his hand. Cloudy, undefinable rage toward the relentless beatings that his father had visited upon him, over and over, night after night, year after year, Adolfo too young and too scared to run away, too afraid of what lay in the mountains that caged his childhood home in a dark valley, of the haunted call of the coyotes that kept him awake so many nights as a boy.
Adolfo imagined himself, hidden beneath a bedsheet... bedsheet? More like a misappropriated window curtain. Regardless, it was under this cloth that he remembered shivering, frozen by fear of devils in the night, both real and imagined. Adolfo dreamed, then and now, of the curtain-sheet lifting gently into the air, by supernatural, invisible means, floating away, giving way to a broad glow of white moonlight. He was floating now, lifted from the ground by imperceptible arms, and carried through the window. Window? More of a gash, hewn into the wall by an angry axe, and an angrier axe-wielder, desperate to get into the home that had been closed to him by an even angrier wife. Wife? More of a child, stolen from her kith and her kin, by a man who talked often and loudly, but acted little and rarely. Adolfo remembered his wiry hands as they encircled this man’s throat. His thumbs pressed in, against his father’s adam’s apple, pushing through, almost to the bone. “Ye ready to die, rapist?” he had asked.
The thin, reedy voice of the devil called Adolfo from his thoughts back into the world. Thanks to a hearing impediment gifted to him by his daddy, and thanks to the skiddish mind grown among years of anxious fear of the same, Adolfo only understood, or heard, or heard and understood the last few words of the man’s statement. “wrong, mister.” It wasn’t much to go on, but Adolfo had learned long ago that sometimes, especially in situations where pride is involved, it is better to appear as though you heard and understood even if you really had not.
“That so?” Adolfo hollered back. A response wide-reaching enough to suit many of the possible insults, questions, or statements the devil had issued. More words came from the devil’s tongue. More than Adolfo could hear, and more than he could run through his mind’s mill, break apart, and sift into useful and un-useful words. “This woman... she came a’calling after me, and not the other way ‘round. I can promise you’re about to enter through the gates of hell over a woman that don’t even know your name.” Adolfo knew there was more, but what he had heard was enough.
Adolfo knew what he knew. He knew that he had looked this woman in the eye when they lay together. “You love me, don’t ye, Elisa?” he had asked in a whisper. She looked away. “Sure, honey, you know it.” He had heard it. From her mouth. It wafted from her lips into his good ear, where it became a thick, warm oil, which poured through his nerves into his mind and his heart. It stuck there, hung on his heart, never to be taken down, never to budge.
The oil in his body was brought to a boil by the devil’s lies. It squirmed back through his veins, back through his chest, through his arms and legs, up to his neck, into his face. It covered his tongue and spoke for him. “Now that’s it! Get ye reedy, ya sunofabeetch! You’re ‘bout to eet my bullet and sheet leed!” The oil reached Adolfo’s fingertips, causing his hands to twitch again. Aaron mistook the twitch for a motion to draw, and went for his pistol.
Aaron’s weight shifted to his right leg as his right arm straightened above it. His left hand fanned the hammer, and his right trigger finger squeezed. The pistol kicked back in his hand, surprising him a little. It had been a while since he’d actually fired this gun, and he had forgotten how much power it had. The kick had pushed his hand a little up and a little left, and his bullet sailed left and high of his opponent.
Adolfo hung his holster a little lower than some men, which caused him to crouch slightly as he reached for it. His hand tightened around the butt of the gun, and his thumb yanked back on the hammer. The intensity of his desire to kill the man before him had long since taken control of his body, and filled him with panic, causing him to squeeze the trigger a fraction of a second too soon. The bullet ripped out of his pistol and skipped into the dirt many feet before his enemy, causing a handful of dust and clay to spout from the earth.
A moment wedged itself between the two men, as they both took inventory of the situation. “Sheet.” Adolfo muttered, as streams of sweat rolled down his cheeks. Aaron’s eyelids twitched as he stood there, frozen, breathing hard. He found himself completely unsure of the protocol for a situation such as this. The distant orange sun seemed to sink many miles all at once, and suddenly it seemed to both men that something must be done, and soon, before it got too dark to see... but what? Fire again? Holster? Shake hands and thank the lord above that fate and physics had spared them a life of dismemberment... or death?
Aaron noticed that he was still leaning slightly to his right side. He slowly pushed himself back to a centered stance, and as he did so, leaned on his heel a little, and took a half a step backward. Adolfo monitored this movement very carefully... hoping that the man’s actions would give him some clarity for his own decision of what to do next. Adolfo’s thoughts reflected back to the moments before he fired, back to his father. More specifically, how Adolfo had killed him.
At the time, this memory had been fuel for the fight... a reminder of the living rage that was sleeping inside of him, that could be unleashed on any man if such a man would be fool enough to stir it up. But now, the memory didn’t bring rage, or energy, or drive. Instead, it called forth shame, regret, and emptiness. Sure, the murder of his father had brought satisfaction... satisfaction? More like a poor ending tacked on to a bad story. It was not a fulfilling action, as he had hoped it would be, but a terrified, anxious one. “What if someone finds me out?” had pounded in his forehead like an 8 lb. hammer driving a bent nail. Days, weeks, and now two years had passed, and he was still as nervous as he had been the day after. “What if daddy had changed his ways...?” a question that sat at the bottom of old glass jars and wooden barrels, beneath gallons of whiskey and tequila. The oil inside Adolfo returned to room temperature. Regret. Disappointment. A misfired bullet shot by hasty hands.
Aaron watched Adolfo like he was juggling a pile of lit dynamite sticks with very short fuses. The two men behaved as though they were watching themselves in a mirror. Aaron took a step back. Adolfo matched him. Another step from Adolfo, another reflection from Aaron. As the distance grew between the two men, Aaron realized that even if one of them did fire again, the bullet certainly wouldn’t hit his opponent. So, he carefully lowered his pistol, and slowly returned it to its holster. Adolfo did the same. “I’ll be the better man,” Aaron thought to himself as he planted his right heel and turned his back on his would be murderer. “After all,” Adolfo thought, “I always was.”
Handy enough to have survived a “duel” with a disgruntled patron back in ‘53. The “weak-eyed patron”, as he had come to be known in local lore, had accused Jared of cheating him in the purchase of a mule. “The mule was poorly-bred, and weak in the knees,” the man had said, in the presence of other customers. Jared, acutely sensitive to the effect that this accusation would have on his mule-breeding business, took exception. Some obscenities were exchanged, and the patron, much confident in his abilities with a pistol, and much unaware of his own short-sightedness, both of the optical and existential varieties, challenged Jared to a duel, only to discover that either form of myopia was a significant disadvantage when standing fifteen feet away from a man experienced with pistols.
Aaron flexed his fingers and narrowed his eyes. He stared at the man, the fool, mirroring him at the other end of the alley. Aaron imagined the moments ahead. He envisioned the fingers of his right hand wrapping around his Colt, embracing the stock, the fingers on his left hand fanning the hammer, his right pointer finger squeezing the trigger, with his right arm locked in the direction of his opponent’s chest. He imagined his arm to be a beam of sunlight, straight as a rail, extended through the alley and through the man’s flesh, bone and heart, breaking through his spine and shining through the skin on his back.
Aaron considered this situation carefully, as any man must when facing what could be his last moments of life. He had not walked into this alley unthinking, as the weak-eyed patron had walked into his own demise. Aaron had arrived only after serious deliberation, and after exhausting all other possibilities. His opponent had refused to listen to reason, as Aaron’s father had tried to train his son to do. His opponent was drunk, not with liquor, but with the jealous rage of a lover scorned.
Aaron had tried to explain, had tried to provide clarity to the man, “I am sorry to say that she doesn’t love you, sir. In fact, she is not a woman who can be loved. She is the type of woman who lacks the emotions you and I expect of a sister, mother, or wife. She has been overheated by the Tennessee sun, one must suppose, by the lack of a family perhaps, and her love has been cooked right out of her. She did not take company with me out of spite for you, but simply as a deer must find water, this woman desires a man, and nothing will keep her from such a thing. That is no offense to you, sir, so be kind enough and strong enough to set your temper, and your fists, down.”
That, in the mind of Aaron Cargill, was a glowing edifice of reason as perfectly shaped as any man could mould. But, in the mind of the man facing him, “them’s was fightin’ words.” The man had grabbed Aaron by the collar of his cotton shirt, and pulled him so close to his face that Aaron could feel every minuscule drop of spittle that ushered from his mouth as he hissed, “I’m ginna sheet ye down like a werthless cuyoat. I don’t knows yer name, ‘sir’, but I weren’t need to onces I blows ye to the kingdom of heeven.”
As Aaron was held there by this man’s dirty fists, he found himself surprised with his own anger. For even though Aaron was not an exceptionally well-educated man, he had read a few books, Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans”, he had read more than once as a boy, and it was this self-imposed education, he supposed, that caused his ire to be raised, not this man’s jealous territorialism... but greatly more his relentless assault on the English language, and his sheer stupidity. Aaron imagined himself an evolutionary force, performing a much needed service for the world and the human species by preventing this man from passing his stupidity to future children. That’s a cause that could bring Aaron Cargill to battle.
The man cracked the knuckles of his thumbs and wrists, drawing Aaron back to the present. “Ye ready to die, raypist?” the man called out. Aaron shook his head. “I’m afraid you’ve read this story all wrong, Mister.” “That so?” the man retorted. “It is,” Aaron replied. “This woman that you’ve imagined as your betrothed, she came a’calling after me, and not the other way ‘round. I can promise you that. And now, you’ve brought yourself to the brink... about to enter through the gates of hell, over a woman that don’t even know your name.”
If this duel hadn’t yet been assured, it was dead set now. Aaron could see the rage build from his opponent’s stiffening legs up through his heaving chest and into the veins on his neck and forehead. “Now that’s it! Get ye reedy, ya sunofabeetch! You’re ‘bout to eet my bullet and sheet leed!”
Aaron Cargill was ready. Ready to draw down on this foul ignorant, ready to shoot him dead, and ready to be shot dead, if luck should abandon him. He fixed his eyes like steel, knowing that one blink or twitch could cost him the fight.
###
Adolfo shook his hands, trying to keep the blood flowing, afraid he might tense up with rage while staring at the loathsome devil in his view. He cracked his knuckles, and wiped his face with his ragged shirt sleeve. His hand drifted lower by an almost imperceptible measure, slightly closer to his revolver, but the devil saw it, and twitched.
Adolfo jerked his hand upward, away from the pistol and shook his head, furious with himself. He had to concentrate, stop his face from revealing his internal criticism to his opponent. “A fight with a man is all in th’head,” his daddy had told him. “It don’t matter how much better a man he is, or how skilled him is. If ye can beat him up in thar, you can beat him at anything.”
Adolfo could almost feel the tap of his father’s fingers against his ten-year-old temple. His father’s green fingernails digging into his skin... the memory, even if it were of an unpleasant feeling... at a more convenient time, might have been welcome, if only for the image of his father. But, like all memories of his father, Adolfo found his mind carried away by a flood of other thoughts and feelings. Anger at the belt that his father wore about his waist. Jealousy, of sorts, at the bottle that his father never loosed from his hand. Cloudy, undefinable rage toward the relentless beatings that his father had visited upon him, over and over, night after night, year after year, Adolfo too young and too scared to run away, too afraid of what lay in the mountains that caged his childhood home in a dark valley, of the haunted call of the coyotes that kept him awake so many nights as a boy.
Adolfo imagined himself, hidden beneath a bedsheet... bedsheet? More like a misappropriated window curtain. Regardless, it was under this cloth that he remembered shivering, frozen by fear of devils in the night, both real and imagined. Adolfo dreamed, then and now, of the curtain-sheet lifting gently into the air, by supernatural, invisible means, floating away, giving way to a broad glow of white moonlight. He was floating now, lifted from the ground by imperceptible arms, and carried through the window. Window? More of a gash, hewn into the wall by an angry axe, and an angrier axe-wielder, desperate to get into the home that had been closed to him by an even angrier wife. Wife? More of a child, stolen from her kith and her kin, by a man who talked often and loudly, but acted little and rarely. Adolfo remembered his wiry hands as they encircled this man’s throat. His thumbs pressed in, against his father’s adam’s apple, pushing through, almost to the bone. “Ye ready to die, rapist?” he had asked.
The thin, reedy voice of the devil called Adolfo from his thoughts back into the world. Thanks to a hearing impediment gifted to him by his daddy, and thanks to the skiddish mind grown among years of anxious fear of the same, Adolfo only understood, or heard, or heard and understood the last few words of the man’s statement. “wrong, mister.” It wasn’t much to go on, but Adolfo had learned long ago that sometimes, especially in situations where pride is involved, it is better to appear as though you heard and understood even if you really had not.
“That so?” Adolfo hollered back. A response wide-reaching enough to suit many of the possible insults, questions, or statements the devil had issued. More words came from the devil’s tongue. More than Adolfo could hear, and more than he could run through his mind’s mill, break apart, and sift into useful and un-useful words. “This woman... she came a’calling after me, and not the other way ‘round. I can promise you’re about to enter through the gates of hell over a woman that don’t even know your name.” Adolfo knew there was more, but what he had heard was enough.
Adolfo knew what he knew. He knew that he had looked this woman in the eye when they lay together. “You love me, don’t ye, Elisa?” he had asked in a whisper. She looked away. “Sure, honey, you know it.” He had heard it. From her mouth. It wafted from her lips into his good ear, where it became a thick, warm oil, which poured through his nerves into his mind and his heart. It stuck there, hung on his heart, never to be taken down, never to budge.
The oil in his body was brought to a boil by the devil’s lies. It squirmed back through his veins, back through his chest, through his arms and legs, up to his neck, into his face. It covered his tongue and spoke for him. “Now that’s it! Get ye reedy, ya sunofabeetch! You’re ‘bout to eet my bullet and sheet leed!” The oil reached Adolfo’s fingertips, causing his hands to twitch again. Aaron mistook the twitch for a motion to draw, and went for his pistol.
Aaron’s weight shifted to his right leg as his right arm straightened above it. His left hand fanned the hammer, and his right trigger finger squeezed. The pistol kicked back in his hand, surprising him a little. It had been a while since he’d actually fired this gun, and he had forgotten how much power it had. The kick had pushed his hand a little up and a little left, and his bullet sailed left and high of his opponent.
Adolfo hung his holster a little lower than some men, which caused him to crouch slightly as he reached for it. His hand tightened around the butt of the gun, and his thumb yanked back on the hammer. The intensity of his desire to kill the man before him had long since taken control of his body, and filled him with panic, causing him to squeeze the trigger a fraction of a second too soon. The bullet ripped out of his pistol and skipped into the dirt many feet before his enemy, causing a handful of dust and clay to spout from the earth.
A moment wedged itself between the two men, as they both took inventory of the situation. “Sheet.” Adolfo muttered, as streams of sweat rolled down his cheeks. Aaron’s eyelids twitched as he stood there, frozen, breathing hard. He found himself completely unsure of the protocol for a situation such as this. The distant orange sun seemed to sink many miles all at once, and suddenly it seemed to both men that something must be done, and soon, before it got too dark to see... but what? Fire again? Holster? Shake hands and thank the lord above that fate and physics had spared them a life of dismemberment... or death?
Aaron noticed that he was still leaning slightly to his right side. He slowly pushed himself back to a centered stance, and as he did so, leaned on his heel a little, and took a half a step backward. Adolfo monitored this movement very carefully... hoping that the man’s actions would give him some clarity for his own decision of what to do next. Adolfo’s thoughts reflected back to the moments before he fired, back to his father. More specifically, how Adolfo had killed him.
At the time, this memory had been fuel for the fight... a reminder of the living rage that was sleeping inside of him, that could be unleashed on any man if such a man would be fool enough to stir it up. But now, the memory didn’t bring rage, or energy, or drive. Instead, it called forth shame, regret, and emptiness. Sure, the murder of his father had brought satisfaction... satisfaction? More like a poor ending tacked on to a bad story. It was not a fulfilling action, as he had hoped it would be, but a terrified, anxious one. “What if someone finds me out?” had pounded in his forehead like an 8 lb. hammer driving a bent nail. Days, weeks, and now two years had passed, and he was still as nervous as he had been the day after. “What if daddy had changed his ways...?” a question that sat at the bottom of old glass jars and wooden barrels, beneath gallons of whiskey and tequila. The oil inside Adolfo returned to room temperature. Regret. Disappointment. A misfired bullet shot by hasty hands.
Aaron watched Adolfo like he was juggling a pile of lit dynamite sticks with very short fuses. The two men behaved as though they were watching themselves in a mirror. Aaron took a step back. Adolfo matched him. Another step from Adolfo, another reflection from Aaron. As the distance grew between the two men, Aaron realized that even if one of them did fire again, the bullet certainly wouldn’t hit his opponent. So, he carefully lowered his pistol, and slowly returned it to its holster. Adolfo did the same. “I’ll be the better man,” Aaron thought to himself as he planted his right heel and turned his back on his would be murderer. “After all,” Adolfo thought, “I always was.”
