The Learned Heart
"I always liked A Christmas Carol best," J. D. said, his glass of beer thumped down on the table for emphasis, liquid sloshing out to splatter the pile of money lying in the middle of the table. "Me and my mom used to read it every Christmas."
"Yeah, that one was good," Buck agreed, intent on the cards in one hand. "But my favorite is A Tale of Two Cities. Now there's a story."
"'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,'" Josiah quoted.
"The man could sure write," Nathan added, shaking his head in awe.
Ezra dealt out a round of cards requested, skimming them across the table to his six companions and dealing one to himself. "I, myself, have always found that particular book to be the least of Mr. Dickens' efforts. Such an insipid ending."
Nathan took up his cards, his frowning attention on the gambler. "Why do you say that? Because a man was willing to sacrifice himself for someone he loved instead of looking out for his own skin?"
Chris, too, collected his cards, his gaze on Ezra amused. "Is it just me, or does anyone else have this image of Ezra sitting knitting while heads roll?"
"Not me." Buck grinned. "The way I see it, he'd have been working the crowd, laying bets to see which head would roll the farthest."
Ezra shot a sour look around the table. "Laugh all you wish, gentlemen. But I say it would have been a far better thing for Carton to have come up with a con that didn't end with his head in a basket."
"What do you think, Vin?" J. D. asked the seventh of the group, who had so far remained silent and nearly hidden beneath his slouch hat. "You think Carton did the right thing?"
The hand sorting through cards held stilled. Then from the shadows beneath his hat, Vin said, tone one of irritation, "It's just a story, J. D. Ain't no right or wrong to it."
"But it ain't just a story. I mean, it is. But it's about real life too, and the choices we all make. Right?" J. D. looked around the table for confirmation.
"That's right," Nathan agreed. "Stories ain't always just stories."
"Most of the world's great literature is more than stories told for amusement's sake," Josiah added. "They're about the human condition."
Vindicated, J. D. turned back to Vin. "See? So what would you have done in Carton's place?"
There was a moment of silence. Then Vin slammed his cards down. "I reckon I'd have done what I aim to do now, J. D. -- get gone." And with that he snatched his money off the table and pushed out of his chair to stalk away and through the batwing doors.
J. D. watched him go with a look of confused surprise. "What's his problem?"
Buck shrugged. "Vin don't exactly impress me as the literary type. And probably he don't cotton to listening to us jaw about stuff he ain't interested in."
"Well, all he had to do was say something instead of going off mad."
"Why don't you tell him that the next time you see him? But in the meantime, you going to play or fold?"
J. D. tossed a bill into the pot. Then, when the man beside him made no move to do likewise, he gave him a nudge. "What about you, Ezra? You still in?"
Ezra shifted his gaze from the batwing doors still swinging. Then, laying down his cards, he gathered up his money. "I fold, gentlemen. And if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go get some fresh air."
*~*~*
He followed Vin through the night shadows to the far edge of town, where the tracker perched on the top rail of a fence on the border of what lay behind and what lay beyond, in neither place and caught between: his back to wood and brick, and to the tame that could rip into a man and leave him bleeding from wounds to heart and soul; his face turned to earth and sky and a wild that could wrap itself about a man and gentle all that grieved in him.
Drawing close, Ezra stood watching him, envying his ability to balance on the edge of two worlds pulling at him with a constant and unyielding force. Then shifting his gaze to that which Vin had sought out for comfort -- friends and words and the shelter of both left behind in lamplight and street fire -- he studied the dark and the wild it hid, wondering not for the first time what the tracker found there that he could find nowhere else, wanting in that moment to know as he wanted nothing else in life.
"I've read books enough to stock a small library," he said, voice soft and gaze still fastened on the world stretching away before him. "And I've traveled enough of this world to at least know one end of it from the other. But when I look out there, into a land that stretches from here to the Lord God Almighty, I feel I know nothing of any importance whatsoever. And I find myself disconcertingly humbled and not a little frightened. Yet there you sit with a want in you to ride out into the back of nowhere alone and unfettered -- and I can't even begin to understand why."
"Maybe 'cause you're so used to the things of man." Vin's tone was low and even, his gaze on the dark still, Ezra's presence known and accepted. "And even them big tall buildings back east you and J. D. are always going on about ain't nothing compared to the smallest mountain God ever made. Kind of boggles the mind, I reckon, to think that the best a man can do ain't nothing much in God's eyes. And if a man likes to think of hisself as more than he is, ain't likely he'd want God showing him up. So best he keep to what he can lay claim to or destroy if he can't."
"You don't think much of what man can do either, Mr. Tanner?"
Vin shook his head. "That ain't the way of it. I've seen what men can do, both good and bad. And while some of it turned my stomach, others of it left me hungering for more. But I ain't never seen nothing built by a man's hands that takes my breath away like the new risen sun or a high mountain meadow when the flowers have taken over from the snow and the world's all fresh and new again."
"You prefer the simple offerings of nature to the most complex of monuments Man can devise? Why?"
Vin turned at that, slipping off the fence to stand with head held high and eyes blazing. "I reckon a man simple as me can't expect to appreciate nothing too complicated. Might give me a brain fever or something if I was even to try."
"Simple?" Ezra echoed in surprise. "Is that how you see yourself, Mr. Tanner? And here I stand thinking that you are quite likely the most complicated man I have ever in my life met."
Vin blinked, the fire in his eyes banking in confusion. "What the hell is that supposed to mean? I ain't any more complicated than a tree stump."
"And have you never considered how long and deep are the roots that lie buried beneath said stump?"
Again Vin blinked, then gave a sigh of exasperation. "Hell, Ezra, why can't you never just say a thing instead of dancing it across the floor and out the door into the street?"
Ezra shrugged. "Very well, in words plainly spoken, let me ask you this: Why do you prefer the vast wilderness to a more civilized existence?"
Another blink. "Who says I prefer it? I'm here, ain't I?"
"Yet here isn't enough for you, is it?" And when Vin didn't dispute his claim, the gambler continued. "Why? What is it you can find out there that you can't find here?"
More blinks. Then turning back to the dark, Vin stood for a long moment before saying, voice gone soft and low, "I can find me, Ezra."
It was Ezra's turn to blink. "And do you get lost very often, Mr. Tanner?"
"Don't we all?"
Vin kept his back to his companion, his voice still soft as he continued. "Out there, there ain't nothing to get in my way, to turn me around and inside out, to make me forget who I am and what's important in life. It ain't that way in town. Here there's too much to get lost in."
"I find that hard to believe, my friend. In fact, I would say that you are the person I would least expect to lose his way."
"Then you obviously wasn't paying no mind in that saloon just now."
The words were bitter, the tone harsh. And knowing what lay behind his flight out of the saloon, as J. D. and perhaps the others did not, Ezra kept his own tone neutral as he spoke only a part of what he knew. "So you haven't read Dickens. I hardly consider that occasion for losing one's way."
Vin turned, his expression accusing. "Even J. D. knew what you was all talking about in there. Some kid still wet behind the ears and he knew. Made me feel like I was dumber than a rock."
"It's a book, Mr. Tanner. Nothing more."
"No, it ain't. It's you six knowing things I ain't never even heard tell of. It's you all walking into a room and folks smiling to see you, and me walking in and them pinching their faces like they smelled something dead. And when I see that look, when I sit and listen and hear what I don't know, I get all tangled up inside, like I've lost a trail that was clear and suddenly it ain't no more. And sometimes I get scared that I ain't never going to find it again." He jerked his head, turning back to the dark. "Reckon that sounds stupid, don't it?"
"No, Mr. Tanner. It sounds honest."
Vin leaned against the rail at his back. "I ain't like the rest of you. I ain't had me a roof over my head since I was five. Leastways, not one made of wood. Never had folks since then neither, nor manners nor the right way of talking. Hell, there's been years at a time I ain't spoke like a white man at all. Ain't never had no schooling nor book learning of any kind. I know how to hunt and track and kill a man so he dies slow and painful. I know how to tell when it's coming on to snow or where to find buffalo when there was still some to find. But I don't know much of what most folks do that have growed up white."
He sighed. "Josiah was talking the other day about us fighting a war with England a long time before this last one between the states. I asked him who won it, and J. D. looked at me like I was plumb loco." He lowered his head. "How come I don't know stuff like that, Ezra, and J. D. does?"
"Because he grew up in a different world, Mr. Tanner. And that sort of knowledge is simply a part of that world. While knowing how to hunt and track is a part of the world in which you were raised."
"I ain't stupid, you know." Vin turned back with a defiant look. "If someone would have just told me those things, I'd know them the same as J. D."
"Of that I have no doubt. But why is it so important that you know what J. D. knows?"
"Because it's his world we're living in here."
"And you don't feel you can fit into that world without the proper knowledge?" Vin nodded. "And what is the proper knowledge?"
"All that stuff you get out of books, I reckon."
"And what of other types of knowledge? Are they important as well?"
Vin was back to blinking. "What other types? What are you talking about?"
Ezra was silent for a moment, considering. Then he said, "Why did you so fervently believe Josiah to be incapable of murder when Poplar accused him of such a few months back?"
"What? What does that have to do with anything?"
Ezra ignored the question, continuing on as if Vin hadn't spoken. "All the evidence pointed to his guilt. And never once did he proclaim his innocence. Chris had his doubts, as did the rest of us. Yet you were utterly convinced he hadn't killed that woman. Why? What did you know that nobody else -- not even Josiah himself -- knew?"
Vin stared at him. "Why are you asking me this now? What difference does it make?"
"To me? Perhaps none. But to you? The difference, I would say, between sitting in a saloon among friends and sitting alone on a fence rail wishing you could disappear into the night."
Vin turned away again, his gaze going back to the dark and the wild that lay beyond. "You ain't making no kind of sense, Ezra. I think maybe you had too much whiskey or something."
Again Ezra continued as if his companion hadn't spoken. "Did you never wonder, Vin, how it was that Chris was so willing to take your word that you hadn't committed murder when a wanted poster said otherwise, yet he could so readily believe Josiah capable of it? Why trust in you and not him? Why have faith in a former bounty hunter and not in a man of God? And for that matter, why trust you with Lucius Stutz' assassin's rifle and not me with the man's ill-gotten gains? Why trust you not to kill when he couldn't trust me not to steal?"
Vin shook his head, his back still to the gambler. "I don't know, Ezra. And why are you even asking me this? What are you trying to get at?"
"Just this: For all our learning, for all our knowledge of the world and men's ways and accomplishments, for all our deep thoughts and philosophical musings, for all our learned minds, neither Josiah nor I nor any of our compatriots have what you have -- a learned heart. We know music and novels and the cities of the world. We know facts and figures, and dispense them freely. But we don't know men, the way their minds and hearts work. And we know nothing of the ways of things not of man. We trust only in what we see and can prove and touch. So at the end of the day, when the books are closed and the music falls silent, we know nothing at all. And Chris Larabee knows that. He looks into our minds and isn't impressed. He looks into our hearts and knows us for the fools we are. But when he looks at you, he sees a heart that knows more than the mind ever can. And he trusts that heart more than he ever could any man's mind."
Vin turned, gaze uncertain, and Ezra continued, warming up to his theme. "You didn't merely think Josiah was innocent or want to believe -- you knew. His innocence was as plain to you as the new risen sun or a high mountain meadow. While the rest of us weighed evidence and considered the men he'd knowingly killed, while we listened to our minds and came at the question of his innocence six ways from Sunday, you listened to your heart and went straight to the truth. Your heart knew what our minds could only guess at."
He studied his companion as if seeing him for the first time. "I envy you that, you know. I envy how you can walk forward or back, and be at home in either wilderness or town, having an understanding of both that isn't of facts or figures or philosophers, but of the heart. You see, I know how to con a man, but I don't know how to make him my friend. I can tell when a man lies, but truths escape me. And as for those things not of man, I've never felt anything but annoyed on those few occasions when I was unable to avoid the new risen sun. And if I were ever to lose breath at sight of a high mountain meadow, it would undoubtedly be a reaction to the altitude."
He gave a wry grin, followed by a sigh. "A man can gather facts and figures, Vin. He can know who won what war and when it was fought or who wrote what book and what story it tells. But at the end of things, will it be that which decides a man's worth or the evidence of his heart?"
He allowed a silence to settle, that chance given to consider words spoken and the truths behind them. Then, he said, "Maybe you haven't read A Tale of Two Cities. And maybe you never will. But you live that story, Vin. You lived it that day you saved Nathan's life. And you live it every time you risk your life to save another's. It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. Those are words, Vin. Anyone can recite them. But not everyone can live them. So if anyone should be ashamed of their lack of knowledge, it isn't you." He waved his hand dismissively. "As for the rest -- you can learn to appreciate a good book. As I can learn to appreciate a new risen sun -- if I were ever of so deranged a mind as to voluntarily get up at such an ungodly hour. It's simply a matter of finding the right teacher."
He gave a half-smile then of embarrassment at heartfelt words so freely spoken. And shifting his position, he said, "Well, I left a rather large sum of money sitting on the table back in the saloon. And in the spirit of knowledge shared, I believe it to be my duty to teach our compatriots how to lose gracefully. So I'll bid you goodnight, Mr. Tanner."
He turned, only to stop when a soft voice rasped out behind him.
"Ezra? The sun rises at six tomorrow. And the best view to be had of it is right here."
Ezra was still for a long moment. Then looking over his shoulder, he said, "Perhaps I'll join you then, Mr. Tanner."
Again he started to walk off and again Vin stopped him.
"Ezra? You got a copy of that book about them two cities?"
"I believe so, yes."
"Then can you bring it with you when you come?"
Ezra gave a smile hidden by shadows. "I think I could manage that. Until tomorrow then, Mr. Tanner."
"Yeah, Ezra. Until tomorrow."
The End