A Winter Night
Visiting their graves, after three years, shouldn't hurt so much. But it did. Nothing seemed to fill the emptiness where his family should have been. There was no moon, which was right on the third anniversary. He thought he would check on his friend, before turning in to lie awake and think.
Nathan's rooms were located just above and behind the saloon, a blessing for many a bar fight participant. Chris Larabee stood for a moment, looking up the flight of stairs, leading to his friend. These stairs looked like the side of a cliff, as tired as he felt. Taking a breath he started up. Entering the main room Larabee felt like he had entered a church peace and comfort seemed to seep from the walls. The main room was small, claustrophobic for a man used to traveling and sleeping on the open prairie. The dusty smell of drying plants struck him first. Nathan had bottles of oils and herbal concoctions on every available surface; books covered all the other spaces, expensive, leather bound books. A pot of one of his special teas simmered cheerfully on the gray potbelly stove adding the warmth of the overcrowded room. From the doorway, he could see Nathan leaning over his friend, but it looked like he was talking to someone else.
"How is he?" Chris Larabee asked, when the black man came into the main room. He was still trying to remove the dust from the trail from his black duster.
"Your friend Chris be fine. Fact is he'll be up and around tomorrow. Bullet went through the shoulder and didn't hit anything important." Buck Wilmington, was wounded trying to stop a bank robbery earlier that week. "It's JD, I'm worried about now."
"JD?"
"He's been in there most of the day. I can't get him to go back to his room and rest."
Chris went into the other room. It was smaller than the first dominated by the old bed in the center. The only other furniture in the room was an old rickety chair. The old creaked when he sat down but didn't give way under his weight. His friend, Buck, was in the bed, in a drug-induced sleep that would last until morning. JD looked like he was asleep wrapped in an old tattered quilt, at the foot of the bed. Even Larabee could see that the kid needed to be in his own bed.
"He is getting over the pneumonia," Nathan spoke in a whisper from behind the gunfighter. "But he needs to rest in his own room."
Larabee sat down beside the teenager, and touched the boy's shoulder "JD," he said, trying not to startle the boy.
"You're back," he said, then coughed, deep and painful.
"And YOU are going to bed." Larabee said, allowing no argument, but this was JD. Nothing went unquestioned.
"But Buck?" The boy said.
"Is asleep and Chris yell if he finds you here. Buck needs rest, not worrying about you." Chris tried to sound stern.
JD stood up and started coughing. Larabee waited until the fit had passed.
Larabee placed his hands on the young man's shoulders and guided him out of the bedroom.
"I'm taking him to his room." Larabee said. JD was frowning at the gunman and didn't see Nathan's silent thank you.
"I'll be over after while to check on him." Chris nodded and guided his charge back to the hotel where they lived.
Walking down the boardwalk, his boots echoed with a dull thud and the jingle of his spurs. JD walked beside him, the moccasins, Buck gave him, whisper quiet over the old wood. He would start to cough and stop by force of Chris, only to start again. He was holding the quilt over his mouth and nose to keep the cold air away. The town was so quiet, like a blanket of winter had been thrown over it. As he rounded the curve of the main street, the rest of the small town was dark except for the nightly fires lit along the street. It was a tactic meant to deter the outlaws that regularly attacked small isolated towns for money and supplies, but it was more for the piece of mind of the town folk. The air smelled cold, a combination of the smoke from the homes, and a smell he couldn't quite define, but a part of winter. This late at night the saloon and hotel lobby were dark, but the side entrance to the hotel would still be open.
"Buck'll be alright won't he?" JD finally asked, his voice so quiet that Chris barely heard him. He seemed reluctant to talk, probably because the ice-cold air would start him coughing again.
"Yea, he's gonna be fine. Can't quite say the same 'bout you."
"I'm fine." JD said, then coughed when the winter air creped inside the protective quilt.
"Yea."
+ + + + + + +
The only light came from an open door at the top. JD had the corner room at the far end of the hall. Chris suspected that the old lady that owned the place had a soft spot for the young man.
JD sat down on his bed and stopped exhausted by the walk over. You are going to rest now." Chris pulled the covers up to allow JD to get into bed, emphasizing his words. He took some of the cough medicine left by Nathan and poured it into a spoon.
"Take this, it'll help you sleep" JD took the medicine and was soon fading. He sat beside the sick teenager until he was sure that he was asleep. Then he moved around the room, one of the larger ones, picking up clothes. Usually this room was relatively neat. The bed dominated the center next to a window. This was a corner room and had two windows, a blessing in the summer not so much in winter, but the huge fireplace managed to keep the room warm. A pair of 45's hung from the headboard, it never ceased to un-nerve him, that one so young was so good, but JD was one of the deputies, at 17.
JD slept soundly, surrounded by the pillows that left him in an almost sitting position, and made it easier to breathe. A pot hanging in the hearth put steam and soothing herbs into the room making the room smell of sage and eucalyptus. A plant that Nathan said was from the other side of the earth. Chris sat near the window, his leg propped on the sill, after adding more herbs to the pot. The window rattled with the cold wind. He felt the stare as if it were a physical touch.
"You're supposed to be sleeping." He came back over and sat on the edge of the bed and wiped damp hair from JD's face, his hair always seemed to need to be cut.
"Why still here?" JD was careful, talking just above a whisper to avoid coughing.
Chris wasn't quite sure why he was still here, because Buck should have been. The kid gave him a suspicious look, but didn't say anything. JD looked at his hero, the last man he ever thought would be sitting with him while he was sick.From the beginning their relationship had been strained. JD saw him as a hero, a gunfighter with a reputation, romanticized by writers back east. He saw himself as a man doing what it took to survive. He wasn't strong enough to end it, and he wasn't strong enough to live without his family. JD drifted off to sleep before the older man could answer.
+ + + + + + +
"Mr. Larabee?" Nathan said from the doorway. "He asleep?"
Chris said, "Yeah." The sadness crept into his voice, but tempered by time. "He reminds me of Adam."
"Adam?"
"My son, he would have been 9, now. I keep thinkin' that he would have been a lot like JD."
Nathan looked at the man before him. "Is that why you keep pushin' him away?"
"What would you know about it, Doc?"
"Grief can be a terrible thing." he said, placing a gentle hand on Chris's shoulder. A shadow passed over the black man's face before he turned to his patient.
JD cried out, still asleep. He pulled the blanket down and checked his breathing. JD tried to pull away in his sleep, but Nathan took boy's hand in his own, sitting close, and hummed a lullaby till the boy fell into a deeper healing sleep. When he looked up to see Chris smiling at him.
"I can stay, if you want to go get some rest."
"I want to stay for awhile, 'cause Buck can't." Chris said. Buck Wilmington was the one that should have been here. And would have been if he hadn't been shot stopping the robbery he'd seen from this very window. JD and Buck were closer than brothers and had been since he had known them.
"Rather have you here than the saloon." Doc said. He did have a tendency to come back from these trips and drowned his grief in a bottle.
The click of the door was answered with twin clicks of revolvers.
"Gentlemen, You requested that I bring sustenance." Colin Winthrop III said. He ignored the guns and sat the tray on the table near the bed. "I assure you, I am alone." He took the revolver from the boy's hand and placed it back in to the holster hanging from the headboard. When the door opened, JD grabbed his gun without thinking, letting his instincts take over. He recognized the gambler in time not to pull the trigger. His heart pounding in his chest, but he let the gun and his hand fall to the bed, and began to cough.
The gambler sat on the edge of the bed. "JD." He brushed long bangs from the boy's face. "Young man, I Chris provide the funds needed for you to see a barber." JD had relaxed back into the pillows, closing his eyes. The scare left him with no energy. He opened his eyes and glared at the conman.
"I like my hair the way it is."
"Time for dinner." He ignored the last comment. With Chris's help JD sat up. Colin ignored the other two men, telling JD the story of one of his best cons. His British accent created a distraction that had JD done with the broth and biscuits before he realized it. JD had a strange look on his face, looking from Colin to Chris and finally at Nathan.
"What is amiss, Mr. Dunne?" Colin asked, noticing JD's confusion.
He knew Buck cared. The tracker was a brother he never had back east, but in the few weeks he had been in Crescent, JD felt ignored by everyone else. He was confused by these men and their behavior."
"Why are you all here?" Repeating the question he had asked of Larabee earlier.
"Since Mr. Wilmington is unable to be here. We are his surrogates." he said ignoring the real question that was asked, why did they care now.
"Huh?"
"We're here till Buck is better." Doc translated.
"And then you leave and ignore me again?"
"No, we'll be here." Chris said, wondering where that came from, " Can't let Buck have all the fun, can we?"
Colin helped the boy lie back down, "I must take dinner to our prisoners. You Chris heed the words of our leader and the good doctor." The gambler picked up the dinner tray and smiled. "I Chris check on you later." Colin hesitated at the door and then was gone.
+ + + + + + +
After dinner JD slept for several hours, but was awakened by coughing.
"God I'm tired of this." JD said, not to anyone in the room Chris could see that, just fighting against the weakness of being sick and being forced to rest until he was better.
"Do you want some of the medicine the doc left?" Chris asked. Nathan had finally gone to bed with Chris's promise that he would stay. This was the gunfighter's favorite time, the quietness of late night. The little town was silent, the street deserted, the peace of full winter. He handed the young man a glass of water.
"You can go, I'll be fine?" After he caught his breath.
"No, I told the doc I would stay." Rather than going and drinking myself in to a stupor, Chris thought.
"Oh." He paused, "Who's Adam?" JD asked. Chris gave him a stricken look, but it passed in a split second.
"My son." The words were flat, no emotion. "Where did you hear about him?"
"You and the doc were talking earlier." JD put the glass of water back on his bedside table.
Chris let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
"You were supposed to be asleep."
"Was kinda half there." JD shifted to get more comfortable "Does he live near here?"
"He died three years ago."
"Sorry." JD picked at the quilt "My family died in a fire, about that time. Still have nightmares 'bout it. Woulda been dead, but Buck stopped me from tryin' to save them."
Chris sat for a moment, unable to say anything. Loss was such a part of his life; it hit him that he was not the only one who had lost people precious to him. Chris covered his face with his hands. "I didn't know."
"You never asked." The widow blew open a shutter somewhere down the street, as if punctuating the statement.
"Is it snowing yet?" JD asked, shying away from the painful subject. "Buck said it might snow." The wind rattled the window again, one of the coldest sounds Chris could remember.
"Not yet, but it threatening." The only light came from the fire, which kept the room warm, and the cold and dark at bay.
+ + + + + + +
Some time in the early morning Chris fell asleep. He woke up when the door opened. Buck Wilmington entered, closely followed by Nathan.
"Buck." Chris said, he couldn't hide his smile seeing his friend up and around again. "Shouldn't you be in bed." he asked looking at Nathan.
"Just sittin' shouldn't be a problem. Besides thought you could use a break to get some rest." Buck said. "JD give you any problems?"
"No more than usual." Chris gave his seat to his friend, who settled into the old rocking chair. Chris paused at the door looking back at his friends. Buck was resting his head on a pillow and letting his eyes close, and JD would sleep for several more hours. The End