By D. Ryan Lafferty
The heat rose from a wide, rough, and dusty road in shimmering waves. It breathed dry and heavy upon the faces of the good people of Sun Valley, a half-dead town torn from the pages of a Zane Grey novel. There were children scrambling in the shade and leaping from clap-board porches, ducking and covering to fire invisible pistols in each other’s general direction. “Pow Pow, Bang Bang!” they cried and giggled off into the distance. An old widowed woman wrapped from head to toe in her black high-collar dress worked beneath the sweltering rays of the mid-day sun. Her movements, repetitive and mechanical, as she manned the aging pump; lifting up, rocking back and down again to retrieve what was left of the sour water from the dregs of a stagnant well. The blistering rays beat down upon the man tending the horses. His clothes matted with grime and a week’s worth of dried perspiration that absolutely reeked; chafing him in every corner of his body. His dark leather face, long immune to the roasting furnace of the summertime, hardened like so many clay pots from a kiln, tempered like the folds of thickly-creased steel. His eyes moved ever so imperceptibly toward the tall figure sauntering down the main drag of this soon to be ghost town. His name was Sievers, Jim Sievers, and he’d watched this scene play out more times than he could count.
It was only yesterday when the most recent newcomer had arrived in town, barely clinging to life and nursing an open wound on his right shoulder; barely conscious, hanging on his horse by its mane. It was then Jim started digging again in the shallow depths of a boot-hill cemetery just outside of town. Sievers had learned long ago that it was best to get things ready ahead of time. It was easier that way. Fewer opportunities to think on the morality of the lives lost in such a violent moment, an instant where the quick and the dead were separated forever, and the one thing Old Jim couldn’t stand anymore was the thinking.
He wore many hats in this town; full-time livery stable hand, handyman, and part-time gravedigger. It paid the bills, but when digging a hole for the far-too-young and nearly departed, well there’s just not much more to do than think. It killed part of his soul, dwelling upon how those lively, laughing handsome young men, so full of bravery, gumption, and wild self-assurance had whimpered like wounded hounds in the end. They cried out for mother and for home as the life vanished from their eyes like the starved flame of a kerosene lamp, snuffed out in the chill of the desert evening. How cold it left him in the absence of that vibrant glow. How it reminded him so cruelly of his son. The stark contrast between the rollicking heat of the valley’s sweltering days and the frigidly cold, cold nights. It sent a shiver right down his back even in the warmth of that blistering afternoon sun.
This new stranger had walked in a way that Jim had learned to avoid and ignore either from cowardice or just plain old fatigue. He pretended not to notice, not to see the angel of death taking swaggering strides down mainstreet, thumbing the hammer of the cold-steel revolver swinging from his hip. From what he could tell without looking, a dark hat tilted upon the stranger’s brow to shade his eyes from the mid-day sun. In fact, nobody dared look up toward the figure as they hurried about their business, tying and re-tying ropes and triple checking saddle bags; always being sure to glance in whichever direction was the furthest from this unwelcome guest, but that was noontime, only a few hours ago. Somehow a lifetime ago, and my, how things had changed.
Now, Old Jim cursed himself quietly as he lifted another shovel full of sandy soil and heaped it onto the mound that rose to his waist as he stood with both boots dug into the shallow trench surrounding him. He shook and coughed into his sweat-soaked bandanna and wiped his face with the clean side. He’d watched that gunslinger peel away everything that was good in his home one piece at a time. Thinking back, Jim Siever had turned away when the stranger shot down the kindly old mayor in cold blood; unarmed and defenseless in the middle of the street, coming home from Sunday services. Old Jim had been sure to spend extra time mucking out the stalls way, way back in the barn the day the man drummed up a posse of the loud and unreasonable crowd at Sadie’s Saloon, and ran the law right out of town. How many times could he have grabbed the stable buck’s shotgun and ended it all? How easily he could have slipped away under the cover of darkness last night or any other night before, but, where would he go? It’s often said that a coward dies a thousand deaths and the brave man falls but once. Wisdom is often lost in the heat of the moment, in the fog of war as they say. Head down just for a moment and this too shall pass. Something about losing the battle and living to win the war. But not today.Well, it was now very late in the afternoon on that sun-baked summer day when the coward’s count rolled over. He’d lived through 999 disgraceful moments, hidden his face in shame and self disgust countless times only to end up here. Shovel in hand, Old Jim could feel the burn of the stranger’s aim at the back of his neck as he lifted the rusty spade one last time, finishing the second grave he’d dug that day. As Jim looked over and across to the lifeless body that lay in the identical hole he’d started digging just the day before, he mouthed in a dry, course whisper, Lord, forgive me, to what remained of the boy with wounded right arm, now cold, pale, and forever still, resting in sickly repose as his neighbor beside.
Dr. D. Ryan Lafferty is a local Bordentown poet, writer, and the author-illustrator of children’s books. To see more of his work, visit http://www.DartanionPress.com
Literary Crumbs: Poems & Short Stories to Savor by D. Ryan Lafferty 