Realistic or Modern Two Graves By Canary Creek (closed)

[Rhaine]

"A man who desires revenge should dig two graves."​

( A Midwestern RP between Rhaine and Svadilfari )​

 

[Rhaine]

From what Delilah had heard, Canary Creek was starch-blank yellow at the beginning of summer. It seethed like the underside of an iron. The locals shifted about under cover of shade, skittering like insects in the patches of bare sunlight. Hair was wet beneath the brims of hats, and the women bound their braids ever tighter out of their faces, abandoning propriety over practicality in the unbuttoning of their blouses.

Water in bedside basins was hot smack in the morning, and children stood out crop-defined by the scarlet hue of their ears. Life moved slower then. Even the old women clad white on their porches rocked a little lazier in their rocking chairs - gabbed a little less, fanned themselves a little more.

Most of the men were out of sight during the day: boiling alive in the dark of the mines where the air seemed thinner.

The creek that gave the town its name was a barren little thing, but it shone. The stones at the bottom were polished smooth and clean.

Delilah guessed she would find little to like about Canary Creek. Not even yet nearing it, the heat made her leg ache sharp as a spit run through it, but so did the cold, and so did the constant rock of the wagon on its rickety old wheels. Bill had offered to let her ride along. She would have suffered just fine on horseback, able to grit back the rise and fall and muster strength enough in her grip, but Bill had that tempered, reserved kind of perceptiveness. Like a card-player judging a hand. Like a father reluctant to betray care.

Maybe it was the fatherless sundown in her that had made her accept. Maybe she had figured it would have been an advantageous opportunity to see what Bill knew of their marked companion. She settled on the latter.

Bill had one pale, witch’s eye - glossy and weeping grey. It didn’t swivel or twitch in his head. It lay dead as glass, and it might have seemed it if not for the snowy film and the wet hush about the corners. His other eye was whiskey light, and quick as a thin-legged boy. He passed a heavy, wrinkled hand over his head, beneath his hat, to scratch the bald scalp beneath. His thinning beard was more silver than black - patches of white and grey shock-stark consuming what was left.

They each could have made up a whole witch together: Bill with his eye, Trudy with her mane of curls, Ron with his hooked nose, Little Lorie with her knobby hands, Luke with his mark, and her with her stilted craven’s limp. Delilah didn’t know the others. Not by name.

Delilah hadn't spoken alone with Bill before. She was not yet so familiar an addition to the group. She asked him, roundabout-wise, what had caused him to leave his home.

Bill smiled a crinkled, nearly toothless smile.

“A bad hand.”

Always the gambler, he didn’t betray much, and yet all.

She asked him if he had family he was leaving behind. Her voice fell thin and croaky in the dry heat.

He half shook his head, stuck out sideways. His tongue darted out to wet his lips before he spoke. His dead eye stared.

“None now that care if I go.”

She said nothing for a while, though it had been her intention to lead small talk. She peered out at the others on horseback - silent or talking amongst themselves. Trudy looked back as if she had felt her gaze, wrinkling her nose when she smiled. She went on to bare the gap in her teeth, fanning herself in an exaggerated way, letting her head loll back like a corpse. Trudy was easily familiar with strangers. Knowing her profession, it was easy to understand how.

It had been Trudy that had told her to tag along if she willed it. She didn’t know the real reason Delilah came. None of them did. She didn’t have to adjust to the isolation. It was a constant fixture: today and all the days passed. To a point.

There, on the other side of the wagon, he rode horseback. Delilah knew if she only turned her head, craning slightly beside Bill, she could spy his sharp profile, his mark hidden from her over his left eye.

She didn’t move to look. Not with Trudy’s attention still vaguely fixed on her. Delilah sniffed in response. It wasn’t a laugh, but it was something resembling it. Trudy tossed her head back up straight, her curly-cue tresses jostling about. Delilah thought she saw her roll her eyes.

“She’s a character.” Delilah remarked, and Bill grunted at her side, a sort of whistle sound at the back of his throat.

“That’s true enough. Smart girl. Got my oldest son into a run of trouble once. Plays a hard hand of brag. Might be you’d think she’d be easy to catch a tell on, but not so much, no.”

“Do you know the rest of them just as well?”

“Some.. might be most. I lived in Middlespool most my life. Most here did too, cept’ for that sonuvabitch with the mother’s mark. If you’d grown where we did, you’d be able to tell just by a look that he wasn’t born soon near Middlespool. No. That one came later.”

Delilah felt a pinprick slight at the nape of her neck. She wiped the sweat away on the back of her hand. She spoke even and measured out. Practiced calm.

“But you know him too?”

“Not so closely. He’s a funny kind. Off by a stitch mark. But then, so are you.”

Bill closed his good eye in what managed to be a wink, with the dead eye staring straight through her.

Her features lay smooth and undisturbed, though she may have felt otherwise.

If her suspicions proved correct: then Bill was more right than he knew. There was a stitch mark separating them from the rest, and in the same breadth, a single blood-red thread tied tight as a noose between them. Neck to neck.

Delilah thought she might’ve heard far-off gunfire, but she knew it was a trick of her mind. Her round, black eyes flitted out to the horizon, though the source was there on horseback, taking the same road.

A child’s memory. Faded. I could have dreamt the mark on the boy’s face. I could have dreamt it all.

 

[Svadilfari]

It first began the day she 'left;' the 'sickening,' as his mother liked to call it. They were out on the barren field that day, with the cloudless skies above, and the broken tracks below. The great hunks of steel were stewing under the angry sun, ever so slowly, and so were they: him with his faraway eyes and strong, muddy limbs, and her with her hands on her hips and Sam Hill's verdict on her tongue.


"Heavens' sakes Ronny, are ya listenin'?"


He can hear the boys hammering away in the distance.

Good, he remembered thinking, there ain't nothin' better than biddable.

All around them, the sky was bright.

Too bright, he decided.

It shouldn't rain any sooner, from the looks of it. They've got time. He was sure of that.


"Yes, I am."


A half-a-lie.

He was and he wasn't.

There were a lot of things that needed fixing.

The State wanted the Tracks done come Winter. That was a problem all on its own, considering the miles of land there and between, and the rolling hills and doughy earth that snaked betwixt them. The shortage of men was another problem, among other things that were out of his control: the weather, the wild, and those goddamned Bushwhackers.


"Ronny?"


She was waiting on him. An eyebrow cocked and a tiny frown marring her pretty little face.

There were just some things that you can't mend, no matter if you try your damnedest.

Some things you just can't fix.


"Well?"


He wanted her to understand that. But he knew she wouldn't.

Willful as she is.

The years gone by had been tiring. For her, but not for him.

Oh, never for him.

Not even once.



"That's alright darlin'."



And that was when it began.

From three simple words that dripped from his lips, sour as cup'o Belly Wash.

They meant too little, and hid too much.

The 'sickening,' as his mother liked to call it.

And the brunt of it all stayed heavy as stone with him throughout.

Weighing him down.
-



Ronald Sinns
[ (Railroad) Chief; Overseer ]


Eighteen.

Nineteen.

Twenty.

He couldn't tell for how long he would be able to bear it; after the thirty-first rock, he started to lose count. His mud coloured eyes strained to see beyond the dusty beige canvass covering the wagon bed. Pale yellow fingers of sunlight weaved between the fabric, reaching for the cartons of supplies strewn about on his left, the rough, tweed rug laying underneath him, the worn out soles of the bottom of his boots, and the top of his curly brown head. By the daylight, he reckoned it had probably only been a few couple of hours that had passed since Middlespool. And by the speed they were riding, he reckoned he'd bite the dust before midday. He felt every jolt and creak of the wagon as if its body were his own, the dull pain digging deep into his tired bones. A shut-eye was impossible. He needed to get out.

He needed some air.

Ronny Sinns propped himself up to one elbow, and with a grunt, managed to get on to his knees. For a man so sturdy, he moved so slow.

Oh by the Blue Devils what happened to my dear boy? The days had not been kind to you, hadn't they, poppet?

Martha had noticed it, before the Consumption took her sight from her. Day by day he moved a little less, slower and slower like molasses.

Don't get sick like your mother, now.



"Bill?"

Ron pulled back the tarp and squinted, as his eyes adjusted to the newfound brightness. Miles of hard-packed earth stretched, menacing before them, riddled with harsh shrubs, spindly cacti, and red and brown mountains that towered like giants to the sky. Bill Hammond grunted in acknowledgement, his good eye fixed at the humid nothingness. Beside him sat the stranger with the craven's limp, as old as Bill's daughter would have been if she had lived.

"D'ya mind tradin' places? I ache like the dickens in there."

"You get what you get, son. It ain't been more'n an hour or two just yet. We settle at midday someplace. Cowboy up."

Another dip. Another jolt. His legs are now aflame.

To his left a familiar marked face came riding into view.

"Sonny, I'll give ya a well-deserved raise if you can lend me yer Hoss for a day."

It was the strangest look he had given him just then. He wondered if he had said something wrong, made a mistake. Luke's blue eyes looked even bluer. There was something in them. Something apologetic and reluctant. The brunet opened his mouth to respond, but it was Bill's words that decided.

"Well all blazes, you'll just chew gravel Ron. Y'ain't no rancher. Lucky Boy why don't ya ride on ahead and see a us a spot for good settlin'. And you," Bill swiveled and lifted a heavy leg up, pulling himself under the shade of the canvass, "Y'owe me a Deadshot."



The air was humid, but he breathed it deep. It was far better outside. Behind them, Bill laid with his arms behind his head, one leg over another, with his hat on his face. He wondered what that was all about, between him and Luke. He can ask Bill about it later. He stretched his arms, then his legs, slowly like he usually does. In front of them, Trudy rode on, not sparing a bother. Not that he minded. There are just some things that can't go back the way they were. Some things that can't be mended.

"I hope ya don't mind me keepin' ya company, Missy."

His nose itched.

The sun was climbing higher into the sky; it should be midday soon.

"Mind me askin' what brings you to Canary Creek with us?"

Beside him she sat, with a faraway stare, in her eyes as dark as Jamoka.

He knew that look.

He was familiar with it.

The 'sickening' as his mother liked to call it. ​

 

[Rhaine]

"Bill?"

Come the agitated voice from behind the canvas. Even as Ron's solemn, shining face parted the fabric, his words seemed miles away. Was that pain on his brow? The heat turned everything clotted and sour. Delilah pulled her long, blonde hair to rest over her shoulder, starting to braid it between her slender fingers. A crone knitting as the young paddled on. Yet she was not so old at all, and younger still than she let on. Her dress buttoned harsh at her neck. Dressed like a matron, it was only the flush bloom of her skin that betrayed her age - yellow and pink and white and smooth about her gravedigger's eyes.

About to offer the overseer, whose desperation rang a familiar bell, her place in the humid air, she was stilled as he turned his plea to the marked man on horseback.

She watched the man's shift in expression. Cornflower blue turned to violet, and into the grey beneath. She could not read it. She knew not at all what the change meant. What it held - and before he could speak to illuminate himself that small bit, Bill answered for him.

The moment was broken like a glass on a wooden floor - and the pieces slipped through the gaps in the boards. So, she supposed, she wasn't meant to find answers so easy.

Bill sent the man ahead, and relented to take Ron's place.

She watched, half something like amused.

"I'll see you later then, Mr. Hammond."

A departing nightingale's song. Delilah talked with that old-fashioned articulate's crop. A school teacher's timber. That high, soft bristle. It was a particular cadence, betraying the child of a learned man.

“All these, how-e-ver, were mere terrors of the night, phan-toms of the mind that walk in dark-e-ness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time..."

A grunt was all she received by way of reply.

Black eyes turned to her new, umber-toned companion. Ron was younger, much closer to her age than Bill, yet somehow more worn. He had that ache about him. Delilah felt it - hung close to the surface. Ron with his sad eyes and his warm voice. Ron with the dead's serenity.

"I hope ya don't mind me keepin' ya company, Missy."

Delilah smiled, mannered.

"Not at all, Mister."

She could see the relief in his face to be out in the open air. The mountains jutted out at the horizon. Looming, and the sun hung higher still. She finished her braid, tying off the end. Her skin was sticky-soft with the humidity.

"Mind me askin' what brings you to Canary Creek with us?

Always this question, and why shouldn't he want to know? She had her answer ready. It came smooth, though not so smooth that it seemed practiced.

"I don't mind, though it is a bout I plan on rectifyin'. Turns out there's not much work to be found for a woman with a gait like mine. Even when you're only half a cripple."

She smiled that small, slight way of hers and turned her face down as if she were bashful, though she wasn't.

"'ve heard there's need for teachers in Canary Creek. Folks who can read right enough to pass it on. That I can do."

Face no longer downcast, she was questioning again: that demure kind of curiosity - frank and inoffensive.

"What then about you, Mr. Sinns? What's brought you on here?"

Her gaze seemed to prod even when it didn't mean to, too plain for comfort. If she had been a beautiful girl, it might have come smoother - more coy. Trudy had that gift: the sharp seemed somehow easy to swallow, the intrusive somehow welcome. Delilah knew it, and she spared him her gaze: her eyes turned outward, into the heat that bent out farther ahead. She could see it waver in midair.