They cursed him for a false prophet, mostly, and tried to run him off. Sometimes it came to blows, or even bullets, while other times he got off with a few harsh words, weathering them stone-faced, same as the horse apples they chucked after him. In the end, it was enough to’ve made his speech, Jenkins reckoned; they were warned now, if nothing else, no matter what-all they might yet choose to do (or not do) with that same grim intelligence. And that least—the very least, sparse as it might be—was, frankly, the best he could probably aspire to do, given the circumstances.
Those were the good days. Bad days came when he made a sweep elsewhere, spanning as many compass directions as he might around his target’s last legitimate stopping point, and found nothing but ruin: homesteads denuded, gore-soaked not from affray but from above, as though some wounded behemoth had floated overhead spraying grue every-which-way; graves exploded outwards and empty. All the now sadly predictable detritus, roster of attendant destruction tabled ever-upwards, with no apparent sort of end—easy, or otherwise—in sight.
For this was the trail of Sartain Stannard Reese that Jenkins followed, as he had since what was left of the man had passed through his own home, sowing similar awfulness in his wake. Sartain Reese, known as “One-Shot,” with his bushwhacker locks and his odd-angled pale eyes; Reese, who had ridden with Bartram Haugh in Lincoln and elsewhere, leaving enough far more natural devastation behind them both to sow broadsheets emblazoned with their linked images from here back to Missouri. Reese, who Jenkins’s predecessor, Sheriff Marten, had failed to prevent his citizenry-flock from hanging off their single still-viable tree, only to see him come striding back up Main Street a night and a day later, trousers stiff with dirt and piss, to demand the guns Haugh had once gifted him with as a seal on their marriage of sorts—Satan-approved and God-decried, just like in Sodom-town of old—before shooting Reese straight through the heart, treacherously self-loving as always, and leaving him in the desert to die.
That other sheriff was gone from this world for sure, now; Jenkins had seen full proof of it, more than enough, before prying the man’s tin star free and taking on that charge. But as for Reese, driven hither and yon to do what Jenkins could only assume was God’s judgment on every other blooded creature in his way, while truly seeking retribution on one faithless companion only . . . though he certainly bore his fair share of a corpse’s qualities, Jenkins somewhat suspected that one could neither call Reese dead nor alive, at this very moment, and hope to be entirely correct in the verdict. He was a revenant, a harbinger, and where his steps took him blood followed, literally—down from the heavens first, then back up from the earth borne on a tide of hungry ghosts; a fatal crop seeded and brought to sudden bloom by Reese’s own execution.
Whose blood was that you had on you, Reese? he remembered asking as they’d sat together in the jailhouse, recalling the sticky red coat Reese had worn on first entrance, before the doctor had cleaned him up enough for Marten to place his face. To which Reese replied, not even looking up, apparently too tired by far to bother being properly sociable: Oh, somebody from round here’s, I expect. Didn’t you recognize it?
Because, as Reese went on to point out—You and yours seem good people, on the whole, from what I’ve seen. But there’s always a reason I run across places, and you have been unlucky, so might be that’s ‘cause there’s other people here, ones that’s just like me.
I’d know, if there was, Jenkins had maintained, steadfast-foolish, not knowing any better. And Reese had simply laughed, torn mouth bleeding enough to paint his lips, before asking: Would you? How, exactly . . .
( . . . excepting the Word of God?)
For himself, Jenkins had listened mightily hard for that Word these many weeks since, both daily and nightly, catching not the barest syllable of a reply. Indeed, he almost began to feel that all his former prayers had been in vain, seeing how the only true miracles he’d ever witnessed were of Reese’s pitch-black variety.
Yet still he came on, ever farther from the vales he’d known, plagued by heat and thirst, sore in both heart and belly; he stopped only to rest, to pick stones from his horse’s hooves and then walk a while, for what else was he to do? Someone had to warn them Reese was coming, giving them at least that slightest of chances in the face of impartial and awful justice, this sanguine Second Deluge. To protect the guilty from their guilt, the sinners from their sins, the weak from the consequence of their own weaknesses . . .
. . . thus doing, apparently, what the same absent Lord that Jenkins had been raised to praise no longer cared to.
***
The next “town” Jenkins reached, by nightfall, was so small it hadn’t found itself a name yet: no farms as such, no real homesteads, just a combined whistle-stop and trading post which specialized in whatever the last transaction’d left behind. The fellow manning it was of origins so indeterminate that the definition of such almost seemed a puzzle set for unwary travelers by a vaguely amused and un-benign Nature. He was dressed in badly-
cured hides which haloed him with stenchgood and currently deep engaged in cleaning one of a brace of lizards for immediate jerkyfication.
Jenkins introduced himself, while the counter-tender regarded him with disinterested distrust, slopping lizard guts up over his shirt-cuffs. He allowed as how he was hoping to meet up with a specific local someone, if possible, a concept the man either didn’t appear to’ve ever heard of, or saw too little to approve in.
“Willicks, that was the name they gave me, back at Shortfall. Said he’s your marshal, or close enough.”
“Y’huh.”
“But you wouldn’t know him to look at, I’m takin’ it. Or where-all he might best be found at.”
“N’huh.”
“‘Cause I’ve been traveling a piece, sir, and when I told my story up Shortfall way, they said Fred Willicks was him I should make my case to, in these parts . . . ”
“Uh,” the man behind the counter put in, with some force, like he maybe meant to follow it up with more—but didn’t. Jenkins stood there a long moment, waiting for elaboration before sighing and touching his hat.
Then he turned, only to be confronted by another man entirely, abruptly conjured from nothing: cat-footed and far more elegant in his motions than his clothes’ drab cut would suggest, a luxuriant beard blurring his face, one hand sure on his gun-butt and the other shading his eyes, themselves hazel with just a light touch of rain-grey.
“Poor Mahershalalhashbaz here’s only got half a tongue to work with, sir, thanks to bad Injuns, and that cut sideways,” the man—whose lapel bore, Jenkins now saw, a tin star as well—told him, gaze held steady. “Makes him tough to put questions to, let alone get any useful answers from. But you’re in luck nonetheless, turns out: Fred Willicks is my name, as it happens. Which makes you?”
“Clarke Jenkins, Mister Willicks. I’m . . . well, I was from Esther, before. Not that there’s much left there now.”
“Which wouldn’t make you much of a sheriff at all, then, given you lack a town to watch over.”
Jenkins shrugged, hands held carefully wide and empty, letting his full body allow as how when considered that-a-way, Willicks might have himself a point.
“You want my star, I’ll gladly hand it over,” he said, “‘long as you do me the honour of listening to what I’ve got to say.”
Willicks contemplated this. “Hell,” he said, at last, “it can wait ‘til I’ve heard out the latter to decide on the former, surely; my wife does like to entertain, not that she gets much cause for it. I’ll tell her to set one place more.”
Jenkins felt himself start to relax, as Willicks said it—where he was from, men didn’t invite one another to guest if they planned on doing ‘em ill, after. But then again, One-Shot Reese had been a guest too, in a way, and the “good” people of Jenkins’ home had swung him from a tree; bad manners at best, even if not quite worthy of what’d followed, at least under non-Divine law . . .
I do need food, though, he thought. And rest.