February 2012 BB Challenge Words: pining, lunatic, moonshine, secondary, interval

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2

“Joe! Start that fire, Joe!” Hoss’s shouts pulled Joe slowly out of the darkness, out of the warmth of his murky, dreamless sleep. “Come on, Joe! Ya’ got to get up and get movin’!”

“In a minute,” Joe answered…or he thought he did, anyway.

“Now, Joe! Come on! You’re runnin’ out of minutes.” Hoss nudged him, pushing at his back as though he intended to roll Joe right out of bed.

“I said in a minute!” Joe shouted. His eyes shot open, instantly seeking out his brother in anger.

Only…his brother wasn’t there. Joe was alone in a line shack, miles from home, miles from the warmth of his bed. He thought of his own soft mattress and suddenly the floor beneath him seemed harder, miserably so. He tried to picture himself nestling deep into his sheets and pulling the thick, quilted coverlet up to his neck.

“Ain’t no use pining over somethin’ ya’ can’t have,” Hoss scolded, nudging again at his back.

No, Joe realized. That wasn’t Hoss. It was the door. He’d forgotten to close the latch. He was alone, Joe reminded himself yet again. Hoss wasn’t real. Joe’s bed wasn’t real. The only thing real was this line shack, and that miserable storm. And if he ever wanted that bed of his to be real again, Joe was going to have to start the fire Hoss had been all fired up about getting him to start.

No, not Hoss! Joe shouted into the fragments of thoughts storming through his fog-filled mind. Hoss isn’t here! What was wrong with him, anyway?

He pushed himself upward, confused by the numbness in his hands and feet, and clumsily set the latch back into place. That would hold, he decided. It would hold against the wind, and the wolves, and maybe even…maybe even moonshine-addled lunatics like Jonas…like….

“Jonas T. Schultz is the name,” the old man said, smiling around a mouth only half-filled with dark, rotting teeth. He held out his hand, and Joe was startled by the sight of leather-wrapped bones.

He did not accept the greeting. He didn’t even dismount. He stayed astride Cochise and edged his own hand over his gun. “Well, my name’s Cartwright, Mr. Schultz. Joe Cartwright. And this property isn’t yours to build on.”

“That right?” Mr. Schultz looked around and scratched at the scraggly gray hairs barely clinging to his balding scalp. “But if there ain’t already somthin’ built on it, I sure don’t see the harm. All I’m tryin’ to do is give myself a little shelter here, next to the finest still this side of the Mississippi.” He reached for a jug, and then handed it up to Joe. “Best moonshine you’ll ever taste, son,” he said, smiling wider now. “Best there is, or my name ain’t Jonas T. Schultz.”

“You’ll have to find another place to set up your still, Mr. Schultz,” Joe said, making no effort to take the jug. “You’re on Ponderosa land.”

“Son,” Schultz’s smile faltered. “A man offers you up his own hard-made moonshine, ya’ take it.” He thrust the jug forward once more.

Joe kept one hand on Cochise’s reins while the other continued to hover over his gun. “You might as well hold onto it,” he said sternly, “because it’ll be the last batch you make until you set up somewhere else, away from the Ponderosa.”

The old man met Joe’s gaze for a moment, and then nodded, slowly turning away. “First,” he said, keeping his back to Joe, “you insult the fruits of my labor by refusin’ it. And then you threaten that labor di-rectly.” He continued shaking his head. “Ain’t right. Ya’ got to know, that just ain’t right.”

A rush of wind swirled around the man. It howled through the crevices of his leathery smile as he swiveled back toward Joe flashing the yellow eyes of a wolf and sporting a mouth full of canine fangs. “Ain’t right, boy!” he growled.

An icicle plunged into Joe’s arm, throwing him from the saddle. He hit the ground with a start, the door rattling behind him.

“Not real,” Joe told himself. “Not…real.”

The only thing that was real was this line shack, that storm outside, and the fact that Joe had to start a fire. He had to get warm. For an instant, he let his thoughts slip back to his bed, but he didn’t let them stay there. He couldn’t. Hoss was right. There was no point to pining over something that wasn’t real.

But it was real, though. He knew it was…as real as Jonas T. Schultz and the most deadly moonshine this side of the Mississippi. It was all real. Even Hoss was real. He was just…out of reach. For now. After the storm Joe could make his way back home. He could finally put that lunatic, Jonas, behind him. He could put all of it behind him. After the storm. Yes, after the storm. After the–

“Joe!”

“After…after the storm, Hoss.”

“There ain’t gonna be no after if you don’t get a fire goin’!”

Joe opened his eyes again and found himself staring at the jumble of dropped logs. “A fire,” he whispered. “Have to build…a fire.”

How long it took, Joe would never know. Time came and went…even reality seemed to come and go in intervals of sanity and lunacy, as though Joe had somehow become Jonas T. Schultz…or been infected by him. But no, that wasn’t right. The trouble was, he didn’t know what was right, not anymore. He didn’t know anything for sure at all anymore. He knew only that the wind was still blowing, its icy daggers pelting the wood and the windows around him, and somehow…somehow he had managed to get a fire going. He sat on the floor, staring into the flames and wondering what he was forgetting.

“Your primary concern was to get warm,” Adam said. “What was secondary?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.”

“Think about it, Joe. You had two things to take care of when you came here. What were they?”

“To get warm,” Joe answered.

“And what else?”

“To…to get out of the rain.”

“Come on, Joe!” Adam argued. “You can do better than that! Getting out of the rain was all part of getting warm. What else did you have to do?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You have to remember, Little Joe!”

“I don’t…I can’t.” He stared at the flames, not even bothering to close the iron door in the belly of the stove. The fire mesmerized him, comforting him as nothing else could.

“What else did you have to do?” Adam shouted.

“It…doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, Joe! It does!”

“No.” Growing drowsy, Joe lowered himself to the ground. He didn’t want to argue. He was too tired to argue.

“Joe!” Adam hollered.

Joe pulled his legs toward his chest, curling up to absorb as much warmth as he could.

“What else, Joe?”

He wrapped his arms around him…and felt that icicle ripping into his bicep once more. His eyes shot open. He stopped breathing…only for an instant, only long enough to let the pain subside, and then he reached a numb, shaking hand to his right arm.

“Ain’t right, boy!” Jonas T. Schultz had scolded him. The next instant had been a rush of lost breath and white-hot pain as a knife plunged itself into Joe’s arm and threw him from the saddle.

And now…now the knife was gone. Cochise was gone. Even Jonas T. Schultz was gone. But Joe was here in this line shack. And just as he was finally starting to get warm, he was also finally starting to realize he had to find some way to treat the wound.

“Hypothermia, infection and blood loss,” Doc Martin said. “Any one of them could kill him, Ben. Add all three together, and….”

“And Hoss was right,” Joe said. “Ain’t gonna be no after the storm…not if I don’t…don’t spend more time on this side of reality.” Or was it sanity?

“Ain’t right, boy!” Jonas T. Schultz flashed him a toothless, fanged grin.

“No,” Joe said softly. “It isn’t.”

He couldn’t close his eyes. He knew he couldn’t close his eyes. He just needed…just needed a moment to catch his breath.

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