June 2012 BB Challenge Words: Giant, Lumberjack, Babe, Logging, Legend

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6

Joe opened his good eye, or his better eye, anyway, to the extent he could. He couldn’t see much more than a smoky murkiness. Was he underwater? Was that why he was cold? His hands were so numb he couldn’t even feel them anymore. He sure couldn’t use them to pull himself to the surface. Couldn’t use his feet to push himself up, either; they felt weighted, too heavy to be of any use.

He was drowning. Must be. Serves him right, he supposed. It was far too early to go swimming. Snowmelt was still winding its way down off the mountain. It was never good to go swimming when the lake was chilled by snowmelt. Of all the dumb, fool things he’d ever done, this had to be about the dumbest. He couldn’t even remember diving in, but that didn’t really matter, did it? For whatever lame-brained reason he’d done it, well…he’d done it. Now he was paying the price.

He didn’t consider the fact that he was still breathing until he saw a boy’s face come floating into view. Startled, Joe gasped…and realized he’d sucked in air instead of water. He wasn’t drowning after all. He wasn’t even in water. Neither was the boy.

Who was that boy, anyway? His cheeks were smooth and round, like he’d been starting to grow out of childhood but hadn’t quite finished the job. That was odd, because there was an old look to the boy’s eyes. They were almost like Pa’s eyes. Almost. They had a touch of green in them—not much, just the smallest bit, just enough to make Joe think of a dried out, dying pine bough tossed out to the wood pile after Christmas.

Christmas was long past. Months ago. Maybe years ago. Joe tried to remember Christmas. All he saw in his mind was the Christmas after his mother had died. Joe had been sure he would wake up to find her sitting beside the tree. She had been the only thing he’d wanted that year. But she wasn’t there.

Was she here?

Joe tried to look around him. He couldn’t see anything that might indicate his mother was nearby. If she was, he would see something good, something…special. But he didn’t. There was nothing special in that room, maybe not anything good, either, just a bunch of brown-clothed folks in a cold, brown line shack that stank of wood smoke and moonshine.

One of the men carried a long iron poker, the tip glowing red. Joe stared at that red tip, mesmerized by it. He felt fear rising up within him, like a tidal wave was forming behind him, gradually tugging his breath from his lungs as it grew. But then the boy moved into his sight again, and that glowing red, mesmerizing tip was hidden from view…and Joe found he could breathe once more.

Thank you, he wanted to say to the boy for giving him back his breath. It was about the best gift he could hope for right then.

Joe got to wondering if that boy had ever gotten the kind of gifts he’d wanted. Had he ever had a good Christmas? Or had they all been like that year Joe’s momma had died? The boy’s eyes sure made it seem like he’d had plenty of bad Christmas’s. That chubby cheeked boy had such old looking eyes Joe couldn’t imagine them ever coming alight on a Christmas morning; maybe that was because the boy was supposed to have been the New Year’s baby, the one who takes over from old Father Time…only the old man hadn’t been willing to let go.

Joe chuckled, suddenly imagining a fight between a little baby and an old man.

“You got no business laughin’, boy!”

Thick knuckles slammed into Joe’s cheek. He licked at the fresh blood on his lip and wondered why. The man had complained about a boy. So why did he hit Joe?  Joe wasn’t a boy with chubby cheeks and old eyes. Joe was….

What was Joe? A cowboy? A killer?

“That was my pa you killed, boy.” The wolf had said that…the wolf with yellow eyes.

Don’t be stupid, he chided himself. Wolves don’t talk, except in fairy tales. Joe was long past being a little boy who could believe in fairy tales, even if that wolf had called him one. Danged if that wolf wasn’t the only one who’d called Joe that, either. Jack O’Callaghan had called Joe a boy, too, last year, when they were felling trees for that timber contract with the Blackstone mine. O’Callaghan had been among the first to sign up; but when he’d caught sight of Joe he’d said he wasn’t going to take orders from a boy.

“Yer jest a wee babe in the woods! Fresh outta the cradle, you are!” O’Callaghan had told him.

Joe hadn’t had a choice. He’d had to punch O’Callaghan square in the nose to prove him wrong. It didn’t matter that Joe had ended up with a bloody nose, too. Or maybe it did matter. Maybe it was on account of both of them bloodying each other’s noses that they’d ended up as friends, and O’Callaghan had agreed to take orders from him after all. They’d celebrated together, too, once all the logging had been done. They’d agreed to buy each other’s beer—although Joe had put down far more cash than O’Callaghan. That man sure could drink. He would have drunk that saloon dry if Joe’s brothers hadn’t dragged Joe—and his cash—out of there when they did.

Whatever happened to Jack O’Callaghan? He’d just up and left one day, like so many folks on the Comstock tend to do.

“I got better ways to ply my time’n bein’ some dumb lumberjack.”

“I ain’t no dumb lumberjack!” Joe said. Or he thought he did anyway…only…he didn’t hear the words.

“Sure’n yer not!” Jack told him, laughing that hearty laugh of his. “Yer jest a wee babe in the woods….”

Something hard hit Joe’s nose. He was pretty sure it wasn’t O’Callaghan’s fist.

“You answer me when I talk t’you!”

Confused, Joe looked toward the voice, expecting to see Jack O’Callaghan…or a chubby cheeked boy with old eyes…. Instead he saw a man with fiery eyes and tobacco juice stuck in the stubble of his week-old beard.

What sort of man had fiery eyes? Joe wasn’t even sure he looked like a man. His edges were blurred, and through Joe’s watery vision he moved funny…undulating somehow, sort of the way a snake moved. Or one of Hop Sing’s dragons….

Hop Sing had told Joe stories about the legend of the Chinese dragon. Despite its fiery eyes and breath, it was supposed to be a good dragon, benevolent, not like other dragons Joe had read about in books.

“You got no business laughin’!” the dragon spat.

No; whatever this creature was, it sure wasn’t one of Hop Sing’s dragons. There was nothing benevolent about it. And Joe sure wasn’t laughing, especially when it shot fire right into his belly. The pain was so fierce Joe cried out like a wee babe might. He didn’t even care what Jack O’Callaghan might say.

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Joe’s cry rode the howling wind right into Hoss’s heart, and about pulled a cry out of him, too. He stopped to look at the shack, fighting harder than ever against the urge to bust on in there and get his little brother away from them monsters. Then he heard another cry, a sound that chilled him more than the wind was doing right then. In fact, the wind had died down considerably. The storm might finally be blowing itself out.

Hoss followed the sound of that second cry, one that had come from the trees rather than the line shack. Seconds later, he finally caught up with that giant of a mountain man. That’s when he saw Walker had caught up with the boy.

The boy was sitting on his behind looking up at that big fella, and leaning back on two wobbly arms. There was terror and…sickness?…in the boy’s eyes. When the wind shifted, Hoss noticed an odor rising up with it. He saw then why the boy was wobbly. The kid had vomited into the snow.

“We can’t do it, Adam,” Hoss said as his brother moved up behind the kid, though Hoss never took his eyes from the boy. “We can’t hold him out here. He’s sick.”

“I ain’t sick!”

Another shout, this one from the line shack, almost drowned out that boy’s denial. “Buford!”

The boy’s eyes shifted nervously to the side, and then back toward Hoss. “I ain’t sick,” he repeated in a softer tone.

Glancing curiously at Adam before returning his attention to the boy, Hoss indicated toward the vomit with a nod of his head. “That there says you are.”

“Just because I got sick don’t mean I am sick.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ain’t no business of yours!”

“Buford!” came another shout from the cabin. “Buford Sampson Schultz! You answer me, boy!”

The boy started panting as his attention wavered between the men surrounding him and the line shack.

“That your name?” Hoss asked. “Buford?”

The boy looked up at him and nodded.

“That your pa callin’?”

The boy shook his head. “My pa’s dead. The man in there, he killed ‘im.” There was more fear in the boy’s reply than sadness.

“Can you tell us why?” Sheriff Coffee asked.

The boy shrugged. “Lots a’reasons I guess. Don’t much matter.”

“Buford! You get yerself back here, boy, or there’ll be hell to pay!”

“Who’s that callin’ you?” Hoss asked.

“My brother, Jasper.”

“You gonna answer him?”

“You gonna make me?”

Confounded by the boy’s words, Hoss watched Adam crouch down beside the kid.

“You’re afraid of him, aren’t you?” Adam asked in a gentle tone, the kind he’d always used when Hoss or Joe was upset over something and needed older brother to make things right again.

The boy looked at him for a long while, and then he looked up at Hoss; he seemed intent on avoiding meeting Walker’s gaze, as well as the sheriff’s. After a moment, the boy nodded. “He’ll beat me if I go back there now. I should’a answered right off.”

“Why didn’t you?” Adam asked.

The boy shook his head.

“Are you more afraid of him, than you are of us?”

The boy held silent for another long while. Then he nodded.

“Is that what made you sick?”

The boy nodded at Adam again. “I can’t…can’t stomach it.” When he looked up at Hoss this time, there were tears in his eyes. “Ain’t never could stomach it. All that blood. Ain’t no good to it. Ain’t no good at all!”

“You’d better be dead or dyin’, boy!” Jasper Schultz shouted, sounding closer than before.

Walker tapped Hoss on the arm and nodded toward the shack. Two men had stepped outside, shotguns in hand. They were heading out to find Buford.

That meant there were only two men left in the shack. Hoss couldn’t hope for a better opportunity to get to Little Joe.

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