Walking on Air

by Catherine Anderson

  Still, Gabe couldn’t bring himself to walk away. He considered his options. There weren’t many. The kid was too young for Gabe to give him a bunch of money. He’d piddle it away or lose it, or it’d be stolen, and in the end, he’d end up under the stairwell again. Maybe, Gabe decided, he could stay over an extra day, guarding his back every second, and talk with the local preacher. Surely there was a family in town who’d be willing to take in a kid and raise him properly—if Gabe offered enough money to make it worthwhile. Money talked. He’d sure learned that. And he’d learned, too, that few people could do such a deed out of the goodness of their hearts. This boy would be an extra mouth to feed, bottom line, and folks with smallish incomes would be unable to say yes unless the boy came with a generous monthly stipend attached.

  Yes, Gabe decided, he’d stay an extra day and see if he couldn’t get this kid settled somewhere. At present, though, it was a hair before dawn on Christmas morning, when the preacher and his flock would be celebrating the birth of Christ. Nobody would have the time or interest to consider the fate of an orphaned boy until the holiday passed.

  Gabe drew a third gold eagle from his trouser pocket and, with the ease of long practice, gave it a toss. The coin landed on its edge and rolled to the gouged and holey tips of the boy’s boots, which appeared to be several sizes too small, judging by the protrusion of one toe extending well beyond the sole. Gabe’s excellent aim, much to his shame, came from frequently following in his father’s footsteps, elbows braced on a poker table in some gaudy saloon. The one and only good thing Gabe could say that he’d inherited from his dad was a gift for playing cards. Learning how to spin a coin on its edge across green felt had served him well over the years. It kept his hands free to go for his guns if some cocky asshole decided to call him a cheat. More than one man had lost his life over a poker game. Gabe had made it a point not to become one of them.

  “Boy,” he said softly, “there’s ten dollars to get yourself some decent clothes. You can’t buy any today. It’s Christmas and all the shops are closed. But you can get some tomorrow.”

  The kid snatched at the coin, closed his fingers around it, and stuck a grubby fist into his pocket. The twist of his lips that passed for a smile was clearly visible to Gabe in the charcoal gloom. “Mister, my belly’s emptier than a beggar’s pocket. Ain’t clothes I’ll buy.”

  Gabe lifted his hands. “No need to buy food. I plan to mosey next door for a couple of whiskeys to wet my throat, but afterward I’ll take you out for a big breakfast, and you can roll all the leftovers up in a napkin to hold you for the rest of the day.”

  The kid’s unchildlike gaze locked with Gabe’s. “Yeah? After a couple of jiggers you’re gonna feed me? Hell, mister, thanks for the money, but I know better than that.”

  Gabe recognized that snort. He’d made it himself more than a few times—mostly as a disillusioned youngster. He stared hard at the kid for a long moment. “I said I’ll be back to take you to breakfast. The hotel restaurant stays open for guests. We’ll have ourselves a feast. But first, I got a gnaw in my gut for a little whiskey.”

  The boy nodded indifferently. Obviously, he didn’t believe Gabe would return. “You a drunk?”

  Gabe nearly smiled. He tipped a glass now and again, but he wasn’t dependent upon alcohol. He simply had an inner clock that told him it was still way too early for the hotel to be serving breakfast, and, God help him, one of the few pleasures in his life was a good belt of booze after being with a woman.

  “No, not a drunk.” Gabe backed out from under the stairs and straightened. “Keep your appetite sharp. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  As Gabe turned toward the tavern, he realized how lonely and utterly empty he felt. He wanted so much more out of life, but the good stuff, like taking that boy under his wing, always seemed just beyond his reach. A quiet hopelessness welled up inside him, bringing unaccustomed and unwelcome pain. Things were never going to change. He was never going to change. And the hell of it was, he wasn’t really sure he wanted to go on living if this was how it would always be, day after meaningless day blending into equally meaningless nights. Dodging bullets because some punk wanted to be known throughout the West as the fastest draw. What was the point?

  A few steps took Gabe to the bat-wing doors of the saloon. He pushed them open, scanned the few men sitting at tables wreathed in smoke, and then walked over to stand at the bar. Behind him, the room fell silent. Well, he was used to that. His formidable reputation with a gun made him fearsome to a lot of folks. “A bottle of your best whiskey and one glass,” he told the barkeep.

  Bald pate gleaming in the lamplight, the plump older man slung a white towel over his shoulder, pulled the cork on a bottle, and then set it and a glass in front of Gabe. “Merry Christmas.”

  Gabe nodded as he poured a two-finger measure of amber liquid into the tumbler. After one gulp followed by a whistle through his teeth, Gabe barely suppressed a shiver. Even so, he sloshed another measure of alcohol into the glass, downing it quickly so he’d get the burn over with fast. Though he didn’t often overindulge, he knew that drinking rotgut liquor most of the time because nothing better was available meant he’d probably die with yellow skin from liver disease, just like his father. At the thought, Gabe poured another jigger. Why not? It wasn’t as if he had one damned thing to live for.

  The barkeep moved to the far end of the counter to serve another man, a seedy-looking fellow in a rumpled gray suit. The doctor, maybe? In the month that Gabe had been in Random, he’d kept pretty much to himself and still couldn’t recognize all of the town’s residents on sight. He studied the man in the mirror that lined the opposite wall, which, by power of reflection, made the establishment’s liquor stock look a lot more ample than it was. The fellow had a thin, haggard countenance, a large nose to support his wire-framed spectacles, and a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed with nervousness above his dingy white shirt collar, which sported a limp, off-kilter red necktie, the loops escaping from a tarnished stickpin. His blue gaze locked with Gabe’s in the mirror. Recalling his manners, of which he had few, Gabe looked away and found himself staring at his own reflection.

  Christ on crutches. He looked like the very devil, his attire all black from his Stetson on down. His jet hair needed a trim, the shaggy ends shining in the light where they curled over his collar. His eyes, the color of thrice-boiled coffee, glittered like polished stones in his sun-darkened, sharply chiseled face. No wonder ladies veered off the boardwalk to avoid encounters with him, and people fell silent when he entered a building. He had the look of a coldhearted killer.

  Well, that was fitting. He was a killer, though he’d never set out to be—or had a choice. Some people believed they were in control of their lives, but Gabe had learned the hard way, and at a young age, that fate was as fickle and inconstant with her favors as a dance-hall girl.

  Remembering his breakfast date with the ragged, hungry boy, Gabe corked his bottle, asked the barkeep to put his name on it, tossed a coin on the bar, and left the saloon. As he pushed through the doors onto the boardwalk, he saw signs that people were awakening to celebrate Christmas. Scattered ribbons of chimney smoke canted upward into the gunmetal gray sky. He fleetingly imagined the interiors of the homes from which the smoke came. Sleepy children staggering downstairs to stare in wonder at the gifts left for them under the Christmas tree. Cheerful fires crackling on brick hearths. Gaily decorated stockings stuffed with sweets. Women stoking their stoves to roast stuffed turkeys. Was that really what Christmas was like?

  In comparison to the cozy pictures in his mind, Main Street looked funereal, the windows of the shops dark and bleak, snow drifting listlessly through the gloom. Only one spot of brightness shimmered in the dreariness, the windows of the milliner’s shop a half block away. Candles flickered on the interior sills, warm beacons to a lonely man. Gabe bypassed the stairwell where the boy waited, thinking he’d come right
back, and strode slowly toward the light, yearning to catch just one brief glimpse of Christmas before it turned daylight and he’d be caught staring through windows.

  Several yards before he reached his destination, Gabe heard a man call his name. The hairs on his nape prickled. He had lived through this same scene too many times not to know how it always unfolded. Hand hovering over his six-shooter, he whirled to face the danger. He glimpsed movement in the shadows of a building. Then he heard a shot ring out and knew that whoever was lurking in the folds of darkness meant to kill him in an unfair exchange of lead.

  For an instant, Gabe welcomed the thought and didn’t go for his weapon. But then his instinct to survive took over. He slapped leather and fired at the black blur of a man . . . and felt a slug of lead plow into his chest with such stunning force that he was knocked backward and off his feet before he heard the second report of his opponent’s gun.

  Lying motionless on the frozen ground and staring stupidly at the still-dark sky, he felt no pain, just an odd heaviness and an awful coldness.

  “I got him!” a man shouted. “I shot Gabriel Valance! Me! Pete Raintree!”

  Gabe managed to turn his head slightly and saw a thin young man staggering toward him, crimson already staining the front of his jacket. The youth’s legs gave out just before he reached Gabe. He fell to his knees with a bewildered expression in his eyes and then touched the blood on his jacket as if he couldn’t quite believe it was there.

  “Dammit, you went and kilt me, mister.”

  The younger man no sooner uttered the words than he pitched face-first into the frozen mud, dead before he ever hit the ground. Gabe tried to sit up, but his limbs wouldn’t work and there was no air.

  This is it, Gabe thought, and returned his gaze to the sky. The air around him smelled faintly of gun smoke, whiskey, and the metallic sweetness of blood. A fitting end. The chill of Gabe’s gun butt lay against his palm, his fingers limp around it. He regretted that he’d ever pulled the damn thing from its holster. The dead youth beside him was barely old enough to be dry behind the ears, yet Gabe had snuffed out his life. And all for what? So he could lie in the street and die with snow pelting him in the face?

  It hit Gabe then that no one would mourn his passing, not even the boy for whom he’d promised to buy breakfast. As the fog of death closed in around him, as the effort to breathe became exhausting, he felt a clawing regret. He wished that just one person would cry for him, that just one person might miss him. Just one. But in all his miserable life, not once since his mother had died, had he known or earned that kind of sentiment. He’d caused plenty of tears, he guessed, but none of them had been shed for him.

  His world was growing colder and darker. Why couldn’t things have been different? Why, despite all his efforts and good intentions, had he been unable to change? It’s Christmas, dammit. People shouldn’t die on Christmas. His unsteady gaze searched for the brightly illuminated windows of the hatmaker’s shop. In the moment of brilliant clarity that comes right before death, he managed to focus. Candlelight beamed in the window, casting a cheerful amber glow over the artfully draped fir boughs that framed the glass. The greenery outlined the face of a woman, her solemn gaze fixed on Gabe, her blond hair shimmering like a halo. She was so beautiful Gabe wondered if he wasn’t already dead and seeing an angel.

  Dark spots dotted his vision. Her sweet countenance began to swim in and out, clear one moment, gone the next. With every ounce of his remaining strength, Gabe tried to keep his eyes open, but the blackness grew thicker until it settled over him like a blanket, wiping out everything, even awareness.

  Chapter Two

  Gabe jerked back to fuzzy consciousness, then blinked, startled half out of his wits to find himself standing outside a wooden shack with a closed rickety door hanging slightly awry from rusty hinges. He clamped a hand over his chest, expecting to find blood, but felt only the front of his shirt and firm, unwounded flesh under the cloth. I’m dead, he thought. Only this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Where the hell are the pearly gates? Maybe better people got pearls and streets paved in gold, while others, like him, were sent to the back entrance. Just deserts. After the life he’d lived, he couldn’t expect a grand reception. Not that he’d ever believed in, or even heard much about, the pearly gates. His lack of faith undoubtedly accounted for the fact that the door was closed, barring his entrance.

  So now what? Where was he supposed to go? He turned, glanced down, and felt his heart skip a beat when he saw that his boots rested on what looked like a wispy cloud. He stepped sideways, but there wasn’t any earth. Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat. What was holding him up? He felt his chest again, to reassure himself that he still had a body.

  Suddenly two men appeared outside the shack. They wore long, flowing white robes and had rope sandals on their feet. One blond, the other brunette, they each sported long hair falling to just below the shoulder. Gabe assumed they were some sort of entrance attendants—only, the entrance to where? Given that he’d killed a young man only moments before dying himself, he didn’t care to explore the possibilities. He wasn’t all that sure heaven even existed, but he knew from personal experience that hell certainly did, even though the hell he’d lived in since early childhood had been on earth.

  Without a word, the two men—were they angels who’d forgotten their wings?—entered the structure and gestured for Gabe to follow them. Gabe wasn’t real sure he wanted to. What was in there, a yawning hole that led to an eternity of fire and brimstone? But he couldn’t spend eternity standing outside a stupid shack that looked like a good sneeze would blow it over. Feeling shaky, which was unusual for him, he stepped inside but left the door hanging open behind him, just in case he needed to make a quick escape. His boots made no sound on the floor, and Gabe, bewildered by the lack of noise, looked down to discover that he still stood on clouds, not wooden planks, as he’d expected.

  The men had taken seats behind a paper-strewn table that looked highly unorganized, and then they proceeded to quarrel heatedly over Gabe’s identity, one of them convinced Gabe was someone named Abe Van Horn, the other insisting he was Pete Raintree, the boy Gabe had just shot. Trying to look as if he didn’t resent being talked about as if he weren’t there, Gabe averted his gaze and found himself staring stupidly at the men’s bare knees and lower legs, revealed beneath the table. Apparently they’d hitched up their robes to get more comfortable.

  Holding up a hand, Gabe forced himself to look them in the eye and said, “Hold it! My name’s Gabriel Valance. I’m guessing you two are angels. Right? But where the hell are your wings? Do you dress different to greet newcomers or something? And am I at the wrong entrance or is this the back way into hell?”

  Gabe had never pictured male angels with bony knees and hairy legs. Now that he thought about it, he’d always had a vague idea that angels were female. And he wasn’t any too sure he wanted into heaven if it meant he’d have to wear one of those girlish-looking robes. Not that he was likely to get an engraved invitation, anyway.

  The two men began shuffling a little frantically through their papers. Their eyes widened as they scanned Gabe’s life history. With an appalled expression on his face, the blond angel glanced up and asked how a man with a respectable name like Gabriel could have led such a deplorable life. Gabe suspected he was face-to-face with the archangel Gabriel—a biblical figure almost everyone had heard of, even if they didn’t go to church. Apparently the angel was none too pleased that one of his namesakes had been such a miserable sinner.

  Still, delivered by an angel or not, such a sweeping condemnation seemed uncalled-for. Gabe felt a little indignant. “Come on,” he said. “I haven’t lived that bad a life. Aside from killing a few people, of course. But that was in self-defense, and I never really had a choice. It was shoot back or die myself. You going to hold that against me?”

  The two men assumed stern expressions, making Gabe feel like a
boy about to be dressed down by the schoolmaster, not that he’d ever been fortunate enough to experience that dubious pleasure. Even so, he wasn’t far off the mark. From out of the clouds surrounding the shack, Gabe suddenly heard voices. After listening a moment, he realized they belonged to people from his past, a recounting of conversations they’d once had about him. In nearly every exchange, he was either cursed or greatly feared by the speakers. Only a couple of old ladies who knew him as a boy had anything good to say, and that was more pitying than anything else. Poor little Gabriel Valance. That boy doesn’t stand a chance.

  Gabe figured that just about covered his life story, and since he was clearly dead, his chance to make amends was gone. Never a man to put off the inevitable, he asked, “Where is hell? Sounds to me like I may as well make tracks in that direction. As you two have pointed out, I’ve killed fourteen men, counting the one this morning. Why bother reading the rest of my history? I don’t want to wear a damned robe, anyway.”

  The two men regarded Gabe with saddened expressions, and in a flash, the clouds around Gabe’s ankles turned to flame.

  “Ow! Holy hell, that’s hot!” He lifted his feet, trying in vain to escape the heat. “This isn’t fair. I shouldn’t have to go through this until I actually get there!”

  Before Gabe felt any real sting, the angels waved away the flames. “Do you still have an aversion to wearing a robe?” the blond asked.

  “Rather than roast like a bird on a spit, I’d wear just about anything, petticoats included,” snapped Gabe, belatedly tacking on a respectful, “sir.” Relieved that the flames were gone, however temporarily, Gabe added, more to himself than to the angels, “I can’t believe hellfire actually exists. How can God call Himself merciful and yet sentence sinners to burn for eternity? I’ve got a hell of a lot of faults, but I wouldn’t be that cruel to a dog.”

  The dark-haired man studied Gabe with solemn brown eyes. “It is indeed a very harsh punishment, but it isn’t of God’s making. The flames are Satan’s creation, which is why Gabriel and I—Michael is my name, by the way—are assigned to heaven’s gates. It’s our job to save everyone we can, even men like you.”