by Tony Healey
Myra wiped her mouth on a handkerchief and attempted to stand up straight. “Sorry you had to see that,” she said weakly.
Ethan walked her to a timber pile and ordered her to sit. Then he walked back to the well, removed the bucket and returned with it. “Drink this. Wash your face and hands in it, too. I’ll get some light up in the house so you can see. It’ll be dark soon,” he said, peering at the sky.
“You don’t have to do this,” Myra said. “I knew all too well what awaited me here.”
It was hard to tell what Ethan was thinking. “You’re right. I don’t have to do this,” he said simply, then returned to the house.
Myra drank the water, then did as she had been told, washing her hands and face in it before tipping the bucket over the area where she’d been sick. She returned the bucket to the well. The house glowed from within, window by window, as Ethan set lanterns going. Presently he emerged from within.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Just say ‘thank you.’”
“Thank you,” Myra said. “Can I ask . . . what’s the rest of it like in there?”
He looked at her with pity in his eyes. “Bad.”
“Oh, God,” Myra said, averting her gaze. The tears came, hot and fast, but she wiped at them urgently. Wanting to get on. Wanting to be strong. Not just for herself, but for Glendon, Celia, her niece and nephew, too. It was so hard. It was worse than she’d imagined it would be. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she said, wanting to take what she was feeling and drive it down hard, bury it deep.
“Yes, you can. You can do this,” Ethan said.
She looked at the house. It now appeared warm and inviting. Somehow, the reality of what had occurred within those walls made the sight of it even more difficult.
Ethan asked, “Do you know how to start a fire?”
“Yes,” Myra said, looking up at him.
“Start a fire yonder,” he said, indicating an area of bare earth twenty feet away from them. “Use that firewood if you have to. Get it going, and I’ll bring out what I can.”
“What do you mean? What are you bringing out?”
Ethan touched her arm. “Just light the fire.”
* * *
* * *
The flames spit embers up into the darkness and the logs cracked and popped. Ethan carried another armful of sheets and quilts from inside the house and threw them onto the fire.
“Let me help,” Myra said.
“Absolutely not,” Ethan told her. “I can’t let you do this. It ain’t right, seeing as you were kin and all. I’ve seen my fair share of death and plenty of blood. Difference between you and me is, you know who this blood came from.”
He got a clean blanket from somewhere and draped it over her shoulders, then told her to sit up in the cart and watch the fire. Ethan patted one of the old horses at the front of the cart, running his hand down its coat.
Myra said, “You really didn’t have to stay here and do this. But I do appreciate it.”
Ethan didn’t say anything. He gave the horse another pat and walked back to the house, disappearing through the open doorway. An hour later, he had cleared all the bloodied items from the house and thrown them on the bonfire. He winched the rope on the well, sending the bucket down into the water, then pulled it back up. Ethan stood before her, washing his face and running his wet hands over his perfectly bald head. He stood for a moment contemplating the house. Myra didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure what to say or what to ask. It felt like she should be watching him, so that was what she did. He detached the bucket and carried it inside. Another hour and several more buckets later, he stood out in the courtyard once again and went through the same ritual of washing himself. “It’s done.”
Inside the house, the blood she’d first seen on the floor was gone. Ethan led her upstairs, to what had been the children’s bedroom. The beds were bare. She could only imagine what they had looked like. But there was no trace of blood anywhere.
Ethan looked at one of the beds, eyes wide. Lost to the world for a moment. She wondered if he was seeing the bloodied bed and the evidence of the murders. I should have been the one to clear away what was left, she thought, almost ashamed that she hadn’t. A part of her wondered, But would I have managed it? “I’m at a loss for words. Honestly, I do not know what to say,” she admitted.
“Don’t say anything.”
* * *
* * *
She watched as Ethan released the horses from the cart and led them to the stable next to the house. Soon he returned, wiping his dusty hands on the seat of his pants. “They’re good for the evening,” he said.
“No horses in there?”
“Not unless they’re invisible.”
Myra frowned. “Doesn’t make any sense. There were two last time I visited. They had two horses. Where could they have gotten to?”
“I don’t know, but I think they’re the least of your worries right now. We can sort that in the morning.”
“We?” Myra asked. “You mean you’re not returning to town?”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “I cannot in all good conscience leave you on your own. Not when it’s dark and you’ve had a helluva day already.”
“Because I’m a woman,” Myra snorted.
“Man or woman, it wouldn’t matter. I’d be saying the same thing.”
“Sorry,” Myra said. She looked at the house, at the light shining from the windows. As if the place were still inhabited by her brother and his family—as if nothing had happened. Myra would never have admitted it, but she had dreaded spending the night in the house on her own. “I can make up a bed for you with whatever’s to hand. We couldn’t have burned everything.”
Ethan shook his head. “No need. I’ll get my forty winks out here on the porch.”
“That’s out of the question. You can’t sleep out here.”
“Why on earth not?”
Myra searched for the right words. “It’s not proper.”
Ethan smiled. “I didn’t ask permission, Miss Hart. I do believe I was tellin’ you what’s what in that regard,” he said, sitting down in a rocking chair at the end of the porch. He retrieved a cigarillo from his shirt pocket, bit the end off it and lit it, his face momentarily illuminated from beneath by the flare of the struck match. “I’ll get some shut-eye out here tonight for your safety. Unless you want to march me off your brother’s property at gunpoint and tell me to get outta here. In which I case, I guess I’ll have no choice but to follow orders.”
“Not at all!” Myra said, outraged. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Then the matter is closed,” Ethan told her. “I will take a blanket if you have one spare. I don’t have much love for the cold. Never have. Another reason I never went back to Nebraska.”
“No cold like a Nebraskan winter.”
“Never a truer word said than that.”
Myra looked at the fire raging, the bloodied belongings now incinerated. The deed done now. Would she have had the stomach to do that? Pull their things out here and burn them? Wash their blood from the walls and from the floor? Ethan had done her a huge kindness, with no expectation of reciprocal kindness from her in return. She sometimes struggled to believe there were men like that in the world. Good men who were true to their word, who did not operate with an ulterior motive in mind. She was not a weak woman, nor was she predisposed to be fearful. Blood and death did not scare her, particularly, but when it came to dealing with blood that belonged to your kin, it became a different matter. That blood was not simply something that could be washed away and forgotten. It held more meaning. It was impossible to forget. You saw it long after it had been washed away because it was as good as your own blood on the floor, up the walls.
Her brother, Glendon, and his wife, Celia, should not have been killed. Their children shoul
d not have been killed. Myra looked into the fire and felt the anger rise within her, and soon that very same anger became a rage like nothing she had ever known before. Her hands clenched tight into fists at her sides. “I would like to kill the people who did this,” she said, the fire in her eyes. “Personally kill them.”
Ethan smoked and didn’t say anything straightaway. When Myra turned to him, he was staring into the fire as she had been. The devil dancing in his eyes. “Think you could?” he asked. “Think you could kill a man?”
Myra exhaled, a tremble coursing down her entire body. “Find the man who killed my family, and see for yourself.”
Ethan tipped his head. He dropped the cigarillo to the floor and crushed it out under the toe of his boot. His eyes locked with hers. “Okay, then,” he said.
* * *
* * *
Myra found biscuits inside. A little cured meat. Corn, too. She assembled some of the food and carried it outside. Ethan located another chair for her. Myra found her brother’s whiskey at the back of one of the cabinets, and a pair of glasses. She poured them both a measure of the amber spirit and together they sat on the porch, picking at the meager offerings with their hands.
“It’s not a lot, I know,” she said.
“Don’t apologize,” Ethan told her.
“I want to thank you for what you did,” Myra said, gesturing toward the bonfire. She bit into one of the biscuits. It was nearly stale. “Do you do this kind of thing a lot, Ethan?”
“Do what?”
“Help damsels in distress.”
Ethan lifted his whiskey and sipped it. “I wouldn’t say you’re a damsel in distress, Miss Hart. I happen to think you’re more self-reliant than that.”
“Please, Myra will do now we’re acquainted better. This Miss Hart business sounds foolish now.”
“As you like.”
“So if you wouldn’t say I’m a damsel in distress, how would you describe me, then?”
Somewhere in the night a coyote or a wolf howled in the distance. They both listened.
Then Ethan said, “You’re a woman grieving for her brother, her sister-in-law, nephew and niece. You are in a tough spot and need helpin’ out, whether you realize it or not.”
Myra said, “I didn’t think it’d be like this.”
“What were you expecting?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
Ethan sighed. “Death ain’t never the way we think it will be. No such thing as a clean murder and no such thing as gettin’ over loss like that, either.”
“Nothing is ever easy, is it?”
“My mother used to say, ‘Tough times come the moment you’re born, and don’t stop till you’re in the ground, so get used to it.’”
“Sounds like a wise lady.”
“She was,” Ethan said with a wry smile. He looked away, the smile fading on his lips, face turning pallid and slack. Myra realized that he was no longer present, lost to whatever it was in the past that plagued him. Caught in the swell of loss and heartbreak. She herself was beginning to know that feeling—like sinking into quicksand and, with no way out, coming to some measure of acceptance when it came to your fate.
She looked at his empty glass. “Care for another?”
Ethan snapped out of his fugue and looked at her, eyes momentarily startled, as if he wasn’t sure how he’d come to be there on the porch with her, staring into the fire. Then he relaxed and lifted his glass. “Why not?” he said.
* * *
* * *
She woke to a cold chill. Myra had fallen asleep in her chair on the porch. She stood up and stretched, her body stiff from sleeping upright. It was early morning, the first light creeping in at the edges of the world. The big fire they’d set had died. She went to look for a blanket to cover herself with and stopped dead in her tracks.
Ethan was gone.
His chair was empty, the blanket he’d accepted from her strewn over the back of it. Myra hugged herself from the nip in the air and cast about for any sign of him. The cart was still there, and she could hear the old horses shuffling about in their enclosure. So he hadn’t gone far.
Then she saw him obscured by the well. Stock-still in the twilight, hands braced over his holsters as he stood guard out in the courtyard. He had his back to her, visibly tense as he watched for signs of movement in the shadowy landscape before the property.
Myra stepped down from the porch and crossed the courtyard to stand next to him. He didn’t move an inch. Her presence beside him didn’t break his concentration. He just watched, his every muscle tensed and ready for action.
“What is it?” Myra whispered, trying to see what he could see but failing.
At first Ethan didn’t answer. Then, without looking at her, he told her that he’d woken to the sound of horses approaching the house.
“I don’t see anything,” Myra said. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She couldn’t see much of anything. “Have you seen them?”
“No.”
“Maybe they’ve gone.”
“Maybe,” he said, uncertain.
“What shall we do?”
He turned to her. “You should go get some sleep. I’ll stand watch.”
“Ethan . . .”
“I insist,” he said. “Get your sleep. At sunup I’ll be gone. I’ve got to get back to town, you understand.”
“I do,” she said, keeping the disappointment from her voice. “Will you let me make coffee before you leave? It’s the least I can do.”
“Sure,” Ethan said.
Myra returned to her chair and was surprised to find that sleep fell upon her again with little effort, enveloping her like a spell. She dreamed of the fire raging and her brother and sister-in-law within the flames dancing to music that only they could hear. She called out to them, imploring them to leave the fire and save themselves, but they couldn’t hear her. All she could do was watch the fire consume them until there was nothing left but particles of dust igniting and burning to embers.
When she opened her eyes again, the dawn had spilled its light over everything and Ethan was gone, as were the cart and horses. Myra was on her own. He had not attempted to rouse her and, she realized, never intended on doing so. Nailed to the stable door she found a note that read “Next time,” signed “E. H.” at the bottom. What does the “H” stand for? Myra wondered.
She tore the note free and folded it in her hands.
CHAPTER FIVE
Well, howdy. Look what the wind just blew in,” Warren said, whistling through the gaps in his jagged teeth at the sight of his horses and cart rolling up to the barn. Ethan ordered the old beasts to come to a stop, jerking back on the reins until they halted completely. “You’re lucky, too. I just made a pot of coffee.”
Ethan hopped down from the cart and stretched. “I like to time these things.”
“Did you get lost? I missed our card game.”
“I apologize. Something came up at the Hart place,” Ethan said, following Warren inside. “Wouldn’t have been right, you know, leaving her out there on her own like that. Least not straightaway.”
“That bad, huh?”
“You could say that.”
Warren whistled again. “I heard it was a bloodbath.”
“You heard correctly,” Ethan said, helping himself to a cup of the coffee. It was thick, black and piping hot. The concoction smelled strong enough to strip paint from timber, but he’d tasted it before and it was good. Appearances could be deceiving. He smelled the brew in his cup. “This is just what I need. For what it’s worth, those directions of yours worked a treat. Had no trouble findin’ the place.”
“Good to hear. Sheriff came by last night. I said you weren’t here and I didn’t know when you’d be back.”
“I gotta drop by, see him this
morning.”
Warren sat on a stool in the barn and watched Ethan wander to his horse, patting her on the neck. “Before you ask, she’s been no trouble.”
“Ruby never is.”
“I do have to wonder how long you’re thinking of stopping here.”
“How so?” Ethan asked, pulling up a wooden crate and sitting on it. “I mean, it’s no problem. I can leave if you’d like, if I’m in the way.”
Warren shook his head. “That’s not what I’m implying. I have no objection to you bunking here in the loft. I just don’t get why you’re not holed up at the guesthouse like other folk do when they stop by a few days. You’d be a helluva lot more comfortable there than in here.”
“Comfort ain’t everything,” Ethan said. He sipped his coffee. “Right now I need to keep a low profile. If it’s a question of payment, I can pay whatever you ask. I said that from the beginning.”
“And I said no from the beginning. I’ll take any further offer of payment as a personal slight,” Warren said.
Ethan smiled. “Okay.”
“But you’ve got to admit it makes a man look suspicious when he’s got the means to stay in a bed and chooses to lodge in with the livery.”
Ethan set the cup on the floor between his feet and clasped his hands. “Look, there’s a good reason I don’t pay for a room. I have business here, and I don’t want the subject of my business to be aware of my comings and goings.”
“What kind of business?”
“D’you know you’re the second person to ask me that question in so many days?” Ethan said. “Let’s just say that my own reasons for being here in Amity Creek and Myra Hart’s reasons for being in Amity Creek might not be so dissimilar.”
“Really?” Warren set his own cup down and folded his arms. “Well, I suppose now it makes sense.”
“What does?”
Warren indicated the gun belt. “What you carry around with you all the time. Those twin shooters. I’ve seen a lot of men adept at slinging bullets, and you do carry yourself as someone who has shot and killed a man or two in your time.”
