Haints Stay

by Colin Winnette

  “It has nothing and no one and nowhere to go,” said the face. “It is like a little mouse in the leaves.”

  “I’m a bird,” said the boy.

  “A little bird, yes, maybe, and I am a snake or a fish, and I am a lucky one.”

  The face vanished and the wood croaked once again and the boy was dragging through the leaves as before. A rock passed under him, pulling his shirt up and scratching a painful line from his hip to the center of his back.

  The trees grew dense until the stars were gone and there was nothing around him except the sounds of the cart and of his being dragged.

  They were headed downhill ; the boy could feel the pull of gravity, their slight increase in speed, and the ache in his gut as his weight pressed down upon it.

  “We’re home,” said the face, and a stone was slid open to reveal a kind of darkness that has never seen light. It was textured, thick, and pulsing. The boy lifted his arms to swing out at any approaching sounds, but nothing came. He attempted to curl up again but the pain was more than he could bear. He curled his hands into fists and imagined two stones. He pictured a rock breaking into the face, and then the face and its body collapsing there and still forever. He pictured his own body rising up and carrying itself back out into the night.

  It was days before they found a town. Uneventful days, filled with bitterness and loaded silence between them. The town was standard. Sugar and Brooke found a bar and found it empty of patrons.

  “We’re not heavy drinkers,” explained the bartender.

  “What do you do ?” asked Sugar.

  “We’re religious,” said the bartender, “mostly. And we like games. Or most of us do. Every town has a few folks who keep to themselves.”

  “What’s that mean, you like games ?”

  “It’s just something most of us can agree on.”

  “What kind of games ?”

  “Can we have two house wines ?” said Brooke.

  The glasses were set before them and filled. Then the bartender explained, “Stick and ball games, some. Cards. We’re active.” He held out his forearm to display his vascular build, as well as the scarring that ran from elbow to wrist. “I’m a slider,” he said. “I know it’s not good for me, but I get excited. I can’t help myself.” He drew a stool from behind the bar and set his foot upon it. He cuffed his trousers to mid-calf and displayed the swollen ankle of his right leg. It was purple and white, like a drowned man’s.

  “That was a misstep that I fell into,” he explained. “Hard.”

  “A committed player,” said Brooke. He raised his glass, first to the bartender and then to his brother. Sugar did not raise his glass, but turned back to the bartender and asked the name of the particular game that had cost him his ankle.

  “I’ll be back in fighting shape soon enough,” said the bartender.

  Brooke drank, elbowed his brother, but Sugar kept his eyes on the bartender.

  “Do you rent rooms ?”

  The bartender shook his head and pointed across the road.

  “That’s there,” he said.

  A building opposite the bar held roughly the same shape, though the porch sagged slightly and the windows were dirty beyond being able to see into.

  “How’s a place like yours stay open if no one in your town drinks ?” said Brooke.

  “Travelers, mainly,” he said. “And it’s not no one, but most.”

  Brooke finished his drink and Sugar slid his full glass toward the opposite edge of the bar.

  “Won’t be needing it,” said Sugar.

  “You’re sure ?” said the bartender.

  Sugar nodded. “Consider us one of yours,” he said. “We’ll be here a bit and I’d like to try on the life of an insider.”

  The bartender chuffed, took up the wine glass, and tilted its edge toward Brooke. Brooke waved his hand and rose from the stool beneath him.

  “Excuse him,” he said, patting Sugar on the shoulder. “Without a proper bed, he gets strange and over-serious. Why don’t you hold onto that drink. We’ll head across the way and secure a room, then settle up once we’ve finished our first round.”

  “Of course,” said the bartender.

  In the street, Brooke stopped Sugar with a slug to the gut. Bent over, Sugar looked plaintively to his brother and shocked Brooke with the sudden desperation in his eye. He collapsed to his knees, then onto his side in the dirt. Brooke hovered over him.

  “What’s got into you ?” said Brooke. “And where’s my brother ?”

  Sugar watched the townsfolk leave their porches and enter their homes. They could smell a fight, and the two strangers were more than likely armed.

  “What aren’t you telling me ?” said Brooke. He loosed a kick into the middle of Sugar’s back, which was curved and exposed from his position. Sugar bent backward and set one hand to protect his spine while the other stayed at his gut, holding it dearly.

  “We can keep going on like this,” said Brooke, “in front of the clouds and everyone. I can pound you all day and you know it. You’ve never set against me in two lifetimes and come out on top and that’s just the facts of the situation. Either you tell me what’s gotten into you or I break you open a bit and see if it doesn’t come sliding out.”

  “I’m carrying something,” said Sugar.

  “Go on.” Brooke tapped his heel in the dirt to loose a clump of wet grass, the last bit of the woods still clinging to them.

  “I was told I’ve got something inside me,” said Sugar.

  Brooke nodded.

  “We can get it out,” he said.

  “I was told not to get it out,” said Sugar. “I was told explicitly not to.” He was not looking at his brother. He was staring down the lane to where the rowed storefronts and home fronts angled toward one another and vanished into the light. “It felt like a warning.”

  “We’ll get it out,” said Brooke. “Everything will be as it always has been. Now get up.”

  Slowly, Sugar lifted himself, his eyes still locked on the horizon.

  Brooke bent to help Sugar and Sugar leaned into the hands that found purchase at the moist pits of each arm.

  “You’ll be okay,” said Brooke. “I’ve got you.”

  Bird woke when his wing broke. It had been a steady fall, a straight for the canyons dive, and only some faint part of him knew that it wasn’t real, that he would wake and be free of the panic that was riding him, rushing his breath and heartbeat and making him sweat. But then the pain in his wing shot through him and he was in complete darkness again. The daylight and the vast horizons and the deep canyons carved by a steady stream of blue water and all the lush trees, it all vanished and he could see nothing. Only darkness. He could only hear the soft sound of something tearing, and could feel on some basic level that it was the skin of his right forearm. Something sharp was drawing a shallow cut and working the skin loose, and he was tied and broken and without recourse.

  He screamed. Nothing about the situation changed. He pleaded into the darkness and the same held true. He swung his left arm and struggled with his right, which seemed pinned or fastened in place and would not budge. His flailing left arm found no company.

  What was happening to him continued to happen until he was out of tears and collapsing back into a dream of sawdust and pine needles and wolves gathering at the trunks of each and every tree.

  The keeper of the inn was an old maid of the tobacco chewing kind. She spit what she could into a brass pot near the ledger, and the rest hung at her chin between a stray hair and a scar, thick and marbled like lard.

  “I’m Brooke,” said Brooke, “and this is Sugar.”

  “Twice the fee for two,” she said.

  “Same as two rooms ?” said Brooke.

  “Same,” she said.

  “That doesn’t seem exactly fair,” said Brooke.

  “Maybe it isn’t,” she said. She was even in pitch and unmoving, perched on a stool behind the counter and shifting only to bring the brass pot
a few inches from her lip and let loose what was filling the basin of her mouth.

  “I’ll be straight with you,” said Brooke, “and tell you that we were hoping we might be able to owe you some work or a favor of some kind, in exchange for a room. We’ve been in the woods for weeks now.”

  “Months,” said Sugar.

  “Months,” said Brooke. “We’re hard workers and we can commit ourselves to just about any task.”

  “That your wife ?” said the keeper of the inn.

  “My brother,” said Brooke.

  Sugar removed their only weapon — a small blade he’d sheathed in the front leather of his half-inch-thick belt. He placed it on the counter and let his hands fall to his side.

  “How about a challenge ?” said Brooke, “if a favor won’t suit you.”

  The old woman stared back at him, unflinching, circling her jaw.

  “From behind the counter, which of the two of you can get closer to my body without piercing me from across the room.” Brooke took several steps to place himself against the far wall.

  “You strike me, you lose,” he said. “You get closer than my brother without doing so, and we’ll come back when we’ve got some money.”

  “Two throws a player,” said the woman. “I don’t have much experience with a knife.”

  “Two throws then,” said Brooke. “Sugar, why don’t you join her behind the counter there.”

  “You have to untwist that wire,” said the woman.

  A coil of wire was threaded between two copper loops, keeping the waist-high door at the end of the counter cinched shut.

  Sugar’s fingers were trembling slightly. He wasn’t nervous, but still sore and uncertain.

  The woman watched his hands work the wire and declared that she would go first.

  “It’s my roof and my wall,” she said.

  Brooke nodded, and Sugar unthreaded the wire and joined her.

  She did not rise from the stool, but took the knife from the counter and held it a moment. She let it lower her hand, bounced it a bit. She held it by the blade, then the handle. She held its edge before her eye, then its handle. She brought her arm back and sprung it forward as she loosed the knife. It plunged into the wall a foot or so to the left of Brooke’s neck and held there.

  “You’ll announce the throw next time,” said Brooke, unshaken.

  Sugar retrieved the knife and rejoined the woman.

  “I’m throwing,” said Sugar.

  The knife appeared half a foot from the scar left by the woman’s throw, just to the left of Brooke’s neck. Brooke smiled. The vein in his neck swelled just slightly with each heartbeat.

  Sugar retrieved the knife and rejoined the woman.

  She did not rise from the stool. She took the knife from Sugar and held it a moment. She let it lower her hand, bounced it a bit. She held it by the blade, then the handle. She held its edge before her eye, then its handle. She brought her arm back and sprung it forward as she loosed the knife. It plunged into the wall halfway between Sugar’s scar and the left edge of Brooke’s neck, and held there.

  Sugar retrieved the knife and rejoined the woman.

  “I’m throwing,” said Sugar.

  The knife appeared then just at the left of Brooke’s neck. When he exhaled, his flesh pressed against the blade.

  “A winner,” said Brooke.

  The woman shook her head.

  “Three throws,” she said. “I said three.”

  “You undoubtedly said two,” said Brooke, removing the small knife from the wall and joining them at the counter.

  Sugar stood beside the woman, sporting a vague grin.

  “Three,” she said. “My roof and my rooms and my wall.”

  “How will three not turn into four ?” said Brooke.

  She shook her head, spit into the pot.

  “Can you give me a shave, Sugar ?” said Brooke.

  Sugar nodded.

  “Three a player then,” said Brooke.

  He took his place back at the wall, aligning himself with Sugar’s final scar.

  The woman did not rise from the stool. She held the knife in her palm. Let it lower the hand, bounced it a bit. She held it by the blade, then the handle. She held its edge before her eye, then its handle. She brought her arm back and sprung it forward as she loosed the knife. It plunged into Brooke’s right thigh, hilt deep.

  “You win,” she said.

  Something was eating. In the darkness, there was nothing but the pain in his arm and gut and the slurping and gnawing ringing out as if against stone. That’s what it was. They were in stone. Encased in stone like at the bottom of a canyon. The bottom of a canyon with only a canyon above. His one arm was still mobile and relatively painless. He reached over himself to touch the outer layer of his opposite arm. Bending ached his gut, and touching made the whole arm scream. But he was silent. Tears came, but no sound. Only the sounds of it eating, coming from all around him. As if the boy were thinking it, rather than hearing it. What should have been flesh was rough, wet tissue, like the dense pile of leaves on a forest floor. His left hand recoiled. The eating sounds ceased and the stone moved again. Moonlight lit the cavern walls, Bird’s broken body, the cart to which he was tied, and then he was sealed away as before.

  Brooke sank to sitting, pulled the blade from his leg, and the windows of the inn exploded with gunfire. Sugar struck the floor and met Brooke’s eyes from across the room.

  “No,” cried the woman, “not the windows and walls.”

  The gunfire did not cease until she had set to cursing into the palms of her hands and crying just a little and the two brothers had joined one another behind a sagging couch near the center of the room. They had only the blade, slick with Brooke’s blood.

  Soon they heard boots on the planks of the porch and a voice that called out, “Toss what you’ve got and rise up slowly.”

  The boots found their way into the main room, an innumerable cluster of bumps, knocks, and creaks, settling then to silence.

  Brooke wiped his blood on the knee of his britches and shook his head to Sugar, who rose up slowly, hands in the air.

  Before him stood a line of eight unrecognizable faces, and then that of the bartender. Six-shooters in fourteen hands and shotguns in the remaining four.

  Brooke was bleeding through his fabrics. His foot twitched at the ankle.

  “My brother’s got only a knife,” said Sugar. “And I’ve got nothing.”

  “Step out from behind the seat,” said the leader, a man in a brilliant white button-up topped with a loose brown vest. He bore no signifying marks or pins. He appeared roughly forty years of age, give or take a few years. He was hard-faced and scarred at the chin. “Do it now,” he said, evenly.

  Sugar did as he was told. He did not glance at Brooke, who was attempting to steady his foot and gain a clear head.

  “The other too,” said the leader.

  A skilled shot nicked the blade of the knife as it landed a foot or so to the left of the couch. It skittered and spun to the far wall and a young boy near the end of the line apologized.

  Brooke’s hands emerged first. Then the back of his head, his shoulders, and the broad black back of his leathers.

  “Turn,” said the leader.

  “Can’t,” said Brooke, his hands gripped to the couch’s back. “I’m pierced and bleeding.”

  “Go around and see,” the leader said to the man beside him. An older man in a worn black top hat, striped whites, and suspenders set to examine Brooke.

  “We’ve got them,” said the boy.

  “He’s bleeding all right,” said the man in the top hat, looking back at his party from the couch’s left edge.

  “I had them,” said the inn keeper, rising from behind the counter. “I had them both and you came to us like this and bore apart my walls.”

  “Marjorie, we do apologize.”

  “Apologies won’t keep out the wind and the mosquitoes,” she said. “This is nothing but a waste
on your part and a loss on mine.”

  “Take them,” said the leader, signaling with the barrel of either pistol for his men to approach the brothers.

  The man in the top hat lifted Brooke to standing and pulled his wrists together before him. He lashed them with a worn bit of coil while the others set upon Sugar.

  “I’d like to request a cell near my brother’s,” said Brooke.

  “I’m sure you would,” said the leader, tucking his guns behind his belt and releasing the tension in his shoulders.

  “For comfort in a new place, and for the discussion of our defense,” said Brooke.

  Sugar was blank, led to the door by a ring of four men. The face of each blended with the next. Sugar buckled slightly as he disappeared through the door.

  “Plus, he’s sick and should be minded,” said Brooke.

  “The thing is,” said the leader, stepping to Brooke finally with a grin like a lightning bolt. “There’s no cell. No defense. And no one at all to pay either of you any mind.”

  He startled then, as if to slug Brooke, but paused as the bound man flinched. When Brooke recovered, the leader plunged a thumb into the fresh wound at Brooke’s thigh, sending Brooke to the floor again. Then the leader turned to take his leave.

  The remaining four men lifted Brooke and led him through the door where two stagecoaches, each drawn by a set of four horses, were waiting. The lanterns on the stagecoaches were lit. The sun was finally preparing to set. The horses were newly shod and freshly brushed, as if prepared for a journey of some length.

  Brooke was brought to an empty stagecoach, and his mind settled to thinking of Sugar in the other, and whether or not his brother would meet the opportunity to take the gun from one of his men the moment it presented itself.

  The men set him on a low bench at the back of the wagon. They sat around him, two across from him and one at either side.

  If he had not recently been stabbed, he wouldn’t have startled. If Sugar had not acted out upon Bird, they would not have come to this town. The men and the innkeeper, he realized, had been working separately toward the same end. Their plan was known, or at least its most relevant parts. A pistol butt broke into the flesh above his ear and sent him into the lap of the man at his left. From that position, he could make out only the sky and a pair of large red rocks on the horizon. He felt blood at his neck. The sun was behind them, disappearing into the earth. As the stagecoach began to move, he could then see the town, shrinking behind them. Its walls and facades, as they were broken apart, pulled outward by faintly visible ropes, and folded at the middle, back toward the earth. The town was splitting apart like a radish root in a dish of water. In the shadows at its edge, he imagined he saw the phantoms of men, working.