The Wanderer and the New West

by Adam Bender

  Steve looked down at his desk and scrunched his eyes in deep concentration. After a few seconds of this, his head lifted with elation. “Come to think of it, that funny man going nowhere may have been the one you’re looking for! In fact, given he was the only man who came by to ride the train today, I reckon I’m sure of it!”

  With a grin, Rosa pulled a stylus out of her pocket and started writing on her tablet. “What did you make of him?”

  “Well, you know, I see a lot of people here. Some come to the train with a lot of baggage. Others come with just their person. This man didn’t have much of anything, but I’ll be gosh-darned if he didn’t look like he was carrying the weight of the world!”

  He was dramatic. She liked that. “Steve, I have to say, you make a gold interview! Where was he headed?”

  “That’s what I was telling you before — he didn’t know.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “He just wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, and he wanted to leave straight away. The next train due out was headed southeast, so he bought a ticket to the end of the line and said he’d figure out where to get off when he got there.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  What’s the Angle?

  Rosa found a packed parking lot and a buzz of activity at the big white shoe box the town called Liberty Hospital. She had plans to do a story about this place one day. It would be a report on the ever-increasing number of gunshot victims, the strain this put on the nurses and doctors, and the resulting long waiting lines in the ER.

  After many minutes of circling the lot, Rosa spied a crying family walking toward an SUV. She cornered the space and pushed her way in before another truck she’d seen could make a play.

  At the front entrance, a pair of automatic doors spat an icy breath, making her cover her arms. She made a beeline for the reception and asked to see Sara Heller.

  “Oh, you’re Rosa Veras, aren’t you?” chirped the middle-aged lady at the desk. “We haven’t seen you in a while.”

  She swallowed hard. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Heller, did you say? Will you be seeing your nephew as well?”

  “Not today.”

  They left it at that. Not wanting anyone else to recognize her, Rosa kept her eyes glued to her tablet all the way to Sara’s room. She found the door ajar and Sharon Heller gabbing about some inane topic — Easter displays? A syrupy man’s voice responded, and Rosa froze. Father James was here. She hadn’t wanted to see the priest. She knew she’d have to talk to him for the story, but she had wanted to do it by telephone so she could quickly end the conversation if things got awkward.

  Gathering her courage, Rosa pushed through the door and stepped inside. She could just make out Sara’s supine hand in the metal-framed hospital bed. Sharon looked at her like an uninvited stranger, but Father James came to her rescue. “Rosie?” he asked with disbelief. “It’s been a long time. Sharon, do you know Rosa Veras?”

  Recognition materialized in Sharon’s eyes. “The reporter from Our Times.”

  Father James continued to beam. “What are you doing here, Rosie?”

  She might be able to stand it if the priest was an old man — the stereotypical minister in black with white hair. But this was Jim, the cute boy from her high school days. He was her first, and they had gone out together until that mortifying moment when he announced his decision to swear off women.

  “I …” She stumbled for the words. “I just wanted to ask Sharon and Sara a few questions about what happened today.”

  Sharon arched her eyebrows and patronizingly intoned, “I didn’t realize you covered this kind of thing.”

  Rosa took the barb with a smile. It was a fair concern. The reporter’s most recent interview with the eighteen-year-old student council president had been about decorations for the prom. “I guess I’m trying to expand. How is she?”

  Sharon turned to her younger sister. “Alive, but she’s not going to be able to talk to you. She’s been sleeping … a lot.”

  Rosa approached the bed. Sara was tucked tightly in a white blanket and hooked to a web of plastic tubes. Her sixteen-year-old face looked chalky. “Do you know what happened?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Especially not to some reporter.”

  So the interview was going to shit before it had even started. Recalling a tactic that she had once seen in a film about investigative journalists, she tried a different approach. “You don’t have to talk about Sara, but I was hoping you could at least tell me more about this bounty hunter who shot Tom Jenkins.”

  Sharon glared. “I didn’t pay him to do it, if that’s what you’re implying. That man is a hero!”

  Rosa scribbled that down in her tablet. “What do you mean?”

  Sharon recounted how she and Sara had been out at the Coyote Tavern, flirting with some local boys, when Tom showed up high on cocaine. Tom and Sara had been on a few dates, so when he saw the other men, he went ballistic. Finally, Sara calmed him down by convincing him to go outside with her to talk.

  “Where was the Wanderer during all this?”

  “He was at the bar, too. I guess he saw the whole fight.”

  After Sara and Tom left, the Wanderer had come over to Sharon. “I was worrying,” she said. “He made a lot of dad jokes to cheer me up.”

  This detail brought a smile to Rosa’s lips. So the gunslinger had a bad sense of humor — he just kept getting more and more interesting. “I’m trying to form a picture of him. Can you tell me what he looked like?”

  “Well, he was pretty old.”

  Rosa wrote that down, but then crossed it out when Sharon added, “Like, even older than you.”

  Father James smiled sympathetically. “I’d say late thirties,” he said. “Maybe early forties.”

  “Old,” stressed Sharon. “But he had kind eyes. I could tell he was good.”

  Sharon said she had talked to him for another ten minutes or so. When Sara still hadn’t returned, the Wanderer had volunteered to go outside and check if everything was all right. Sharon said she heard a gunshot not long after he’d gone.

  “I found the Wanderer holding Sara in an alley … there was blood everywhere. I didn’t know what to do. The Wanderer took my hand and swore he would find Tom and make him pay.”

  *

  She noticed Father James following her out of the hospital room and turned around to face him.

  “You’re quite good at that, you know,” he said. “I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to get that girl to open up, and part of my job is taking confessions.”

  She tried to laugh, but it sounded forced. She still found it a little strange seeing him in the garb of a priest. He was always a good kid growing up, never got into trouble. Overall, he’d seemed normal.

  “Have you spoken with Sheriff Martin yet?” he asked.

  “He’s my next stop.”

  “Be careful, Rosie. I’ve never seen that man so fired up.”

  Ben Martin had been sheriff of Liberty for as long as Rosa could remember. As the laws gently crumbled and his authority ebbed, he had taken to drinking. The liquor made him angry.

  “Jack told me the two of you had to hold him back,” she said.

  Father James sighed. “I know there’s still a good man inside him. But today he wanted blood, Rosie. I could see it in his eyes. I just thought there had been enough of that for one day.”

  She nodded solemnly. “So what do you think about this Wanderer guy?”

  “I don’t know. He shot one of my people. But … well, that’s why I went to see Sara for myself. It’s terrible what happened. Still, I just want to believe there could have been another way to deal with that kid Tom than —”

  “— with a gun. I know.”

  His hazel eyes looked through her. “Are you planning to visit Pablo while you’re here?”

  “I …”

  The ringing cell phone saved her, but Rosa cursed when she saw who it was: Rebecca Song, mana
ging editor of Our Times.

  “Work?” asked Father James.

  “Sorry, I have to take this.” She gave him a short wave good-bye, took a few steps down the hallway, and answered the call.

  “You took a long time to pick up,” came the editor’s nasal-inflected voice.

  “Yeah, sorry, Rebecca, I was in the middle of —”

  “I sent you an e-mail yesterday. You haven’t responded.”

  “I don’t always check my mail on the weekend,” she said, barely concealing her irritation. At the last second, she added, “Sorry I missed it.”

  Rebecca sighed audibly. “Stephen’s not able to cover the Breck Ammo news conference at the gun show. It’s your town this year. You can cover for him, right?”

  Under normal circumstances, Stephen Jones would travel from the Our Times headquarters in Vegas to cover the Breck Ammo news conference. He had the guns beat and wrote breathless reports about new killing machines coming to the market.

  “Yeah,” Rosa replied without enthusiasm. She didn’t want to do it, but a fight with Rebecca was never worth it. She asked when the gun show was happening, receiving a deeply meaningful silence in response. “Oh,” Rosa added quickly, “the Fourth, right?”

  “Yes, Rosa. It’s always on the Fourth.”

  She resisted the temptation to hang up. “Okay. Well, e-mail me the details and …”

  “I sent them yesterday. Okay? Good!”

  The phone beeped as Rebecca hung up. Rosa took a deep breath as she put away the handset.

  She had been dreading the gun show. It was a big carnival designed to sell the latest Breck products to the gun-hungry masses, and it moved from town to town across the west over the length of each summer. The schedule changed each year, but July Fourth was always the most important day on the tour because it was when Breck Ammo announced its latest products. This year, the dubious honor had come to Liberty.

  “Everything all right?”

  It was Father James returning.

  “Uh-huh!” Rosa put on a smile. “I was just going.”

  *

  Rosa found Ben Martin just where she’d thought he’d be — Betsy’s Diner, stuffing his face with pie in a corner booth. There were morsels of crust spread across the table and cherry stains down his shirt, but at least he looked sober. It was a few hours past lunch, so the place was mostly empty. The only waitress she had seen so far was busy smoking and texting outside.

  “Rosie!” exclaimed the sheriff. Crumbs dribbled down his chin as he spoke. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Heard from your old man lately?”

  “Nope.”

  He always asked her that, knowing full well that her dad was in the state prison and who’d put him there. Given the state of the law nowadays, it didn’t seem likely he’d ever get an opportunity to appeal for release. Rosa figured that Martin knew this, too, and maybe that was why he always acted so soft around her. To be honest, she was over being mad at the sheriff for arresting her dad, even if Martin had never managed to overcome his own guilt.

  She sat down across from him in the booth with her back to the wall. “I’m here to talk about what happened today at church.”

  He scowled. “Why?”

  She took out her tablet. “I’m writing an article.”

  Martin idly fingered a yellow Post-it note a few inches from his plate. It looked as though it had been crumpled up and flattened out again. “What’s the angle? I hope you’re not trying to make that vigilante into some kind of hero.”

  “Isn’t he one?”

  “Ha! I looked into that man’s eyes and I tell you they were completely devoid of any soul.” He pointed to her notes. “Write that down.”

  “What Sharon Heller told me was that he saved her sister’s life from a monster and got revenge.”

  Martin scowled. “No man has a right to take the law into his own hands. I tried to stop him, but that damn preacher … you know, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen if there was still adequate law enforcement.”

  “What kind of thing? You mean Tom Jenkins shooting a girl in the stomach?”

  Ben Martin grinned broadly so that Rosa could see the red mash between his teeth. “You know I meant that goddamned Wanderer. It’s people like him destroying America. Those among us who still remember the law need to stand up before this country sinks into even deeper shit.”

  Rosa smiled slightly as she jotted this latest gem into her notes. Could she print profanity? Well, it was her blog, wasn’t it? When she looked up again, the end of Ben Martin’s shotgun was inches from her face. The world blurred around the dark double-barrel, and she could feel her heart pounding.

  “On the wall behind you,” he whispered, “there’s a roach. Quietly … slide out of the booth …” He kept the Pilgrim trained on the armored brown insect while she scooted out of her seat. “Lawlessness like that? It’s got to be exterminated.”

  When Rosa was out of the way, she realized how angry she was. She took a napkin from another table, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it at the cockroach. The bug scurried safely behind the red seat.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he yelled.

  “Thanks for your time, Sheriff,” she said, spitting out the policeman’s title sarcastically. The bells on the door jingled violently as she slammed it closed behind her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Not that Nice a Train, Darling.

  Saguaro cacti danced across the copper landscape, arms raised in celebration of the great fireball descending into the mountains. The last rays of sunlight shone through the scratched train window and into the Wanderer’s lonesome gaze. He was sitting by himself on the right side of the car. There was a worn denim knapsack on the aisle seat containing all his belongings. All the ones he needed anyway.

  For the first few hours of the journey, he had tried not to think about Jenkins and Sara Heller, but now the bloody affair consumed his mind. Jenkins was just a piglet, and the Wanderer did feel a bit sorry about that. But young or old, he’d tried to kill an innocent girl. The Wanderer reckoned that when Jenkins shot Sara Heller in the stomach, he gave up his right to live. Well, he lived no more.

  Riding the rails suited the Wanderer. Out west, the towns and cities were pretty well spread out and the trains took their sweet old time. It took hours to get from place to place. That was fine by him. He liked that feeling of knowing he was moving but not having to think too much about where he was going.

  There were more passenger lines than there used to be, but they still shared the tracks with freighters, so it was slow going. The passenger trains had made a comeback in large part because the highways had become so dangerous. For one thing, the highways were covered with trash and roadkill, and no one ever seemed to repair potholes anymore. But the bigger problem was the Red Stripe Gang. The outlaws patrolled those roads on their motorcycles, and they seemed to have a passion for causing trouble.

  “Coo-ool!” came a small voice from his left.

  Turning from the window, he saw a boy gaping across the aisle at the Wanderer’s silver revolver. The Lassiter was held securely in the leather holster on his left hip. The child appeared to be about ten years old.

  “What are you staring at?” the Wanderer asked. He said it like a cowboy from the movies — tough but playful.

  The boy looked him square in the eyes. “What are you staring at?”

  They locked eyes for many seconds. Then the Wanderer faked a tackle and the boy jumped back with laughter. He fell into his snoozing mother, who awoke briefly to mutter, “Please, Andy, just let me … a little longer …”

  When both man and boy were sure she had fallen back asleep, the Wanderer chuckled and pointed to his six-shooter. “Want a closer look?”

  The gunman moved his knapsack off the seat next to him so Andy could sit closer. He lifted the revolver from the holster with the twirl of a showman and held it out with the smooth ebony grip facing the boy. She was his good gun and she was a beaut. Just the ri
ght weight and her aim was true.

  The boy moved his hand forward, but the Wanderer pulled the weapon away.

  “You can look, but don’t touch. Dangerous.”

  Andy dropped his hands back down to his sides, and the Wanderer brought the Lassiter back for him to admire further.

  “Have you shot anyone?” the boy asked excitedly.

  “Yes.”

  Andy shrunk back. “But they were all bad guys?”

  The Wanderer blinked. In the split-second of black, he saw the bad gun, his Breck 17, fire at a figure standing in the dark. The air smelled like gunpowder and leftover lasagna. “This one,” he answered, pointing at the Lassiter, “has only vanquished evil.”

  “What’s that say?” asked Andy, pointing at the initials engraved in script on the handle. “E … B?”

  “That’s …” The Wanderer eyed the letters carefully. “That’s the brand.”

  Something outside the window distracted the boy. The gunman turned and saw that the scenery had turned residential.

  Andy asked, “What’s this town?”

  The Wanderer turned and spat. “It don’t matter no more. See that flag on top of town hall?”

  He pointed to a building towering over the rest. On top of a dome that looked burned and partially caved in was a long steel pole and a banner with thirteen red-and-white stripes, but no stars. “That means it’s a Red Stripe town. The Gang runs it.”

  Andy watched out the window with fear in his eyes. “Is everybody who lives there bad?”

  “No, not everybody.”

  He looked confused. “Why would you live there if you were good?”

  The Wanderer liked this kid. Everything in black-and-white. “Sometimes, it’s not so easy to leave.”

  The boy appeared to concentrate real hard, as if trying to get his mind around a new concept. When the train stopped and opened its doors, the smell of smoke rushed in from the Red Stripe town. The boy looked worriedly at his sleeping mother. “I … I better go sit with her, just in case.”