The Winter Family

by Clifford Jackman

  “I don’t know,” Bill said.

  “Anyway,” Matt said. “I didn’t kill Lukas because I didn’t want to live like him. I did it for Austin. He wasn’t going to make it and I had to choose. I could go with Lukas, and Austin would die, or I could kill Lukas, and Austin would live. So I chose.”

  “Well,” Bill said. “I chose too.”

  Matt sucked on the cigarette and then said, “After all this time? I’m skeptical, Bill.”

  “Then be skeptical,” Bill said. “You’ll see how they feel about me when they get here. They’re going to answer all your questions for you.”

  “Hmm,” Matt said, as he stubbed out his cigarette. “We’ll see.”

  “You should have brought more men,” Bill said.

  “He’s just a man,” Matt said.

  “Yeah,” Bill said. “That’s all.”

  93

  The forest snaked north of town for miles. Sometimes it was so thin it was no more than a light veil between great white fields. Still it was there, long and unbroken, and it was through this bridge of darkness that the Winter Family came upon the town.

  They stayed off the roads and so it took them five days and they had little to eat and drink. The snow was deep and their horses were exhausted and their legs were cut from the crust of ice on the top of the snow. When they finally came out of the forest up onto the road they looked like what they were: a bunch of middle-aged men who would soon be dead.

  The Winter Family was, at that time, twenty-seven years old. It had ranged in size from five men to thirty and they had committed every abominable crime under the sun. But their world had steadily shrunk. All of that free land, untamed and wild, that had taken them in every time and hidden them and made them whole. It had melted away, leaving them to the mercy of their many enemies, exhausted and exposed and old. Until it came to this.

  It was a clear day, very cold, and the sun was in the middle of the sky to the south. The five horses stood dully in the road. The men checked their weapons one by one.

  “Well, boys,” Quentin said, “once more unto the breach.”

  Johnson was crouched up over his horse’s neck, almost doubled with pain. He didn’t make a sound but it was clear his shoulder was hurting him badly. It had been difficult for him to sleep and he was moving slowly.

  Every now and then one of them would be racked with a cough.

  Winter leaned back in his saddle, comfortable and clear-eyed. In his hand was Noah Ross’s pocket watch, which he had unearthed a few miles back, where he had buried it two years ago when he had left Time behind with all the other trappings of civilization. He remembered Noah’s final words. He remembered the warning Captain Jackson had shouted at him on the slopes of the San Tan Mountain. And he watched the second hand move. All that movement just to go round and round. Never actually getting anywhere. Till it wound down and stopped. There was a lesson in it, but whether it was for him, O’Shea, or Bill, he couldn’t say. Nor did he care. Parables had always been his father’s specialty. He was long past them. The watch tumbled out of his fingers and vanished in the snow.

  “Let’s go get Bill,” he said.

  The Empire brothers whooped and spurred their horses to life. Winter’s horse jumped to follow. Johnson came next and Quentin brought up the rear, not holding his reins. His rifle was out and he was steering with his knees.

  A sentry sat on his horse in the middle of the road. When he saw the five of them galloping toward him at first he couldn’t believe it. O’Shea’s men were all over the roads and he didn’t see how the Family could be here without anyone knowing. He scrambled trying to get the trumpet out of his saddlebag. They were coming so fast. So fast.

  Charlie was ahead now, he was the better rider, and he had drawn his pistol, his thumb was on the hammer, and he was closing his left eye to aim. He fired and the bullet hit the sentry, who fell off of his horse.

  They came into the town.

  “Yeehaw!” Charlie said, leaning back in the saddle and drawing his other pistol.

  “Fuck you all, fuck all y’all!” Johnny screamed, drawing his two pistols as well.

  Quentin hunched forward and put his rifle to his shoulder and drew a bead on a man standing on the boards in front of the bank in the cold winter sunshine. Pulled the trigger and dropped the man from a hundred feet.

  Winter rode in the middle of his men. He had not yet drawn a weapon.

  A rush of people came out into the street, and suddenly the Winter Family was outnumbered. The mob was not shooting very well because they were afraid, taking shelter behind barrels and posts and windowsills, but the road quickly turned into a death trap.

  “Shit!” Johnny cried, spurring his horse to the side of the road while firing both his pistols. The townspeople scattered. One dropped dead. Johnny dismounted to take cover behind the corner of the inn.

  Someone was blowing a trumpet now.

  Johnson was following Johnny when his horse was shot and he dropped down in the road. His rifle skittered away and then out of nowhere someone was right up on him, an ordinary-looking man who ran up from between two buildings with a pistol in his hand. Johnson rolled onto his back and produced the shotgun, now sawed off, and gave the man one barrel in the chest. But Johnson had been holding the shotgun in one hand, like a pistol, and the recoil broke his wrist.

  “Fuck!” he cried.

  Then they were on him, four men, two of them almost boys, firing their guns again and again, bangs and little puffs of smoke, and holes kept appearing in his body, one after another, until he was crawling in the icy mud, going nowhere in particular. Then one hit him in the head and he stopped.

  Quentin fired his rifle and pumped the lever and fired again. He hit two of the men around Johnson. One of them managed to get up and run halfway to cover before Quentin shot him again. Then a bullet whined by and punched a hole in Quentin’s hat, and he ducked down and kicked his horse into the alley between the dry goods store and the bank on the right side of the street.

  Charlie was on his feet now too, a pistol smoking in each hand, and he ran to where his brother was leaning against the wall of the inn.

  “They’re in here,” Johnny said. “I think most of them are in here.”

  “You hurt?” Charlie asked.

  “Naw. What’s the boss doing?”

  Winter remained alone in the middle of the street. He saw something to the west and turned his horse by grabbing the reins with his left hand. At the same time he drew his pistol from his holster with his right hand and shot.

  “I do believe he’s found Mister Bread,” Charlie said.

  A man leaned around the corner of the building and fired a shot and hit Charlie in the face. Johnny raised his gun and fired back while his brother screamed and bled.

  Winter had seen Bread standing on the stoop of his little house with his Winchester rifle in his hands. By the time Bill had lifted it to his shoulder Winter had already drawn, fired, and hit. Bill’s hand broke open and the wooden butt of his rifle splintered. Then Winter spurred his horse and he was on top of him.

  Bill tried to turn and run back in the house but Winter jumped off his horse and landed on Bill’s back, knocking him to the ground.

  “No! No, Winter, don’t!”

  Winter put one boot on Bill’s neck and stood up. Two men were riding at him from the west, and the mob was coming from the crossroads. Winter raised his gun and squinted to aim and then he started banging the hammer of his pistol and pulling the trigger. The two men on horseback dropped out of their saddles and their horses came to skidding stops. He only got one of the men to the east but the mob broke.

  Bill reached up with his left hand, the one that hadn’t been shot, trying to grab Winter’s testicles. Winter caught Bill’s wrist and twisted the arm so that his elbow was facing up. Then he put his leg over Bill’s arm and sat down on Bill’s elbow.

  “No, Auggie, no, ahh!”

  Bill screamed as the arm broke.

  Back at t
he inn, Johnny went around the corner with a pistol in each hand. He kicked the door open and started shooting, using his thumbs to cock the hammers again and again. Seven men were inside. Bullets hummed and zipped through the air. Johnny was screaming. He got hit quite a few times and then he fell down to one side. He kept shooting as well as he could, calmly aiming one gun and shooting and then aiming the other and shooting it too. From his position in the corner of the room he managed to kill four and send the other three scrambling out the door, shooting over their shoulders blind and wild and afraid.

  “Fuck all y’all!”

  Outside Charlie was kneeling in the mud, touching his face. It felt foreign to him, numb and strange and gushing with blood. Teeth and a chunk of lip came away in his hands. He tried to stop the bleeding by tying his handkerchief around his chin.

  On the other side of the street Quentin was grinning and jamming more rounds into his Winchester. Looking left and right and humming, thinking that they would consecrate this ground far above O’Shea’s poor power to add or detract.

  When Quentin was finished he jogged slowly between the two buildings, away from the main street, until he came out into a field. Two riders were approaching from the west. Quentin fell to one knee and fired a shot. The first rider tumbled out of his saddle.

  Out of pure dumb luck, Quentin had shot one of O’Shea’s hands instead of Matt Shakespeare.

  While Quentin was pumping the lever of his rifle, Matt saw him, drew a pistol, and fired. The bullet caught Quentin right between the eyes and knocked him onto his back. He died instantly. The expression on his face was not surprised or dismayed or frightened or anything like that. He never heard the shot and never knew he was dead.

  Matt rode on without stopping, shaking his head, his hands trembling only a little.

  Not far away, Winter took a parcel from his horse and then kicked it so it ran off. He grabbed Bill by the hair and dragged him into the house. Since one of Bill’s arms was broken at the elbow and the other had a bullet through the hand, he didn’t put up much of a fight, just screamed and screamed.

  “Are you different, Bill? Did you turn into one of them?”

  “Don’t do it, Winter, don’t do it. Please don’t do it.”

  Charlie had joined Johnny inside the inn. He was still trying to patch his face up with rags. The townsfolk were coming at the inn from all directions now. Charlie fired his pistols through a window and they scattered, but he knew they would be back.

  “I’m hurt bad, Charlie,” Johnny shouted. “They got me! It hurts real bad!”

  “We gotta go, Johnny,” Charlie grunted through his ruined mouth. “Get your ass out here.”

  Inside Bill’s house, Winter dragged Bill into the kitchen and threw him into the bathtub.

  “Don’t, Winter! Don’t do it!”

  Winter was still holding Bill up by the hair and now he scalped him. Pulled so hard the skin on the top of Bill’s head jumped up and then he peeled it right off. Bill screamed and then the muscles of his face relaxed like an old burlap sack, down in the corners of the mouth and the cheeks, and then the blood rushed into his eyes. Blood everywhere.

  Winter threw him back in the tub and then shot him through both knees. One and then the other. Bony explosions, little echoes in the tub.

  “Ahhh! Ah ha ha ha! Ahhhh! Stop! Stop it! Stop it!”

  The gun was empty and Winter smashed it into Bill’s face again and again. His own face was twisted with rage, insane and boundless. Winter was crying.

  “Fuck you, Bill! Fuck you!”

  “I didn’t, I didn’t do it! I didn’t! Stop it.”

  Winter leaned back, splattered with blood and breathing hard, and closed his eyes.

  Charlie and Johnny staggered out into the street, leaning on each other, both holding a gun. Shots came from every direction. The brothers moved quickly, even though they were limping and panting and squirting blood into the frozen mud of the streets.

  “Which house is he in?” Johnny panted. “Which one?”

  They got to the crossroads. A full posse coming from the west and another from the south. Meanwhile, there was another group in the north, some of whom were circling around to the east.

  “Shit,” Johnny said. “Fuck, Charlie! They got us!”

  Charlie made a grunting noise and pulled his brother toward Bill’s house, firing their pistols at the riders coming toward them.

  Inside the house, Winter was stabbing Bill. Bill had stopped screaming and was only making little surprised noises and trying to get his hands in the way of the knife. Winter stopped stabbing and stood up and threw the knife away. They were both covered in blood.

  “I’m sorry, Bill,” Winter said. “I fucked everything up.”

  Winter swayed a little on his feet as if he were drunk and then he started to take off his clothes.

  “It’s the end of everything.”

  One layer of blood-soaked clothes and then another. Winter stood naked.

  “Did you change, Bill? Did you change really?”

  Winter wiped the blood off of his face and hands and arms as best he could. Some of it was coming off; some of it was just rubbing into his skin, making him look vaguely pink.

  The Empire brothers burst in through the front door and slammed it shut behind them.

  “Boss!” Johnny called. “We’re surrounded, boss!”

  Winter glanced at them and then shut the door to the kitchen.

  “Auggie!” Johnny shouted. Gunfire began to slam into the walls of the house.

  Winter opened the bundle he had brought with him and produced a straight razor with which he began to shave off his long beard.

  “I looked at the world, and it was cruel, and I thought that God made it in his image and I thought if I was like Him then God would love me.”

  Outside O’Shea and Shakespeare were hidden safely behind the fence to the Methodist church.

  “How the hell did they get the drop on us?” Matt said. “Do you have any idea how many are dead? It must be over twenty. Good lord. They even almost got me. I do believe poor old Bread was right about these folks. They’re in a whole separate category.”

  “Is Winter in there?” O’Shea said hoarsely. “Are we sure?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  “Burn it down!” O’Shea said. “Just burn it down!”

  “Bread is still in there,” Matt said.

  “He is dead. He is dead meat!” O’Shea sounded hysterical. “We have to burn it down!”

  Inside Winter was hacking through his fine white beard.

  “Do you know why they came after me?” Winter said. “It ain’t about what’s right, or they wouldn’t have killed all the Indians. And it ain’t about defending themselves, because I wasn’t hurting no one. It ain’t about costs and benefits either. They knew if I got loose what I’d do to them was worse than anything they’d get out of killing me. So it’s justice. But then what’s justice? It’s men forcing themselves on the world. You see? I couldn’t break the rules and escape. For their rules to be real they have to spread over every inch of the earth. There can’t ever be one free space.”

  The Empire brothers were shooting out the windows.

  “Auggie!” Johnny shouted. “We’re bleeding pretty bad.”

  “In order for it to exist it cannot tolerate anything else. You can’t be able to step outside of it. It has to be everywhere or else it will die. I thought I was like God, and I guess I was, compared to a civilized man. But I made a mistake. I looked at a civilized man on his own. You can only understand a civilized man as a part of something bigger. They make something when they’re all taken together. You take a bunch of nice, civilized men, and put them all together, and you end up with something a lot like you and me. Just meaner. I ain’t nothing like this thing they’ve got now. I never let up for a moment in my life but it wasn’t enough. I’m just a man.”

  Bill shifted a little in the tub. He opened his mouth and blood came out.

&n
bsp; Now Winter dressed quickly.

  “People don’t even really make this thing; it’s this thing that makes people. It’s as natural as a dream. It’s meaner than me, Bill. And it’s never going to die.”

  Winter was dressed. He looked at Bill in the tub.

  “Be seeing you,” he said, opening the door to the front room and walking out.

  Johnny and Charlie were crouched down against opposite walls. When Johnny saw Winter, he smiled.

  “Dandy!” Johnny cried. “Dandy man!”

  Winter was clean shaven and his long hair was smoothed back on top of his head. He wore a suit with a string tie and leather boots. If he hadn’t been missing his ears he would have looked exactly as he had done ten years ago when he had terrorized the west as the Dandy Killer.

  Winter held up the pistol and looked at the front door.

  “Okay,” he said.

  In the tub Bill felt a pleasant warmth move through his body, despite the occasional bolt of pain. He shifted a very little from side to side. Small movements. Gentle. He leaned his head back and looked at the crucifix on the wall, and he was hit with a heavy, almost physical feeling of pity for Augustus Winter.

  After Bill’s house burned down to the embers, and after the embers cooled, Matt Shakespeare strode carefully through the ashes, poking in front of him with the barrel of his rifle to check for traps and holes. Nothing remained of the Winter Family except for a few fragments of bone, charred into formless nubs. And still less remained of the life Bill had tried to build in the past two years. Not a splinter or stitch survived.

  Matt Shakespeare kicked the ashes off his feet and rode off, and the people in O’Shea’s town were left to grieve and bury their dead, their only consolation that the long and dark and murderous career of the Winter Family had finally been brought to an end, its memory fading like charnel smoke, its last chapter written, except of course for this.