Gabe

Mulligan, bloodied and stumbling, wide-eyed but grinning, had scrambled away the second the first shot was fired. Gabe had released him.

The crowd that had gathered to watch and titter had fallen silent and stumbled back, as if pushed by some invisible, expanding circle. Like they could somehow feel the power of his lunacy as he pressed the heel of his hand hard into the torn flesh of her shoulder.

"You'll be okay," he promised, believing his own lies in spite of the steady ooze of blood pushing its way between his fingers and soaking the bodice of her dress. From past experience, he knew that fresh blood had an eerie warmth to it, but her blood wasn't warm. It was hot. It burned his hand where he struggled to staunch the flow, and his leg where her own was pressed against it. The wound in her leg was worse, blood spurting as if in time with the pulse of her heart. "You'll be alright, ma. Take a deep breath for me okay?"

She didn't listen. Didn't seem to hear him at all. Her eyes were glazed and faraway, and she had a dreamy smile on her face that he tried to match. He didn't want her to be afraid. If she was afraid, her heart would pump faster and more blood would seep out to burn him wherever he touched her.

"Ma, please," he said as she panted, her chest jerking and blood painting her teeth and misted the air. She coughed and he felt it splatter against his face. "Please, just breathe," he urged, but it was finally sinking in that there were no words he could say to keep her with him. He could lean all of his weight into those bullet wounds and they could continue to bleed.

"It's okay," he said, holding her closer and fighting to inject some warmth into his tone even as his whole body seemed to ice over. If he moved, he would crack apart. "Everything's going to be okay, ma. I love you. I'll take care of the girls. I'll take care of everything. I promise. Everything is going to be okay."

The loopy, lopsided smile on her face grew wider, made haunting by the blood that coated her teeth. Her back arched and she took three panting, ragged breaths and then collapsed into listlessness. Her eyes seemed to shift focus, looking beyond him to the sky, and beyond the sky to whatever secret the stars kept, well out of reach of those who walked the earth. It made so little sense that, as her spirit left her, her body grew so much heavier.

The crowd had vanished, his mother was dead, and Gabe sat alone against the front wall of the lawyer's office, with melted snow soaking into the seat of his pants and blood trickling and itching down the side of his face. The body in his arms was still and heavy. She wasn't a large woman. Whoever sired him must have been hulking, because his mother barely came to his shoulder. She was short and slight, and her deadweight was unbearably heavy. He stared down at her face, her head propped against the crook of his arm. A small trickle of blood had oozed from the corner of her open mouth, and her cheek was scraped, the abrasion bright red against the stark gray background of her skin. Her eyes were open and staring somewhere beyond the faded blue sky.

Nobody ran to fetch the sheriff, and the men who had attacked them had slunk away. Movement caught his eye, and he raised his head to see a head poke out from the cobbler's door across the street. The man's eyes widened and he disappeared, the door pulling shut with a heavy thud.

The street was deserted—empty as if it was midnight and not just past noon.

His hand shook as he lifted it from where he'd had it pressed against the bleeding hole in her shoulder. He wiped his palm on his sodden pantleg and hesitated, his hand hovering over her face, before he closed her eyes.

Good.

That was better.

Now it looked like she was sleeping.

He knew he ought to hurt, but he felt nothing but a hollow, echoing emptiness as he held the body still and shifted onto his knees. The arms and head flopped limply as he lifted it into his arms and found his feet. He looked around. Reaper was gone, but his mother's horse stood between the barber and the post office. He blinked, swaying beneath the weight of the body and the dizzying thickness of his own shock.

His feet carried him to the horse, and he wondered how it was possible that the weight in his arms didn't drive his boots so deep into the muck it closed over his head and buried him. The horse was nervous and twitchy, and it took him two tries to heft his burden over the saddle. The body was limp and ungainly, and when he stepped away it draped in undignified fashion, facedown over the polished leather. Blood stained the skirts around the left leg and dripped off the toe of the left boot.

Taking the lead, he wrapped the rope around his hand and started off down the street. He kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, but still saw movement in the periphery. Fluttering curtains as he walked by houses. Nervous whispering as he walked by shops. Doors opening, heads appearing, heads disappearing, doors closing.

He reached the road that branched off to the saloon and turned, counting the paces in his head. When he reached two hundred paces, and the intersection had disappeared behind a bend at his back, he left the horse and its burden standing in the road and walked another ten paces, toward the woods. Then he bent, braced his hands on his knees, and vomited into the snow. He heaved until his stomach cramped, and then he straightened. He walked back to the horse, took the lead, and resumed the long walk home.

* * *

Back at the saloon, smoke curled from three chimneys in peaceful spirals, and Reaper was waiting near the woodline behind the stables, tail swishing, nose punched through the snow as he grazed for hidden grass. He should be grateful that his prized possession hadn't disappeared, but feelings of any kind felt far away and untouchable.

Gabe detoured to recapture his horse and led both animals into the stables. He left them there, in stalls but still saddled, their bags heavy with canned goods and flour and bolts of satin and perfume and soap. The body came with him, once more a lead weight in his arms. It was so heavy, but his muscles didn't burn. He couldn't feel a thing except the weight. The pressure.

The stairs to the front porch creaked as he climbed them. The broad double doors would be locked, so he didn't bother shifting his burden and trying to open it. He used the toe of his boot and pounded three times against the heavy wood. The doors were heavy, oak monstrosities. She'd had them special made, ordered from out east somewhere. She wanted something imposing and dignified, but he thought the doors were beautiful. They were finely finished, and glinted different colors depending on the angle of the sun.

Today, the doors were dull brown. He fixed his eyes on the knot just to the left of the seam, but he caught the curtain shift in the corner of his right eye. The curtain fell back into place, and running footsteps sounded behind the door. It swung open.

Caroline didn't speak as she stepped aside to let him enter. There were several other girls, lounging about in the more comfortable chairs, or sitting at tables enjoying plates of eggs and pancakes. When Caroline shut the door behind him, a brief moment of silence fell across the room. Two girls stumbled forward as if to help, until the undeniable deadness of the body seemed to fall over them all. Nobody breathed.

Then there was a gasp.

A cry.

Penny dropped her fork, shoved to her feet, and took two staggering steps forward, her hand going over her mouth.

Chrissy stepped out from behind the bar and fainted dead away. Someone caught her. Gabe didn't see who it was. Didn't care.

He felt them behind him as he walked toward the stairs and climbed. Surely, the weight would break the stairs. He'd crash through them, fall through the foundation, and the earth would swallow him.

The stairs held up.

Caroline rushed by him in the hallway and pushed open the door to his mother's room. A waft of rosewater and clean linen hit him as he stepped over the threshold. It burned his nose, his eyes, and his throat. It choked him.

He set the body on the bed, cradling the lolling head in his hand until it rested on the pillow. Then he straightened and turned. Caroline stood in front of him, her kind eyes wide and watery.

"Gabe—"

He shifted his gaze over her head, unable to look at her. The top left corner of the door frame had a chip in it, where the dark varnish was carved away to reveal the clean beige of cheap pine beneath.

"If you could, uh..." his voice sounded strange in his ears. Dull and hollow and toneless, like the twanging cords of a music box. He lowered his gaze to Caroline's. "Can you change her clothes?"

"Gabe, what—"

"Her clothes are bloody."

"I know..." Caro choked on her words. He felt her begin to crumple, and then she glanced over her shoulder at the girls gathered just beyond the doorway. Their faces were drawn and pale, every set of eyes wide and afraid. Caroline turned back around, and her voice was strong and steely. "Gabe, what happened?"

"She'd want something pretty," he said, lowering his gaze from the doorframe to meet Caroline's glistening eyes. "She likes the blue dress."

"Okay." She nodded slowly, understanding melting the shocked horror on her face into sympathy. He pushed by her. The throng in the doorway parted like the Red Seas, and like a bloodstained Moses he strode through the opening. Down the stairs. Through the empty barroom. He left the sounds of sobs behind him as he stepped out onto the front porch and pulled the heavy door shut behind him.

In the stables, he pulled the saddles off the horse, brushed them both down, fed them, and watered them. Then he retrieved a shovel from the line of tools he kept against the back wall and went out, around the stables, to the clearing behind the saloon. In the summer, the grassy yard served as an extension of the barroom. In the winter, it was cold and empty. A lonely white expanse. It took him five minutes just to clear the snow away. Then he began to dig.

The ground was hard and stubborn, and it wasn't long before his body was drenched in sweat beneath his coat. He pulled his jacket off, and then the thick flannel shirt he wore beneath it, dropping them into the snow at his side. Cold air snatched at the thin cotton shirt left behind, whipping it against his skin. He retrieved the shovel and kept digging.

Caroline came, crunching through the melting snow as the sun began to sink toward the treetops in the west.

"She's ready," she said quietly, hugging herself.

He nodded.

"We cleaned her up. She looks beautiful. Just like she's sleeping."

He bent and drove the pointed end of the shovel into the hard earth. He felt the impact in his teeth. He tossed the shovel of dirt onto the growing mound beside him.

"Do you want to come sit with her for a while? Some of the girls and I can work on this."

He shook his head, and after a few weighted breaths she left, trailing wisps of defeat.

He dug until the earth grew too hard with frost to break with the shovel and his hands were torn and bleeding. Then he went back to the stables, fetched a pickaxe, and returned. The hole was three feet deep already, and his knees wobbled as he dropped down into it, axe in hand. Over and over, he drove the pointed end of the tool into the earth, breaking it into pieces. Then he retrieved the shovel and cleaned out the detritus. Then back to the pickaxe. Then the shovel. Then the pickaxe. Back and forth until the handles of both were tacky and stained red.

A bright orange sunset slanted rays through the dark trees, blinding him, so he turned his back and dug facing the east. His own shadow grew longer, and longer, and then disappeared. The temperature dropped and his muscles trembled, but his blood was hot in his veins.

Caroline returned-- a dark shape, hovering in silhouette above him. The hole was deep now. He was up to his chest.

"You need to come in and eat something," she said.

He ignored her, setting the pickaxe on the ground by her feet and retrieving the shovel from the other side. He bent, shoveling by feel in the darkness.

"You can finish this in the morning."

"No." His mouth was papery dry, and the word felt like sand in his throat.

"Gabe—"

"I won't let her rot."

He heard her breath hitch and one of her knees pop as she crouched down to bring herself closer.

"It's only one night. She won't... she won't, Gabe. It's only one night. You can finish in the morning. Or I can go get a couple of the girls and we can finish."

She waited for a long time. Caroline was nothing if not patient. But eventually the cold and his silence won out and she left him alone.

A thin crescent moon had replaced the sun overhead when the hole grew so deep he could no longer see over the edge. He tossed the shovel up, then the pickaxe. With stiff fingers, he grasped at the edge to pull himself up. His grip slipped, a clump of dirt crumbling in his hand, and he fell back into the inky darkness. His legs buckled and his knees hit the packed dirt. A feral, ugly sound fought its way up into his aching throat and he slammed a fist into the pitted wall of the hole.

No, not a hole.

A grave.

Again, he drew back and hit the dirt. And again. Teeth clenched against each impact, choking on the pathetic sounds that were scrabbling up his throat, he beat at the walls of the grave until blood glistened in the starlight and dripped thickly over the back of his hand. Until those pitiful sounds had surrendered and slunk back down into the core of him.

His whole body shook as he stood. Again, he reached for the top of the grave and hooked his fingers over the edge. This time, when he hefted himself up, the dirt didn't crumble. He sat at the edge of the grave for a long moment, legs hanging over the edge, and studied the sky.

When he and Katherine were kids, she used to talk about Heaven all the goddamned time. It drove him crazy. She was obsessed with it. Her father told her it was up in the clouds, and full of angels and singing. Katherine didn't like that, and neither did Gabe. It sounded boring. Too boring for someone like Katherine, who liked to run in the woods. Too boring for someone like his mother, who loved the busy, dangerous bustle of a crowded barroom.

The stars seemed to wheel overhead, and he dropped onto his back into the snow. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep, but someone must have been watching him from the windows because crunching footsteps approached and Caro appeared above him.

"Are you okay?" she asked, crouching beside him, and he sat up but couldn't find the words to answer her. She sighed and followed as he climbed slowly to his feet and began walking back to the saloon.

Around the stables, through the front yard, across the porch. Through the double doors, across the barroom floor, and up the stairs. He listened to his own footsteps, pounding off-rhythm with the thump of his heart.

The girls all huddled in the hallway. Some heads jerked up as he approached, as if they had been sleeping, but most were wide awake, their faces splotchy with tears and fear. A few gasped when they saw him. Chrissy, apparently recovered from her fainting spell, shot to her feet.

"Are you alright?" she asked, her eyes raking over him, and he looked down. His shirt was stained with blood, and his hands were torn apart and coated with it. He felt the itch of it, dry and crackling down the side of his face.

He pushed past Chrissy and walked back into that room that smelled like rosewater and home. The body lay in peaceful repose on the bed. They'd dressed it in the blue dress like he'd asked. Pale hands were folded gracefully, and the hair was brushed and curled and shiny. There was no trace of blood. Somewhere beneath the pale veneer, there would be a bruise. A scrape. The yellow-gray tinge of death. But they had covered it all up, and Caroline was right.

She was beautiful.

"Do you want to sit with her?" Caroline asked, coming up beside him. "Alone? We've all taken turns. You can have as long as you need."

He turned away from her and went to the chest of drawers beside the door. They'd moved around a lot when he was young, before they came here to settle. Different rooms in different brothels. Sometimes whole apartments to themselves. Once a small house. Wherever they went, it was always home because the little things were the same.

The surface of the armoire was always covered in the same assortment of knick-knacks and perfumes and lotions and soaps. The hand towel above the basin was always pink. Her robe always hung on a nail by the door. Everything—the blankets, the towels, her dresses—always smelled like roses. His clothing was always in the top drawer, hers in the middle two, and linens were always in the bottom drawer.

He was grown, and his clothing was no longer in the top drawer, but the linens were still in the bottom. The wood creaked and groaned as he pulled it open and removed a clean white sheet.

Caroline placed the sheet on the bed as he lifted the body. It had begun to stiffen, the arms and legs no longer flopping limply. Something flitted at the edges of his awareness, like fluttering curtains in the periphery of his vision. Something like pain. He turned his attention away from it and lowered the body back atop the sheet.

He wrapped the sheet tightly around the body, hiding the blue dress and the folded hands. He paused as he reached to pull the white cotton over the peaceful, resting face. The flitting thing just beyond his attention prodded at him. He closed his eyes, hiding from the teasing pain and refusing to consider that he would never see her face again. Eyes still closed, he pulled the sheet over her head.

The funeral procession was a sad, shuffling, sniffling train behind him as he carried the stiff, sheet-wrapped body through the hallway and down the stairs. Across the barroom and through the broad oak doors. Around the stables and through the starlit darkness of the clearing toward the yawning, black hole that awaited them all.

His knees almost buckled again when he slid down into the grave with the weight of absence in his arms. Sinking to one knee, slow and purposeful, he placed the body into the cold, hard cradle of the earth. He didn't say goodbye, and his eyes were dry. So dry they burned in the cold air.

The girls, bundled in coats and scarves, their hair hidden beneath wool caps, gathered in a circle around the grave. He boosted himself out of the grave and they squeezed together to make a hole for him. They all watched him, and he felt their anticipation. Like they drew in a collective breath and then held it together, waiting for him to speak. He wanted to climb back into the grave.

"Does anyone want to say a few words?" Caroline asked from across the grave.

Maybe they had planned it out while he was digging, or maybe it happened naturally. Each girl spoke, and each girl told a variation of the same story: where they were when Vivian found them. The choice she gave them. The happiness they had found, and the safety. Her strength, her kindness, her humor. Their gratitude, their hope, their sorrow.

Caroline went last.

"My story isn't special," she said, a lone tear tracking down her cheek, reflecting starlight in the darkness. "When she found me I was working for a man who took ninety-nine cents on every dollar I earned, and beat me senseless when I asked for more. I was hungry and sick, and my body belonged solely to the men who used me."

She took a deep, shuddering breath and sank to her knees at the edge of the grave, speaking down into the darkness.

"You gave me something for which I could be proud. You gave me a place where I could exist for myself. You gave me the choice to pour drinks instead of spreading my legs, and taught me the skills to be something more than what the world had made me." She broke off, her voice cracking into a breathy sob. Penny sank down and put an arm around her shoulders. Clearing her throat, Caroline nodded resolutely, and raised her face to look around the circle of women who stood above her.

"She pulled us out of hell," she told them all. "Each and every one of us. She gave us back to ourselves, and she taught us how to exist. How to choose. We are burying the kindest, strongest woman most of us will ever know. But we are not burying what she gave us. Right?"

Murmurs of ascent, and a few gasping sobs. Caroline looked back down into the yawning maw of the grave.

"Thank you," she said.

Then Penny. "Thank you."

Chrissy. "Thank you."

Back around the circle, once more passing over him, breaking around him like running water slipping around a rock. All the way back to Caroline, who bent and picked up the shovel from where he'd left it in the snow. With shining eyes, she extended it to him. His hands were numb and stiff, and he had to work to wrap them around the bloodied handle.

Holding his breath, he scooped a shovel full of dirt from the pile behind him and let it fall onto the ghostly white outline leering up from the darkness. He passed the shovel off. One by one, shovel full by shovel full, they covered the body with a thin layer of dirt, until all that was left were specks of white amidst the black. Then, one by one, they fell away as he finished filling in the hole. Caroline was the last to go. She stood across the grave from where he worked, hugging her coat tight over her chest.

"It's cold," he mumbled, when she showed no signs of leaving. "Go in."

"I don't think she'd want me to leave you out here alone, Gabe," she replied softly.

That pain again, licking at the edges of the fog. The edges of the numbness curled and shriveled as if burned, and a shaft of agony shot through him. He swallowed it and shook his head.

"I'm good."

He felt her momentum shift. "If you want to be alone..." she said, trailing off as she shifted her feet, preparing to leave. He caught her with a word as she took her first step back toward home.

"Caro."

She turned.

"Thank you."

"For what?"

He waved his hand vaguely toward the building behind her. "Everything."

She shrugged. "Just doing my job."

"I'm sorry."

"For what, Gabe?"

For letting her die. For not keeping you all safe. For dumping a corpse in your lap. For leaving you to deal with the girls. For digging a grave when you needed comfort.

"Everything."

"Don't apologize for things that aren't your fault," she said. "I'm going to go inside and sit with the girls and keep an eye on the front room. A few idiots came by, thinking we'd be open. Word's probably spread by now, but I don't want one of the girls to have to deal with turning away some angry drunk."

He hadn't even thought of that.

Alone, he finished filling in the hole. It was easier than digging it, but exertion still warmed his blood, though the heat in his veins didn't touch the icy shell that had formed around him. By the time he finished, blood once more slicked the handle of the shovel. He tamped down the loose earth and sank to his knees, staring down at his hands. The palms were crimson and shiny, and all he felt was a vague burning pressure. His body shook with cold and fatigue, but if he hadn't been shaking he wouldn't have known.

He knelt at the edge of the grave and breathed in air that smelled like mud and melting snow and the distant, coppery tang of blood and sweat. His teeth clacked together, spine tight with chills, but he couldn't bring himself to stand and go inside where it was warm. It felt wrong to leave the body here, alone. To leave her here, alone.

But he had to. He was numb but not stupid, and he realized how close to 'too far' he was pushing his body, and he could not afford to make himself sick. People were depending on him, now more than ever, and it was that thought that gave him the strength to climb to his feet and leave her.

"Thank you," he mumbled, staring at the ugly, uneven line where churned dirt met dirty snow. She lay beneath there in suffocating darkness. Because of him. For him. He closed his eyes and felt the icy shell around him expanding, creeping inward. How much deeper would it reach? What if it never stopped and he simply froze solid? Part of him wished for it.

He gathered up the tools and his discarded coat and cast one last glance at the grave as he turned and trudged back to stables. 

I'm sorry.