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The rifle feels heavy in his hands; still. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to it. Used to this. The way his breath seems to get caught up in his lungs every time the tip of his index finger brushes against the trigger. The manner in which he cocks his head slightly to the right, trying as hard as he can to collect himself. The weight of the stock on his shoulder, pushing against his flesh and bones. The nervous twitch of his right leg, and above all: the fear.
That treacherous feeling that seizes him and does not want to let go. It surrounds him. It’s in the sweat sticking wild strands of hair to his forehead and in the air getting thicker and thicker every time he inhales. He wishes he could find a way to manage all of these emotions. To shove them away for a while instead of wearing them on his sleeve for the whole damn world to see.
He snaps out of it when a voice calls out to him. Warm and comforting.
“Come on Arthur. It’s not that bad, you’ll see”, the man says, standing a few feet behind him.
Arthurs feels the gaze of the older man piercing through his clothes and reaching his heart along with all the fears gathered inside of the fragile organ.
“What if I’m too scared Hosea, mh? Then what?”
“Ain’t you the one holding the rifle?”
Arthur eyes the target – an empty glass bottle perched on top of a large rock. His breath comes out of his dry lips in a nervous laugh.
“One day, this might save your life”, Hosea says, “or mine for what it’s worth”, he adds in nonchalant tone.
Hosea’s last line hangs in the air, heavy and meaningful. It strikes him as a fundamental fact. This is required, as much as the violence that naturally comes with their lifestyle. The rifle that feels like a burden right now might end up being a life saver in the near future. That’s only what it takes for him to realize that he’s willing to shoot whatever stands in their way if it means that they’ll get to see another day.
The adrenaline rushes through his veins, coming from deep within. His breathing starts to get more rhythmical as he’s holding onto the idea that one day, he’ll be able to return the favor. That one day he might be the one saving Dutch or Hosea from the horrors of this world. His blue eyes focused on the target; he pulls the trigger. The sound is deafening but he’s used to it. He’s been on far too many hunting trips with Hosea.
He’s only been with them for about eight months, but everything about this action feels right – like second nature. The bullet hitting the target. The scared flock of birds flying towards the greyish sky. The older man’s hand squeezing his left shoulder in an appreciative manner. And the shattered glass falling on the dirt.
“See? Wasn’t that hard my boy,” Hosea says while relieving him of the weapon. Arthur feels a bit lighter but there’s a strangeness to the new feeling creeping up on him. The fear is gone but the idea that this might end up being a regular activity consumes him. His gaze lingers on the rifle for a few seconds and he fights against his own thoughts for a short while before looking up at Hosea. The expression on the older man’s face reminds him of the first time they met each other.
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Arthur was lost and angry back then. His rage felt like a sickness that would never leave him. During the day, it poisoned him. And at night it managed to manifest in his dreams, reminding him of the cruelty of his life. He had been without a family for four years now. His father having been arrested for attempting to rob rich folks somewhere around the southern border. “Larceny and use of explosives” they had said during the trial. They asked him if he wanted to see his father after the sentence was pronounced – as if it meant anything to him. The last time he laid eyes on him, he felt an emptiness that would cling onto him for an extensive amount of time.
“Listen, I want you to be better than me”, his father had said, “you’re gonna make your Ma proud”.
Arthur didn’t care – or at least tried as hard as he could to pretend he didn’t. His father reeked of smoke and sweat: a familiar scent that would linger on his clothes, back at home, when he occasionally returned from a heist or a robbery. Back when Arthur used to share a bed with his mother. Back when it was just the two of them – most of the time, trying to make the best out of what life had in stock for them. Things had changed. What his genitor wanted didn’t matter to Arthur. He was left without a mother, without a father.
His first impulse was to fight back the tears, but the grief was stronger. He grieved his past life and the things that could have been. The pain was too intense to be ignored. He was alone in this world and he hated the look his father gave him behind the bars of that prison cell. He hated the way his father took off his old used hat to plant it on the crown of his head. He hated the blue of his eyes which suddenly looked way too similar to his and the beating of his own heart inside of his chest, uneven.
“I wish I was dead”. The words came out of his mouth like a prayer.
When his father’s calloused hand found his cheek, he did not step away. He stayed still, looking at the dusty cot thrown on the floor of the cell, where he supposed his father would spend most of his days. Hell, he’d probably die in here. And so he kneeled on the floor, resting his cheek against the cold metal bars, his father’s fingers gently stroking the sides of his face that were not being covered by the large hat. Funny how people become soft when their time is running out, he thought. For a brief moment he wondered if he’d end up like him. Or if he’d choose a different path. He stayed there for a while. Mourning the memories of a past he had buried a long, long time ago.
“Don’t let this be the end of you Arthur,” were his father’s last words before he felt the sheriff’s arms dragging him away from him. The last words he’d ever hear from him.
He never went back to that prison cell. Never went back to his father. Or it would have, indeed, been the end of him. On that night, he stayed on the outskirts of town, where he managed to light a fire under a majestic maple tree. Hoping that the large crown of wild leaves at the top of the tree would prevent the trail of smoke from attracting robbers, but half of him also wishing that he would get attacked in his sleep just to feel something remotely distracting from the solitude.
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Three years later, the loneliness was still very present but it had slowly turned into something more bearable. Arthur was now a thirteen-year-old boy living with a group of other lost kids he had met while staying around the Great Plains area. They survived on hunting small animals, stealing and robbing drunk folks in the villages and towns surrounding the area – him and five other boys named Billy, Rufus, Zacharias, Simon and Bartholomew. A few weeks ago they had lost Esther to dysentery. Arthur was not quite sure if he was sad or mad about it. It felt so unfair to him that such a sweet girl would die so suddenly, and he felt a restlessness whenever his mind would go on to think about the matter.
Him and the boys were now stationed on the shore where the Montana River met Flat Iron Lake. The weather had allowed them to camp out in the open, but spring came with a bitterness to it. It felt like he could not freely enjoy the wind whistling through the leaves of the tall cedar trees and the howling of the wolves made him shift and stir in his bedroll. It was early into the night when he decided that it was maybe time for him to move on.
He had been thinking about it for a long time. He had only stayed because Esther was sick and they had spent two weeks stranded in an old barn, waiting for the first snowmelt in order to take their chances east of the Aurora Basin. They had listened to Simon because he was the oldest and also the wisest at nineteen-years-old. But Arthur had half a mind of leaving them to go out and search for medicine instead of spending his days listening to the boys tending to that poor girl. But there was nothing he could do about that anymore. Esther was gone and he was there, being the only master of his own destiny.
So he took all of his belongings, and while the others were fast asleep the boy headed for the nearest city, following his instinct instead of a plan he didn’t have the time nor the will to elaborate. Ironically, now that they were all safe, he had decided to leave. It didn’t hurt him to do so and he felt like they wouldn’t miss him, just like they hadn’t missed the members of the group who had left, been kidnapped or hanged during the past two years.
It was not a family that he had found, but rather a group of people trying to survive while living in a constant state of fear. He couldn’t stand the idea of staying with them for another week, another hour or another second. Arthur was longing for something else. He did not know what it was until he found himself walking down the main street of Coleville at dawn. The town felt eerily silent and peaceful apart from the occasional crow of a rooster and the snoring of drunk men sleeping on a bench or a porch.
His legs were growing tired from all the walking and running it took him to get there so he decided to climb on the steps leading to what he presumed was the town’s drugstore. He couldn’t read the letters painted above the main entrance but after peeking through the windows, he spotted shelves stocked with different sorts of flasks and dusty boxes that looked an awful lot like the stuff that could’ve saved Esther.
Arthur took shelter under the shadow of the porch for a while, seated between two wooden crates while enjoying the peaceful sounds of people going on with their morning activities. The boy was half asleep by the time he heard a ruckus coming from the buildings down the street. Startled by the noise, he looked up to find out what was happening. Nothing good it seemed, since two fellas were escaping a large and imposing building, leaving behind them a bunch of screaming city folk running towards the opposite direction.
Despite the fact that their faces were hidden, Arthur was pretty sure the two lads were not from Coleville. The one wearing a red bandana had dark slicked back hair and Arthur swore he could’ve seen fire dancing in his eyes. The other hid his face with a metallic mask that reminded him of a nightmarish creature and was too well-dressed to be from around here. His slender body made him look like a sly fox.
No one had enough foolishness – or confidence, he thought, to try and rob the Coleville bank. But these two had managed to do both on this fine morning. The scene was so appealing to him that in an attempt to seize the moment he called out to them as they were racing towards him.
“If y’all wanna make use of these while you’re alive, I can help!”, he shouted while motioning towards the dollar bills that seemed to almost float around them for a while before falling on the dirt every time they took one step further up the main street.
Arthur knew for sure that the sheriff would get there pretty soon and it seemed like they had no other choice but to listen to him. The dark haired man looked frantic but he waited for the approval of his accomplice before they ran up the stairs and ended up on the drugstore’s porch. While the dark haired one was glancing around in what looked like a mix of agitation and a strong desire to get the hell away from the mess they had put themselves into, the fox looking man was holding onto the bag full of stolen dollars in one hand, the other pointing a semi-automatic pistol aimed at Arthur. Some of the dollar bills had scattered at their feet and Arthur considered grabbing a handful of them before running into the wilderness.
“For fuck’s sake Hosea, he’s just a kid. Just tryna help”, shouted the dark haired man.
“You’ll talk when I say so Van der Linde! Speak up kiddo or I’ll shoot you in the face, is that clear?”, snapped the other man in a menacing tone.
With the gun still pointed at Arthur, Hosea shoved the bag of money into his partner’s arms before proceeding to take off the metallic mask hiding his features. He had the fierceness of someone who would take him out on the spot without an ounce of hesitation – but, Arthur thought, he looked wise beyond his years and would do no such thing. He could tell by the look the older man gave him that he was willing to trust him – a nobody – instead of blasting his brains out with a simple pull of that trigger.
It was the exact moment he felt the urgent need to follow his guts instead of trying to escape just like the rest of the town. It was just like Dutch would later say: faith. The outcome of the whole situation would be defined by that. Much later, he came to the realization that him meeting them in these circumstances and on that day was due to luck more than just a mere coincidence.
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Arthur is riding at a slow pace behind Hosea. The boy is lost in a nostalgic train of thoughts. They’re both heading back to camp after the shooting session and Arthur breaks the comfortable silence to ask the father-like figure for a song, because he feels like it. Because it fits the mood. The older man obliges. For some reason, that particular song warms his heart. Maybe because it’s the song that Hosea sang while on guard duty, in a soft voice, after they had left Coleville in a blast of bullets and smoke eight months earlier.
And on that night they had fought – him and Dutch – and Arthur pretended not to hear them arguing about the fact that Dutch shouldn’t be the one in charge of making the plans and Hosea the talking since they had almost lost their lives. But they had no argument about him. About the fact that they had picked up a lost boy along with all that cash. Arthur smiles at the memory and he joins Hosea in his singing even though he doesn’t know half of the song. Reminiscing the day he found in that uncommon couple the family he had so longed for.