Chapter Text
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
-“Song of the Open Road”, Walt Whitman
Hol Horse had never really been in a hospital before as a patient; that’s why being a follower was a hell of a lot better than being a leader. Less risk to your own life. It’s always better to let someone else make the sacrifices you yourself won’t make. At least, that’s what Hol Horse has believed for most of his life. Unforeseen circumstances led him to that decision. He didn’t like to dwell on it much.
The bright fluorescents of the hospital lights were damn near blinding, especially to someone who was just regaining consciousness after being shot in the face. It was a painful sight for anyone, really, but especially gruesome to someone whose eyes hadn’t quite adjusted yet.
How long had he been out? Hol Horse thought to himself. A day? A week? Two weeks? A month? The passage of time was a cruel mistress, crueler than any woman he’d never met before, and he’d met a lot of women. Time passes without a care in the world and most certainly does not care about you. She never will, and neither will the strings of fate.
And the strings of fate had led Hol Horse to be here, in this hospital in Egypt, almost dead but somehow still alive. He didn’t know just how lucky he was.
“Oh, good! You’re finally awake.”
Turning his head and shielding his eyes, Hol Horse saw a nurse enter his room and closing the door behind her, holding a tray with food and a small cup containing pills. Still groggy, he let out a groan.
“Don’t push yourself,” she said. “You’ve been out for quite some time. The doctor said you would wake up soon so we took you off the feeder yesterday, but it’s recommended you eat soft foods first before jumping straight into solid ones.”
She set down the tray and walked over to Hol Horse, telling him she was going to prop the pillows up and helping him into a sitting position. He saw the food on his tray: some tomato soup, applesauce, presumably painkillers, some water to wash it down.
That’s when he noticed he could only see out of one eye, and touched his face, feeling bandages covering most of his appearance.
The nurse noticed this. “Oh, do you want a mirror?”
Hol Horse nodded in reply, and the nurse handed him the hand-held mirror on the side table next to his bed. Looking in the mirror, he saw bandages over most of his face, more specifically, over his nose, forehead, and left eye. Had he lost an eye? Was his nose okay? What would happen to his good looks.
Briefly he entered a state of despair. “What happened to me?” he asked weakly. “What happened to me?”
“Nothing that wouldn’t heal,” the nurse replied. “Except for your left eye. One of the bullets that hit you damaged it so bad we had to remove it, though we don’t know where the bullets went. All that will be left after the bandages are removed will be some scars, and you’ll have to wear an eyepatch.”
He started to tear up, his looks damaged. How would a woman ever find him attractive now?
The nurse started to leave the room, then added, “Oh! Since there was surgery on your nose and the surrounding areas, sneezing is going to hurt for a bit. Sorry.”
“Wait!”
She stopped in her tracks. “Yes?”
“What’s the date today?”
“February 1st.” Then she left.
February 1st, Hol Horse thought. It’s been a few weeks. I’ve been out for that long?
Slumping back into his pillows, he sighed, eyeing the food on his tray. How long had it been since he had tomato soup? He grew up with that. It was his favorite food growing up. That soup never failed to warm him up on the coldest of days and bring him joy and happiness. But those days were long behind him. Long before he took up mercenary life.
Before he developed his Stand, even. All of those memories were so hazy now, though that could be the anesthetic still wearing off. How had he gotten here? The many paths in his life that Hol Horse had taken led to this, they diverged here, to him in a hospital bed, injured but lucky to be alive. He could vaguely remember the EMT’s saying that.
Of all the paths he could have taken, he chose this one. What was that Robert Frost poem? What did it say? “I took the road less traveled by.”
Yeah, and it has made all the difference.
And if any place was as good as any to reflect on your life choices, it was a hospital.
Hol Horse always loved looking at the stars. On clear nights he would climb the fire escape of his family’s apartment building, lie on the roof, and stare at the night sky. Sometimes he would check out a library book on constellations and try and find as many as he could before his dad yelled up to him that it was bedtime.
Though his cowboy persona screamed “I grew up in the country” he was actually from New York City. That’s where he lived from birth to age 17 - he had a late birthday - and left after he graduated high school. There was nothing left for him there. He wanted to see the night sky free of light pollution and the loud sound of cars.
But his family didn’t have much money. They weren’t poor, like a lot of his friends in the neighborhood, but they weren’t rich by any means, either. A lot of times they lived paycheck to paycheck, simple meals the only thing they consumed, with Hol Horse being the cook; his father was too tired after work to cook. Soups were a big staple to them.
His dad wasn’t great for a long time. “Deadbeat” would be the best word to describe him. His mom left when he was still young. Hol Horse had to do everything himself, though at the time he wasn’t known as Hol Horse. He was born Howard Allman in late 1953. He was born the year the Korean War ended, though a few months after the peace treaty was signed. When his father was on leave, his mother flew out to Tokyo, and there, Hol Horse was conceived. Despite having served in World War II, his father also had to serve in Korea.
The draft, his father would later tell him, was a bitch.
Fortunately, Hol Horse didn’t get drafted into Vietnam. He wouldn’t have wanted to go anyway. It’s likely, in his mind, he would have joined those groups of draft dodgers, conscientious objectors, flee the country. When he was younger he didn’t like fighting. But as he got older, he realized he didn’t have a choice.
Contrary to what he’s like now, he wasn’t much of a lady-killer in his youth. In fact, he was quite, what the kids call, a “loser.” John Wayne saved the day, though, the Duke himself. Westerns were the one thing Hol Horse and his father could bond over and talk about, and actually have nice conversations about. When they weren’t talking about westerns, they lived in two separate universes. In one universe was a father who didn’t do much of anything and whose universe continued to shrink. In the other was a young boy who wanted his own to expand.
It was also with the help of the Duke that he donned his cowboy persona. After seeing in the movies that the women loved it, that swooned over the smooth-talking, one-liner cowboy who could get any woman he wanted, he went with it. It might have been the 1960s at this point, but counterculture was at its peak. Though he didn’t fit into “mod” or “hippie” he was still friends with people who were in both circles, of all races and genders. There was nothing hotter to women than a kind, masculine man.
At least, that’s how Hol Horse justified it in his head. But hey, it worked.
And he could remember the assassinations of the 1960s. John F. Kennedy, and then Lee Harvey Oswald shortly thereafter. Malcolm X. Martin Luther King Jr. Robert F. Kennedy. If anyone had asked him “Where were you when…?” he would have plenty of answers.
In high school, he was quite popular as a result of his cowboy persona, the smooth-talking that he learned, the flirting he learned. Though he doesn’t look it, he was quite smart, and learned that the ladies loved a man who knew poetry, so he memorized all he could. Hol Horse got a lot of dates, though not really any steady partner; he wanted to keep it that way. After graduation he was going to finally get out of New York City and explore the countryside. That was his greatest dream as a child and that dream stayed with him.
But he had nowhere to go. He was just a rambling man now, like every cowboy that came before him. All he had, Hol Horse thought to himself, was me, myself, and I. And so he hitchhiked his way out of the city, into the great beyond that he was going to acquaint himself with, his astronomy book always on him.
Thus began the dawning of a new life. And thus, after much thought to his new name, Hol Horse was born.