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Buck drank his whiskey and watched the man in the corner. He knew better than to get too close, of course. He’d been through this before.
History had a damn ugly way of repeating itself.
It had been the saloon in Eagle Bend last time, not the Standish Tavern, but the whiskey was the same and so was the look of nothing in Chris’s eyes, as he stared through everything and everyone and just… waited to end.
Back then, with Sarah and Adam, Buck had been the only one holding back the darkness. He’d been the one to hide the guns, force down the food, cut off the drink. All by his God damned lonesome, because Hank had blamed Chris to his face and Sarah’s mama wasn’t any better off than Chris was.
There were six of them now, though. Should’ve been seven, but… It should still have been enough.
Now, Buck watched as Nathan quietly slipped sleeping powders into Chris’s whiskey, admitting sadly that they might eventually kill the man when mixed with the kind of drinking he was doing—a blessing Chris would welcome if he knew. Josiah used sheer force to pick him up off the ground when he finally fell, and shouted him into submission when food was involved.
Not that Chris himself said much, of course. Not until he was good and drunk, at which point Buck left the tavern. He didn’t need to hear, again, how it was his fault. It wasn’t like he didn’t damn well know that already. And that wasn’t even the worst part.
The worst part was watching Chris when he was almost sober.
“Swore I’d never do this again, Buck,” he’d say, rolling an empty glass around with hands that shook with the need for it to be full. “I can’t… God damn it.”
Buck would nod, because he couldn’t talk. He’d tried the first time Chris was nearing sober, and the pain of it nearly ended him right there.
“I’m sorry, Chris,” he’d said quietly. “I’m so God damned sorry. I—”
“It wasn’t your fault, Buck,” Chris had replied, a candid truth in his eyes that made Buck want to throw up. Or throw things. Take off and never come back.
When he was sober, Chris really believed he didn’t blame him. Just like he didn’t blame him for Sarah and Adam.
Actually, he thought, watching from across the room as Chris rolled that empty glass, clear-minded as he was likely to get these days, almost sober wasn’t the worst part after all. No, the worst part was that every now and then, he thought he saw the light come back into Chris's eyes. Just for a second. Thought he saw him realize that there were more people out here waiting on him than the guy who’d killed what was left of his soul.
Sometimes, when they didn’t know Buck was watching, after he’d tried and failed to help JD himself, Chris’d ask JD a question, seem to really listen as the young man tried to hold in his worry and his grief and show some sort of normalcy. He’d talk with the boy when the normalcy wouldn’t come, which was most of the time.
“I wish there was something I could to do help him,” Buck’d heard Casey telling Inez, mirroring his own desire. Inez’s eyes were still red, her hair still covered with a black veil of mourning. Hadn’t been a week yet and already the world was ending.
“JD is young,” Inez had said, that strength to her that Buck had always loved. He listened in, hidden by the darkness of the saloon and the ladies’ own preoccupation. “He is young, yet he lost a mother and returned from it.” She touched Casey’s shoulder and sniffed sadly. “He has lost a brother, Casey,” she reminded the young girl. “They all have. All we can do is be here for him—for all of them.”
Casey had looked out the window to the jail across the street, where JD sat outside the door, staring at nothing. It wasn’t the way Chris stared, but there was a grief there that not even Buck seemed able to penetrate. This was his fault and JD knew it, and he was never, ever going to forgive him for it. Anger and grief made a powerful combination to block a man’s ear.
Buck didn’t blame him, though. He could never blame him. JD’d lost a brother because of him, and the kid was too damn young to have lost so much. Normal wasn’t ever coming back.
Glimpses of normal were all any of them were going to get, it seemed, but they were there if you looked. Sometimes, Chris would respond to Nathan’s or Josiah’s urging him to eat with something other than anger or apathy. He’d eat, sometimes even sleep without the aid of rotgut. Sometimes, he’d look across the room at Buck himself, and open his mouth as if to say something.
Buck would up and leave then, too. Just like he was doing now.
This time, he took the bottle he’d just started, the second one of the night, and climbed unsteadily up the ladder on the side of the mercantile building, cursing himself for his stupidity and his cowardice.
He could leave. Hell, he should leave. This whole damn mess was his fault after all.
There was a brief second of relief.
“Buck!”
“I got him!”
“I don’t want to—”
There was a long eternity of horror.
Buck shook off the memory like a dog, looking around to find a place to sit and hide.
He was less surprised than he could have been that he wasn’t alone up here in the shadows.
“He’s at it again, I’ll bet,” Vin murmured, looking over the top of the saloon and out into the darkness. Moon wasn’t up yet, but Vin’s eyes saw everything. Always had. He knew enough not to get too close, too. Chris was a flame now, burning himself out.
“Recovering before the next round of bottles,” Buck said.
“You could take a lesson from that.” It should have sounded like Vin was taking him to task, but he wasn’t, and Buck knew it.
“Reckon I’ve earned it,” he said, taking a long pull. It didn’t hit him like he wanted it to. The whole situation was just too damn hard for him to be able to drink it away.
“Hell, Buck, I don’t know what to do for him.” The admission was almost tearful, but Vin hadn’t cried since it happened. He’d been there, quietly, helping where he could, letting Chris scream at him when he was done screaming at Buck and it was the only thing left.
“Not sure there’s anything to do,” he told him candidly.
“You brought him back once,” Vin pointed out, never really looking over at him. “How the hell’d you do it?”
“Yeah, well…” he took a long swig and swallowed hard on the acid that tried to come up in response. “I think I always knew I wouldn’t be able to do it again.” He considered the horizon as the moon shoved its way into the sky, inch by painstaking inch. “But I didn’t figure on the rest of you being here to help.” He sighed. “I thought it would make a difference.”
Chris stumbled out of the tavern across the way, and they watched him head for the boarding house, Nathan shadowing him.
“More sober than I expected,” Vin remarked.
They spoke together. “Won’t last long.”
Vin snorted sadly and hung his head. “We’ll lose him to this one, Buck,” he whispered, standing and heading for the ladder. And it’s your damn fault , went unsaid but not unheard.
Buck drained a little more whiskey as his young friend clambered down the side of the building.
“I know.”
And then he drank, because there was really nothing else for him to do.
”Where the hell did Carson get to?!” Chris yelled over the gunfire and mayhem.
Buck looked around from his vantage point on the mercantile, spinning around as he saw Ezra pop his head up from the top of the ladder.
“Carson’s headed to the roofs,” Ezra told him, dashing across to the other side, rifle in his hands and eyes roving. “If we can bring him down—”
The crack of a pistol firing was all the warning they got as Carson leaped onto the peak of the eaves above them. Ezra jerked hard and they both started sliding.
“Buck!” Ezra’s cry was panicked, his hand grasping futilely for a moment before finding purchase and holding tight. There was blood dripping down, but Buck wasn’t sure from where.
“I got him!”
The bottle was empty when Buck turned his head to the side and saw Ezra sitting next to him.
“Should you be here?” he asked, words not slurring as much as they could have. Ezra didn’t look so bad now.
“There’s nowhere else to be,” Ezra sighed. “I suppose I’ll always be here, won’t I? Stuck in some sort of limbo.” He slid a little farther forward. “Unless of course I fall.” Buck resisted the urge to hold him back. It wouldn’t work anyway, would it?
“It’s a long way down,” Buck argued, though clearly Ezra already knew that.
“A long way to fall,” Ezra agreed morosely, staring at the ground far below. “Buck, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I wish I hadn’t…” He couldn’t seem to say the words, but Buck knew what he meant. I wish I hadn’t let go.
“Yeah,” Buck said quietly. “I know.” He snorted, looking at the place where the bullet had torn into Ezra’s arm, though you couldn’t see it now. He wore a smart green velvet coat, looking like it never happened. “I really hate the damn phrase, but it’s not your fault, it’s—”
“It’s my fault,” Ezra disagreed. “And now Chris is lost as well. He blames me for ruining his life, which I suppose is fair.”
“No it ain’t, Ez—”
“I seemed to have ruined all of us. Hell, I figure everyone will be in the wind soon.”
Buck shook his head in anger. “That ain’t right, Ezra, and you know it! If… If this breaks us all up. If what I did means…” God, he hoped Ezra was wrong.
The younger man laid back on the roof and stared at the sky. Buck realized now that Ezra smelled like whiskey and playing cards. He supposed he’d always known that, but now, in his current state, it was… weird. He looked at his empty bottle and sighed. Maybe he needed another one. A full one.
“I suppose I’m most worried about JD,” Ezra said suddenly. “He’s trying, of course, but between what happened and Chris’s current fugue… I fear he isn’t dealing as well as he could be, is he?”
“No,” Buck agreed. “He isn’t.” He’d tried to have a talk with JD about it—tried to get him to open up, like he had when Annie died, but the kid just kept on trying to pretend like he was fine. And he was damn sure anything but. “I ain’t any clearer on what to do for him than I am on what to do for Chris,” he admitted, much as Vin had hours ago.
Dawn was pulling at the clouds, and he knew he had things to say to Chris before the light stole away the chance. He stood and looked down at Ezra, still staring up into the blue, his eyes watering. Strange that his eyes should water like that…
“Goodbye Ezra.” Through the whiskey and the pain and the grief, Buck knew something truly. He’d never see Ezra Standish again. Not like this.
Ezra blinked, tears running from his eyes up here where no one could see him. “Goodbye, Buck.”
Buck turned away and slipped down the ladder without ever looking back.
“Carson’s headed to the roofs,” Ezra told him, dashing across to the other side, rifle in his hands and eyes roving. “If we can bring him down—”
The crack of a pistol firing was all the warning they got as Carson leaped onto the peak of the eaves above them—
“Buck!” Ezra’s cry was panicked, his hand grasping futilely for a moment before finding purchase and holding tight.
“I got him!” he called down to the rest of them, though Buck could see the strain of holding on with an arm that’d been shot through. Blood was dripping, slipping down under Ezra’s coat toward his wrist.
Buck heard Vin’s rifle fire and felt the wind of Carson’s body whistling past him where Ezra held him by the hand, keeping him from falling, if only for a moment. The blood was slippery. Wasn’t blood sticky? he thought inanely.
Buck looked up, saw the desperation in his friend’s eyes, and tried to hold in his own fear as blood-slicked hands slipped away from each other.
“Chris, I need to talk to you. You damn well better listen.”
Chris lay on his bed, an unopened bottle of whiskey on its side on the table next to him, like he’d fallen asleep from exhaustion before he could drink himself into another stupor. Buck looked at the bottle and uncorked it, letting the liquor pour out into the floorboards.
“This is my fault,” he told his friend. “I know it. You know it. It ain’t Ezra’s—damn sure ain’t yours.”
He looked at the pain in Chris’s sleeping face. That face he’d looked at for most of his adult life. Since they were soldiers fighting a war that made no sense to either of them.
“Get up and live, all right?” The light began to inch across the floor and Buck moved away from it, sitting on the edge of Chris’s bed and taking the opportunity to cup his friend’s jaw in his hand. Chris stirred with the movement.
“You got through losing Sarah and Adam with just me to carry you,” Buck reminded him, as Chris’s eyes blinked twice and the heat of the sun began to warm Buck’s back. “You got five strong men here, Chris,” he said, knowing the heat itself would steal him away. It was high time he was going.
He watched his friend’s eyes focus on him—really see him for a moment.
“Buck?” Chris’s voice was raspy and scared.
“Keep going, Larabee,” Buck replied, loud as he could with the sunlight burning. “Stop waiting to end, okay?”
********
Chris reached out to nothing as the image of Buck Wilmington faded with the dawn. Words seemed to hang in his mind as he struggled to come up with a reason to face another day without that man at his side.
“Stop waiting to end, okay? Start choosing to live.”
His gaze turned toward the graveyard where Buck had been buried yesterday. He didn’t want to choose to live. Hell, he didn’t want to choose anything.
But for Buck… maybe he could.
He stood up and immediately felt his socks soak through with something at the same time a waft of whiskey hit his nose. He looked at the mostly empty bottle on his side table and the puddle on the floor beneath it, remembering as clearly as he remembered anything these days how he’d stared at it for long minutes last night before deciding Buck wouldn’t want him to open it.
He touched his cheek lightly, still feeling the imprint of a large, rough, callused hand. Maybe Buck had opened it for him, the way he used to. He remembered waking up a hundred times after Sarah and Adam, to find the bottle he’d planned to drink upon rising inexplicably empty.
Padding in whiskey soaked socks, he headed to the window, looking down into the sunlight that was less bright today. Less real.
Nathan and Josiah were sitting on the balcony in front of the clinic, and Chris fancied he could see Buck sitting there with them, just jawing. Jawing about nothing because it was better than letting your friends sit alone in a silence nearly stifling.
Ezra walked toward the livery by himself, his injured arm out of a sling but stiff and painful-looking even from this distance. Chris realized he hadn’t seen much of the gambler since Buck died. He’d come to the funeral—dear God, everyone had come to the funeral—but he kept to himself, guilt laying heavy over him.
“This is my fault,” Buck’s memory whispered. “It ain’t Ezra’s.”
Chris nodded to himself as Standish slid into the livery and disappeared from view. He’d talk to him. See if he could find some words.
“Damn sure ain’t yours.”
“I ain’t so sure of that, Buck,” he whispered. Continuing his gaze around the town he’d stumbled into with no plan of staying. Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d stay now. Nothing was keeping him here anymore, was it?
Except that Vin was sitting on the edge of his wagon, just visible from this angle. His head was bowed with exhaustion and Chris had fleeting memories of railing at him, screaming, venting his anger because there was nowhere else for it to go. Just like he had with Buck all those years ago.
And Vin took it, just like Buck had. A shadow of his lost friend seemed to stand before Vin, touching his head lightly as if in benediction.
“Reckon maybe I can be a better man this time, Buck?” He didn’t deserve Vin’s loyalty any more than he’d deserved Buck’s, but it was there. Maybe it was time he lived up to it.
He wondered where JD was. Their seventh, Buck’s kid brother, was trying so hard to be solid and normal and adult. It was almost laughable how a child half Chris’s age should be more grown up than he himself was, with his tantrums and his drinking.
But JD wasn’t an adult right now. He was a scared kid whose life had been turned upside down. Losing his mama had given the boy strength, but losing Buck was threatening to break him all over again.
Chris hoped Buck’s shadow was there as well.
“We’ll take care of him, Old Dog,” Chris promised the air, watching Ezra and Chaucer leave the livery, watching Vin, alone now, call to him and raise a hand in greeting and friendship before letting the gambler close into himself and ride off into the growing day.
Another day without Buck Wilmington.
“Get up and live.”
Chris closed his eyes, balled his fists, and turned from the window to try—for Buck—to do just that.
*******
the end