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A Short Story By Shane Wolfe
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1.
The old man lit his pipe, and sat back on the chair outside the saloon. The town had changed much since his last visit, the damage caused by cannon fire and musket shot long ago repaired and repainted. Many new buildings had risen and expanded the streets and walkways from what he remembered. It had been a long stagecoach ride, and Manny Vincent wasn’t just trail tired, he was dead tired. He had decided a few weeks back to return, no more wandering from place to faceless place waiting to be recognised and challenged again. Manny had discovered that a reputation grows the longer you live, myths only start when you're dead. The last of his tobacco flickered and died, and he tapped the pipe out on his boot heel before rising wearily to enter the bar.
Nursing a small beer, trying to make the last of the money stretch till dark, he scanned the saloon for familiar faces. None of the brightly coloured and sweetly smiling saloon girls were old enough to know him, and the few men at the bar were from the local ranches; young men spending their wages on liquor and temporary loving. Manny thought the barman was of a similar age, but no spark of recognition flared when he waited his turn to be served. It was good, he thought, a night without incident. Sipping his cool beer, he realised the two men playing billiards hadn’t struck a ball in a while, and were concentrating on him. Whispered voices he couldn’t quite make out; his hearing wasn’t sharp as it used to be and he felt an old friend creep up his back and start the old routine in his mind. 'It's you....They know you....No way out....Manny hushed his mind, ignoring the voice, but he couldn’t ignore the smug look on the young man now confronting him.
"Hey mister, my friend says you look powerful familiar. You from round here?" Manny nodded, his eyes watching the youth as he made his way around the billiard table to stand in front of him. The youth smiled, full of vigour and cockiness;” My friend also said you were once a man to be feared, avoided even. Well, you don’t look much like that now. Don’t look like you could fight off a flea!" Manny nodded again, slower than before. He put his unlit pipe in his mouth and put down his beer glass, his right hand shaking slightly. The youth guffawed loudly; "See Tommy, ole' timer can’t even hold a glass steady......" The words were no more out of his mouth than Manny's left hand greased his holster and the .44 Colt Army was inches from the braggard's nose. The bar fell silent as the sound of the hammer clicked back. "What's your friend’s name, Tommy?" The other man stammered; "Bill, Bill Stimson." Bill had meantime lost control of his bladder and emptied his last few beers into his new pants. Manny smiled, the pipe bobbed between his lips as he pushed the muzzle square onto Bill's forehead. "This old man just wants a quiet drink, son. Think you can mange that?" Bill nodded, rapidly and Manny returned the Colt to its holster as fast as it had left it. "Then go and clean yourself up, and leave me alone." The young man backed away, then turned and rushed through the saloon doors. As he sat down and picked up his beer, Manny heard the barman; "Sheriff's comin' over."
The sheriff was a young man, he had been appointed to the post by the townsfolk from Deputy some four years back. Quiet, clever and capable he had proved a worthy lawman; keeping the peace and enforcing the laws passed by the town elders. He could talk a drunk out of gunplay, calm the hottest of incidents and rarely had to resort to pulling his gun. Now, as he had been told of the man in the bar brandishing a gun, he hoped it would end peaceably. The cowboys, travelling gamblers and locals all respected him and the town enjoyed a good relationship between the citizens and the people that frequented its bars, saloons, bordello's and gambling houses. He paused, took a deep breath and walked into the bar. Taking a brief glance around, he saw all the usual faces, around the bar, the girls and the faro and poker tables. In the corner, however, facing the doors was the stranger. Sat alone, hat pulled down over his eyes and back to the wall was the cause of the disturbance. Walking confidently over, the sheriff confronted the man.
Manny heard the footsteps, and smiled. He finished his beer and stood up slowly, hands out to the side. "Meanin' no trouble here. Boy just mouthed off some and got a gentle lesson." The sheriff spread his body weight evenly and sized up the stranger, unsure of the voice. "Look up, please sir." He kept his hand close to his gun just in case the man was intoxicated or had been on the pipe in the chinaman's parlour down the street. The hand didn’t move, even when the man's smiling face beamed into view. "You......" Manny smiled, "Well, must have been hard bein' sheriff in this town, even harder bein' my son."
The whispers spread around the bar like a prairie fire, and the sheriff was clearly uncomfortable. "I won’t have gunplay in my town, not from you or anybody. Now, we got some talkin' to do, and right now. Come on, my office is just over the thoroughfare." Manny allowed his son to shepherd him out the doors and over to the brick building that served as the jailhouse. Well lit and solidly built, it had four metal barred compartments, each empty at the present time. "Seems a quiet night in town, son." Manny turned to see his boy sit down in the old leather bound chair, steeple his fingers together and lean back. "Well, it was till you turned up. Been years since you left, and you cause nothin' but trouble on your first night back. You got to know you ain't too welcome in Black Rock. Many people still remember what you did, if they get to hearin' you're around it will not end pretty." Manny sat opposite his son and studied his face; it wasn’t concern for his welfare that played across the face, but for the town and the law. There was no love lost, time had sealed the wound but not healed it, and Manny knew nothing could reverse that. "I came back 'cos it's my time. I'm done and it's here I have to finish my wanderin'." His son laughed, no joy in the sound. "If its forgiveness or absolution you want it will be a cold day in Hell, that’s for sure. Ain’t nobody wanting you around and that’s a fact."
Ben Vincent was six when his father went off one morning, and didn’t come back for three years. The family had struggled in the ensuing years, with money and food becoming scarce. Gangs of marauding soldiers and outlaws had terrorised the county, neighbours fell out, fought and died, and all along Manny Vincent was away God knows where doing God knows what. The family fought their own war for survival, and when daddy came home little changed. The once smiling storytelling face was replaced with a hard, drink taking visage. Ben was kept awake at night by raised voices, Mother's tears and Father's shouts, doors slamming and the gentle sound of weeping. Stories from the other children about his daddy's violent ways; riding and raiding with the scum of the county, made him alone and adrift in childhood. As the stories became harder to ignore, his father's late nights and frequent absences reinforced them and his mother fell sick, unable to cope.
After her death his father disappeared again, and this time the two dead men he left behind were enough to ensure he wouldn’t return for many more years. Ben finished his schooling by taking odd jobs, helping out where he could. Gradually he overcame his father's shadow and became well liked by the townsfolk as a reliable, dependable young man. It was tough for Ben, for many months men came around looking for his father with scores to settle, and it became a talent he developed talking them down, staying alive in the process. Eventually he was made a deputy, and Ben proved well suited to the job. There wasn’t many had a bad word for him; even the saturday night drunks were grateful on sunday that they only had a hangover to cope with. Then, when old John Cork stepped down, he was everybody's first choice to take over. In the four years since, he had only drawn his gun half a dozen times, and fired twice, each a slight wound to discourage anything more. Now, the return of his ne'er do well father threatened to upset the millpond surface, memories here were long and scarred and there were folk that still held grudges.
