One Man's Calling : One Man's Calling, ch 3 by Wayne Fowler |
In the last chapter Ben felt led to make camp by a mountain stream off the road a bit. There he remained until he successfully interrupted a gang robbing a stage coach. Ben prayed for the healing of Arville, the gunshot guard. After talking over the guard job, Ben followed God’s leading and counselled the stage driver to quit his job and return to his family that he’d been supporting. Ben arranged to end his own stage coach duty at Creede, another shotgun rider taking over from there. “Heard about you,” the town sheriff, JD Watson said. “Heard you work cool under pressure, not too quick to get folks hurt.” Standing on the boardwalk, Watson towered over Ben, who’d just dismounted and was loosening Red’s cinch strap. Red snorted his gratitude. “Heard about you, Sheriff. Treat people fair, easy with second chances,” Ben replied, keeping to himself the source of his information. “Need a deputy, ‘specially somebody to watch the jail nights, whenever we have guests, which lately has been purty reg’lar. You’re young, but not.” Watson stepped off the boardwalk, offering Ben his hand. “Pay enough to eat?” Ben asked, his eyes and smile telling the sheriff he’d take the job. Sheriff JD Watson was the son of a modest sized plantation owner in northern Georgia. Physically favoring his father, a tall, barrel-chested man with a gravelly voice that sounded as if emanating from the bottom of a well, his demeanor tended more toward his mother’s, a more thoughtful and empathetic person than her husband. JD often found himself in a mediating position between his father and the plantation superintendent over matters concerning the hundred-plus slaves. He hated having to persuade his father that fair treatment of slaves was more important than profit. That strength was not measured by force, but by integrity and honor. And he despised having to resort to comparisons of plantation livestock. JD’s father was proud of the rank of colonel he was able to garnish for his son in General Sorrel’s Division in the Confederacy. He was also happy to have him off the plantation. His return to the burned down plantation found both parents deceased, the slaves freed, and his younger siblings all in favor of selling the land to carpetbaggers. JD accepted a meager share and joined a wagon train headed for Santa Fe. Single-handedly breaking up a saloon brawl ultimately put a star on his chest, a lawman. A string of odd circumstances landed him the sheriff job in Creede, Colorado, where he was elected both mayor and sheriff. Creede was more of a way-station than a mining town at the time. The end of a stage line and freight hauling line, it served as a jump off point and re-supply base for silver mines. Laid out on the headwaters of the Rio Grande tight against a hard rock bluff on East Willow Creek, the town Willow Creek quickly absorbed West Willow Creek, Stringtown, Jimtown, and Amethyst, and was renamed Creede, the name of a successful miner who’d spread enough payola about the town to secure its name. Later inhabitants and passers-through were as apt to be ranchers or farmers as miners. A couple days into the job, Ben was challenged. “You the new deputy? Hey, I think I know you. Yeah, them eyes.” The inquisitor was a squat, rotund specimen of a man. His three-piece suit seemed to Ben to be his only one based on the frayed edges and assortment of grime. The man’s balding pate shined through the misshapen comb-over, parted on the wrong side for a right-handed man, just above his right ear. Ben reckoned that a hat would make it near impossible for the man to see anyone’s face, the kink it would require to look up. Ben recalled advice from his stepfather to never trust a man in a three-piece suit. Since college, this was his first opportunity to consider the premise. Ben might have chuckled at the sight except for the foreboding sense of evil about this character. It was the same feel as when he’d seen the man in front of a brothel/saloon in Alpine, Livvy’s little town. The man’s aura was wrong, wrinkling Ben’s brow as he attempted to discern the direction of the wrongness. “Yeah, you was the one got ‘em to get all churched up. Them eyes. You leaving made everybody think they was more’n they was. They didn’t run me out, though. I moved on, followed the money. Just so you know, I don’t like you. An’ don’t much like anybody who does.” Ben had yet to speak, content to watch and listen. Salinger. Something Salinger was his name. Ben recalled the foul manner with which he’d treated his female employees, calling them by their body parts rather than their names. Ben noted Salinger’s twitching fingers, his right hand resting on the pistol strapped about his girth, the holster comically dangling over the area of his belly button. “Can I help you?” Ben finally asked. “Want Billy outta there. Outta your jail. I need him to clean up. Only help I got that don’t think he can get after the girls for free. What’s his fine?” Billy Moore was a puzzle to everyone that knew him, a true poser. He had an eye for the women, but only one eye. That is, he saw them from only one eye at a time, and that through a peripheral vision that he had mastered to an art form. Seeing them, holding them in his vision, they only sensed his glare, not actually seeing it. Though he never spoke to women, whether in public or private, he hung on the words they spoke to him, his ears literally perked. Extremely difficult to look at, his mother had been an alcoholic while she carried him. Birth defects in facial features and mannerisms made youthful courtships impossible. But, unfortunately, his appearance was not connected to his desire. He turned fifteen in St Louis. Knowing that he’d had just about the last of his mother’s meals, her male callers not liking him to be anywhere near when they came around, which was every day, he plotted toward the day he would empty her purse, and leave. A week after his fifteenth birthday, celebrated by no one, he roamed residential neighborhoods, as had become his routine, looking for opportunities to view women or girls through their windows. Seeing a young couple heavily into a nearly illegal public display on a front porch, he couldn’t keep himself from their window once they’d moved inside. No sooner did he have his nose to the glass and he was jerked backwards by a hand in his belt. Picking himself up from the ground quickly became a repeated theme, slugged back down by either the belt-pulling neighbor or the romantic young man from within. When he could no longer pull himself up, one or the other of the assailants picked him up for further punishment. The men’s hands sore and tired, the violated one knelt beside Billy, speaking directly into his brain through his swollen and bleeding ear. “If I catch you looking at a woman again, it’ll be this all over again.” A kick broke one of Billy’s ribs. He never looked a female in the face again. Before properly healed, he was in an empty cattle car pointed west, two sacks of food, two silver dollars and some smaller coins his stake. Turning eighteen in Creede, again celebrated by no one, he begged a saloon owner the trade of food for his cleaning services, willing to clean anything. Salinger put him on the payroll when he tired of Billy’s begging for food in return for what turned out to be quality cleaning. “Just don’t fool with the women,” Salinger charged. “Oh, no Sir, won’t even look at ‘em.” +++ It was near dark, only Ben’s second night on the job. The sheriff brought Billy in for public indecency, urinating on Main Street. He was at an alley, but hadn’t the manners to at least turn his back to the public. Ben calculated that Salinger waited until the sheriff had retired for the night, figuring to intimidate the new guy. “Don’t believe I’ll let Billy out, Mr. Salinger.” Ben subtly rose to his full stature, crossing his arms over his chest. Mason Salinger winced at the youth’s familiarity and arrogance. “Why, you, you whiskered pup.” His fingers twitched violently, though his hand hadn’t moved. Ben thought it comical that Salinger would negatively reference his week-old facial growth, the start of a beard that Ben was contemplating, while the man’s own patchwork of grizzle more resembled a mangy dog. “What’s his fine?” Salinger repeated, spittle spraying the personal space between the two. “Not set yet. He’s spending the night right where he sits.” Ben recalled the sheriff’s rancor, seeing the way Billy had wagged himself in full view of the street while finishing his business. Salinger nearly tripped over himself in his effort to turn and storm off. Ben envisioned a swelled tick marching away with a side-to-side gate. +++ On nights when there was no one in the jail, Ben’s duties included patrolling the streets from dark until the early hours of the morning, the sheriff-issued Colt Peacemaker and holster securely tied to his leg. Noises of unruly conduct kept him in the vicinity of Salinger’s two saloons, both on Main Street opposite one another. He’d yet to draw the handgun, his hope that shooting anyone never be required. Hearing a familiar retching sound, he could barely make out that it was Jackie at the landing outside her room on the brothel’s second floor. As often as he witnessed her routine, he correctly figured that it followed most, if not every, customer episode. “You gonna arrest me?” Jackie asked as Ben quietly ascended the stairs, following clear direction of his calling. “No Ma’am. I want to help. I can get you on the stage out of here. Take you out of town, get you on the stage unseen. Buy you a ticket to anywhere you want to go.” Jackie caught a glimpse of Ben’s eyes from the light from her room. She saw his sincerity. “You’d do that? Why? And where could I go? Look at me.” Turning her face to the light, Ben saw her swollen nose and blackened eye. The bite marks on her neck were both fresh and scarred. “You’ll heal. There ain’t no hole so deep, God isn’t deeper yet.” Jackie began to scoff. Until she saw Ben’s eyes, his honest eyes, noting that he’d yet to look down her top. His expression held no sense of condescension. “But…” “Start with Alpine…” “I was in Alpine!” “It’ll be all right. I know a family that’ll keep you safe until you heal. Then Denver.” The idea leaped into Ben’s thinking, speaking the plan as it manifested. “Hotel and restaurant work until you meet a nice young man that wants a family. You’ll learn all about love, Jackie, real love.” Jackie instantly buried her face in Ben’s chest, sobbing convulsively. “Can we go now? Right now? Hide me in your jail until you can get me out of here?” “Get your wrap and a blanket.” Ben escorted her through town to the jail, unseen by the several who’d looked directly at them. In the jail, Jackie felt compelled to explain herself. “You don’t need to say a thing,” Ben reassured her. “But I do, even if just for myself,” Jackie insisted. “My step father …” Ben held up his hand, slowly lowering it, taking one of Jackie’s into his. Ben’s eyes bore into Jackie’s. With a hiccup, Jackie’s momentary trance-like state was broken. She sighed deeply, fully accepting that Ben somehow knew, and understood, everything about her. She nearly forced words explaining how her step father gave her to someone who sold her to Salinger, but held her peace with the realization that Ben accepted her as a worthy soul. +++ “Sheriff, you have to go after them! He ruined me. Bad enough people don’t pay like they promise, but that wagon load of goods will close me up. I can’t order no more.” The complaint was from the mercantile/general store owner, the town’s first, Pressure from the town’s second general store cut deeply into Brockton McKnight’s profit margin. “He said he was from the Ford ranch. Had their wagon, and brand on his horse. They usually pay cash. I figure he stole ‘em, the wagon and horse. Headed north. My bet is that you’ll find him sellink it cheap to the North Creede store.” McKnight enunciated ink as he did all his ing words. Pulling his handlebar moustache from both sides of his mouth, he repeated his demand for recovery. “He said Ford himself would be in the next day to pay.” Within minutes Sheriff Watson and Ben were riding at a fast canter, a pace the horses could maintain the entire distance, even at altitude. His first trip to the north, Ben noted a row-crop farm on the way. An inner urge impelled him to return for a visit. “Have your gun out,” JD told Ben, directing him to the back door of the general store. “We’re not here to have a fair fight. Biggest part of sheriff work is to not get shot.” There was no one in the store but the owner, who provided description enough to identify the man. He begged the return of his money to JD and Ben’s backs as they left the store. Following the sheriff’s orders, the man reloaded everything back to the Ford wagon for return to the rightful owner in Creede J.D. and Ben would stop for it on their return. The miscreant was at the saloon, laughing into a glass of beer. JD casually walked to him, lifting his gun from its holster just before tripping him to the floor. As instructed, Ben watched the other customers, his gun drawn in a non-threatening, but ready posture. “Everybody hold still,” Ben ordered. JD took a silver dollar from his prisoner’s pocket, offering it to the bartender toward a round on laughing boy, the dollar being a small price to pay by the North Creede store owner. Bound and ready for travel, JD lectured the store owner a second time. “Oughta run you in for theft-by-receiving. You knew full well that he wasn’t a freight man, or any kind of legitimate peddler.” “I was going to send word to Creede, Sheriff,” he responded. “Uh-huh.” The sheriff’s tone belied his trust. Ben drove the wagon load of goods while the sheriff escorted the thief, a fired Ford Ranch employee back to Creede. Ben stopped at the row-crop farm for his intended visit. +++ “We don’t care what they done,” the young farmers sang out in near unison. If they don’t mind dirt floors, we don’t mind their soiled past.” “I’m just saying that these girls are as sweet and innocent as you treat them. You don’t bring up their past, I expect they won’t either.” “Heck, Ben, the cow gets into the garden, you don’t shoot her, you just lead her out.” Ben smiled, accepting the comparison’s weakness, but appreciating the men’s attitude. Within the week Ben whisked Jackie’s two friends, both high yellow orphans that Salinger had purchased from the underground flesh market in Kansas City, to the farm, promising to let them know when it might be safe to allow them to venture to Creede. Salinger would be moving out soon enough. +++ “Ben,” JD began one morning as he entered the office to relieve him. JD had lain awake most of the night thinking of Ben, unable to rid himself of a growing concern over the young man. “Ben,” he repeated. Ben held back a morning greeting, at first finding it odd that JD hadn’t greeted himself in his usual manner, but simply by name, an uplift to his voice that foretold something of import to follow. “Ben,” JD said a third time. “Been thinkin’ on this … You have some, some kind of future ahead of you.” Ben remained silent, biting back dismissiveness and sarcasm, which wasn’t in his nature anyway. “You’re special, Ben. I guess you know that, though.” JD didn’t mean anything of an egotistical bent, merely a statement of the obvious. “Heck, law enforcement, politics, business, or whatever, you could go to the top of whatever you chose. You have something. Here you are, half my age and working as a night jailer and I catch myself wishin’ I was you. Took me all night to figure things out. Not that I have. “What I’m tryin’ to say is that you need to, to go sit on a rock and decide your course right now. Today. “Why you could take up with any of those girls you’ve been savin’. They all worship you. Start your family, and get on to whatever it is you’re meant for.” Ben paced himself. Allowing his boss, and friend, time to believe he’d considered the counsel. “JD, don’t think I don’t appreciate your kind thoughts and concern. I do. But my future is right now. My next step. I don’t want to take my next one but that God tells me. You know Joseph, in the Bible, he spent three years in prison following exactly what was ordered for his life. I’m only comparing myself to his following, not his life. “Oh, I know I’ve taken missteps, here and there. I can feel it when I have and it isn’t hard to get back on track. As far as a wife … I don’t see that in my calling.” JD’s eye sparked wide, the first he’d heard the expression. “It isn’t healthy to marry someone who worships you, anyway. First time you accidentally let out a stinker, well, there goes the pedestal she put you on.” JD laughed out loud, breaking his tension. He envisioned himself climbing out of a cesspool, covered with the worst imaginable, clearly observed and disdained by a worshipping bride. “Better to marry somebody who knows you, and likes you anyway.” JD nodded, sensing the wisdom. “Well,” he began, “I just …” “And I thank you for it, JD. That’s what friends do.” With that, Ben donned his broken-down, second-hand Stetson, leaving the office to JD. +++ “Sheriff, I want that boy outta here, clear outta town!” Salinger was adamant. “It’s him, or me. And you know I pay more toward your salary than anybody in town.” Salinger was, of course, referring to Ben, the man he’d rightly suspected of somehow making off with his female staff. “Well, Mason, I’m glad to hear you put it that way. ‘Cause I happen to know of two miners wantin’ to settle in town, get off the mountain for the winter. They’ll buy you out for what you paid to build. And your stock at cost.” Before Salinger quite reached boiling point, his finger-twitching right hand resting on his pistol, Ben injected himself, his eyes intently boring into Salinger’s. “Won’t be a better offer.” Sheriff Watson was taken aback at Ben’s insertion, raising his eyebrows at the youth’s temerity. Once said, he settled into a clear acceptance and understanding of Ben’s call and role in the matter. He watched Salinger whither under Ben’s glare, Salinger’s gun hand limp. With nothing but a barrel of whiskey and a few cases of bottles, Salinger and three brothel maidens made their way out of town, heading for the San Juan Mountains where rumor had it gold had been scratched up. Billy had quit Salinger shortly after his stay in Ben’s jail. From out of the blue, the hotel owner thought Billy might make a good cook. He did. +++ “Ben”, the sheriff began one morning upon relieving Ben of his night’s duty. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing, saying to our customers, but it’s working. Tom, Johnny Q., Randy … and a few others used to drop in for our hospitality on a regular basis, taking their nights behind our bars. I know they’re still around, but … Spratt in there,” he added, pointing to the jail, “I ‘spect not to see again, either. You been preaching to them, or what?” Ben smiled, his calling overcoming his fatigue. +++ “Feel like my job’s done here, JD.” Ben said one morning to the sad but knowing eyes of his friend. Ben had no idea why this day was different from any other. He felt especially good after the talk with the young man in the jail. He’d felt that before. Salinger was gone. There were more women in the other saloons; but they did not draw his focus, though he could not fathom why. He’d come to accept that not every problem was his to fix. “Ben, I love you like a son. Wish you’d stay, but I guess I understand. That church you’ve been talking about all over town’s gonna be built.” JD swallowed, relaxing the grip about his throat. “Happy trails, Son, and I sure hope to see you again.” With that, Ben leaped onto Red without use of the stirrup, his crystal blue eyes glistening with tears as he galloped off. He cleared the town proper just as a stranger was entering, a stranger whose gaze felt evil. Ben believed he’d seen the man inch his pistol from its holster as he quickly passed by. The man’s mouth gaped half opened as if to speak, or perhaps in some sort of quandary. Ben spurred Red to a short sprint, out of pistol range in a moment’s time.
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Wayne Fowler
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