Yeehawgust Day 18: Bandolier
As he came back to the cabin from where he’d gone and brushed down his father’s pretty Appaloosa mare, Boadicea, he heard them talking, and not just usual pleasantries. Meant something was up. They never talked too much, his mother and father, unless it was about him. Sometimes Isaac felt like he could fill ages with the things they never quite said, for all their silences had the comfortable well-worn air of familiarity to them. “It’s coming up on winter real fast. We’ll be headed up over the Grizzlies, so…”
“The last we’ll see of you till spring. I see.”
“Or even later.” Pa sighed heavily. “Look, I know you don’t want to hear about no particulars. But…by the sound of it, we’re planning to stay east of the mountains for a time.”
In other words, I don’t know for sure when I’ll be back. He’d heard time after time when Pa rode away, making some vague forecast of when he might return again, and Ma always took it with polite acceptance. Pa left, Ma and Isaac turned back to the rhythms of their lives, and then Pa would come back at some point, and Isaac could never help the leap of excitement he felt at it even now.
The way it seemed between the two of them, comfortable yet formal, a well-settled habit, Isaac was surprised to hear her pushing back this time. “Arthur…he’s getting older. Twelve now. It was one thing for you to miss things real early when he was a baby and he didn’t realize, but you’ve been here regular enough ever since. He’s come to count on that. He’ll be a man soon enough. He needs a father maybe more than he ever has, not you off doing God knows what…”
“What of it, Eliza?” Pa had a temper on him, which he fully admitted, but Isaac rarely saw any of it turned on either Ma or him. Just bits and edges of irritation, but there was something like actual anger in Arthur Morgan’s voice now, a raw rough edge to his deep voice. “We had this little talk already twelve years ago, and you made it damn clear you wouldn’t have me. The boy’s a McCready, ain’t he? In all them years, not a single thing’s changed, we’re just the same as we both was then, and now you want to tear a strip off me for it again?”
A McCready, whose father “Arthur McCready” seemed to go on a lot of awful long cattle drives and the like, despite that being a dying way of making a living. But people in town accepted it, more or less. He’d never heard people talking about it in a nasty, speculative way. That helped. Mostly they clucked their tongues in sympathy that Mr. McCready couldn’t seem to find steadier work rather than being a relic doing the same job he’d done a dozen years ago, and Mrs. McCready kept having to wait tables in the saloon to make ends meet.
“I said I wouldn’t come join your outlaws, yeah. You’re his father,” she insisted back, her own voice rising. “You ain’t done that bad by him, but you just want to up and vanish out of his life now? He loves you. If you’re just gonna hurt him in the end, I wish to God I’d stuck to my guns and told you to just get lost that day you came back.”
“Hell, you probably should have. Better for the both of you.” Words all low and fierce, and then Pa pushed his way out the door, cursing at the way it always stuck, and stalked off, a tall figure whose long black duster coat blended into the gathering darkness among the trees quickly enough. Not seeing Isaac standing there near the door, heart suddenly in his throat at the notion of getting caught.
Feeling curiously like some veil over things had gotten ripped away, and Ma was right, he was getting older, because he could never go back now to childish assumptions. Odd as the arrangement was between his parents, how his father being an outlaw and unable to settle down had been about the only explanation he’d got, it had always seemed warm and friendly enough between them. But now all he could see was that there was hurt and even fury in it for both of them, going back years and years. And he was the cause of it.
Before he could think much about it, he’d followed his father’s path, knowing where he’d probably be. That same old rock near the river where they liked to fish. A good place too for some quiet when he was alone. Apparently Pa thought the same, because as Isaac came up on the rock, he saw him standing there, arms folded over his chest, staring out into the distance like all the answers to the world were written there.
Isaac must have made some sound, because just like that, Pa had whirled around, hand sweeping towards the butt of the gun at his hip. For just a moment, Isaac saw the man his father must be away from here. Someone fearsome, deadly, quick with a gun, who he’d seen today even had a bandolier tucked away in his saddlebags for having more ammunition in whatever situation he found himself in. Isaac couldn’t imagine exactly what in God’s name that kind of battle might be to require that many bullets, but he was pretty sure it was nothing nice.
Pa saw who it was, and sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. “Don’t tell me you heard all that.” Sighed again, nodding. “Of course you did. Wouldn’t be out here otherwise.”
“Pa…” Now he didn’t know what to say. Suddenly a burst of inspiration struck. “If you got to go, just take me with you, all right? I ain’t much of a kid no more, I could ride with you…”
Pa came over, and took him by the shoulders. “Isaac.” He said the name gently, and the words that followed, soft but spun with a core of steel to them that Isaac could tell meant he wouldn’t give an inch. “That ain’t gonna happen. The last thing I want is you turning out like me.” He gave a low, bitter laugh. “One thing your ma and me agree on, I expect. It ain’t a pretty life.”
“Then why do you even do it?” The words came out before he could help it, demanding and sharp. “If it ain’t good for you?”
It took Pa a moment to answer. “Things got set for me real young, even younger than you, and just…well. I ain’t sure I chose it, but it’s the life I got.”
He looked at his father in that fading light, seeing more now with clearer sight of things. Saw the lines around his green eyes, the weatherbeaten look of him. Seeing not some fearsome outlaw, or the affectionate father who taught him things, but just a tired, sad man growing old before his time.
He might not always love his life either, but he at least had Ma, and Pa when he was here, and this cabin. Thought about the pallet Pa slept on all these years, on the porch if the weather was fine, in the kitchen if not. He’d grown up with that, so it hadn’t seemed strange to him, but it did now. Both he and Ma had a bed, after all. He belonged. He had a home. It struck him like a fist to the belly to realize that Pa probably didn’t. “You ain’t had no other place to go? Nowhere that’s home?”
“Well, I got some people…”
“Didn’t ask if you got folk, I asked if you got a home.”
“Not really.” He paused, adding in a softer voice, almost to himself, “Never really did.”
His breath caught at that, something in him aching for the loneliness of it. Hearing the admission that Pa knew he’d never belonged here, but that could change, couldn’t it? All someone had to do was welcome him. And it couldn’t be Ma, because it seemed like things between them had gotten stuck in a rut years and years ago. “Then stay here.” Hating the crack in his voice at the plea, but wanting, needing so much to ask. Not willing to let him slip away, perhaps forever, and wanting so much to believe that perhaps he was enough to make him stay. “Then if I can’t go with you, I want you to stay, OK?”
Another of those tired sighs, and his voice took on the tone of explaining something obvious, like Isaac was a stupid little boy. “Your momma’s put up with enough nonsense from me over the years, coming to see you. I don’t think she’d like me hanging around for good.”
“You think that, but you ever ask her? Maybe that’s what she wants.”
“Son. When a woman in trouble turns you down flat, you’d best take the point she’s making–no, never mind. That’s all old business between Eliza and me. No need to bring you into it.”
“Yeah, well, I got born into the middle of it.” Snapping the words, and maybe there was something angry in him about all of it too, and that felt both terrifying and satisfying all at once. “So I’m involved, ain’t I?”
Pa stared at Isaac, and some expression he couldn’t quite place passed across his father’s features. “Goddamn,” he said, almost under his breath. “You really did go and grow up.” Pride and melancholy all at once in his words.
“I heard what she said. She said she wouldn’t go be no outlaw, but that don’t mean she wouldn’t let you stay.” The anger was slipping from his grasp, and the edge of fear came back, but mostly Isaac just felt the sense of rightness in saying it. “You got a choice, Pa. Just…ask her. Please. Come home, for good.”