desireearmfeldt

Having killed eleven men in his time, Sean is not quite as surprised as another man might be to wake up one morning staring at a ghost.  What is surprising is that it’s the ghost of a man he didn’t kill.

In fact, when Sean wakes up with Ben Cutler standing over his bed, he doesn’t catch on right away that he’s looking at anything but Cutler in the flesh.  Before he’s rightly awake, he’s rolling to the floor, grabbing wildly for a gun he hasn’t kept by him in years.  The thump of his landing doesn’t wake Jane, quite; she sighs and turns over with her face to the wall and the blanket half-covering her face.

It’s beyond dumb to think he can get this done without waking her, but he keeps his voice low anyway.

“Aw, come on Cutler, we really have to do this again?  It’s been years.  I thought we were done.”

“I’m not here for your bounty, Sean,” says Cutler, and that’s a mite peculiar; him and Cutler have history, all right, but they ain’t never been on a first-name basis.  “Besides, it’d be hard for me to collect it, seeing as how I’m dead.”

Well, that’s more than a mite peculiar.  Sean’s seen plenty of dead men, one way and another, but he’s never yet met one as knew he was dead, never mind wanted to chat about it.  He squints up at Cutler, wondering if this is some kind of trick to catch Sean off-guard, although really, what with catching him in his bare skin and with not a weapon in sight, seems like the cards are already stacked pretty well in Cutler’s favor.

Now that he gets a good look at Cutler, it strikes him that the man’s covered with blood.  His shirt’s soaked with it, his face is streaked all down the side with the good ear, and come to that, maybe it’s not his good ear any more, because it sure looks like there’s a chunk missing under all that blood and Cutler’s hat.  Not many men could just stroll about with a hole in their head like that, on top of which, the blood’s not dried but it’s not running, either, nor smeared, nor nothing.  It’s just there, like Sean’s looking at a painting of a man with his brains blown half out.

“The hell happened to you?” he asks.

“Shot.”  Cutler shrugs.

“Not by me,” says Sean. 

“Naw, by some snot-nosed kid thinks he’s going to make a name for hisself as a gunslinger.  And maybe he will, at that.”  Cutler shrugs again, like he’s bored by the tale of his own death.

“Well, then, what in hell are you here haunting me for?’ Sean asks.

“Couldn’t rightly say.”  Unlike Sean, Cutler’s talking good and loud, but Jane doesn’t so much as twitch at his voice.  “I didn’t get any say in the matter.  Just hit the dust, saw this flash of white light, next thing I know I’m standing in front of a door.  Open it, here I am staring down at your ugly muzzle.”

“So you ain’t out to settle old scores?”

Cutler throws his head back and laughs out loud.  “That’s tempting, Sean, it really is, but I always reckoned death pretty much settled a man’s scores once and for all.  Getting even is for them as is still breathing.”

“Well, then. . .”  Glancing at sleeping Jane, Sean gets gingerly to his feet and motions for Cutler to walk out into the other room with him.  The ghost obliges.  He walks like a living man, but his boots don’t make a sound on the wood floor.  Don’t leave no tracks, neither: not dirt nor blood.

Sean pulls the bedroom door shut behind him and heads out to the front porch for good measure.  Sun’s about halfway over the horizon.  Looks to be another hot day coming.  He sits down on the steps and Cutler joins him.

“So, what are you here for, then?” Sean asks.  “Not that you ain’t welcome, but. . .”

Cutler gives him an ironic, raised-eyebrows grin.  But the funny thing is, Sean finds he mostly means it.  He always thought Cutler was the kind of man he might get along with well enough if he hadn’t always been set on nabbing Sean and handing him over to the law. 

“Don’t know as I’m here for anything in particular,” says Cutler.  “Don’t know how long I’m here, or if it’s up to me.  Reckon you’ll just have to put up with my company for a while.”

“Fine with me,” says Sean.  “Long as you don’t make trouble.  I’ve got out of the habit of trouble.”

Cutler snorts skeptically.  “Man like you?  Trouble’s your middle name.  Get you out of trouble and you’d be like a fish on dry land, wondering why it can’t breathe.”

“That ain’t so any more,” says Sean, softly but firmly.  “Used to be, but I’ve changed.  My hand to God.”

“Huh.”  Cutler doesn’t look convinced, but he quits arguing. 

“No, but I thought ghosts were supposed hang around ‘cause of unfinished business or the like,” says Sean.  “And, no offense, but if you’re hanging around waiting to haul me off to Hell, you’re liable to have a long wait ahead of you.  Least if I have anything to say about it.”

“You might have the right of it, for all I know,” says Cutler.  “If so, I ain’t in any great hurry to see the inside of Hell myself.  You want me to hang around here for the next fifty years waiting for you to die, sounds like a fine plan.”

Sean looked up at his bloody-faced one-time personal bane and grinned.  “Long as we got an understanding.”

“Oh, I think we understand each other fine.”  Cutler grins back.  “We’re two of a kind, Sean.”

“Two sides of a bad penny,” Sean agrees, and suddenly he’s feeling downright happy to see the man.  Sean loves Jane to pieces, and he’s fond enough of the townsfolk, but none of his neighbors are the least bit like him.  That’s mostly a good thing, but. . .sometimes a man gets lonesome for his own kind, even if his own kind are basically scum.

Cutler shakes his head slowly as he looks out over Sean and Jane’s land, which is at its barest and dustiest just now.

“You sure picked a Hell of a place to retire, Kid,” he says.

Sean shrugs and grins.  “It grows on you.”

“It better,” Cutler grouses.  But Sean spots a glint of speculation in the bounty hunter’s eye, the one that isn’t half-hidden by bloodstains.

Behind him, he hears the rattle of the stove and Jane’s voice humming softly as she moves around the kitchen.

Sean never figured to die in bed, and he never figured to have an ordinary life.  Lately he’s learned to hope he was wrong about the former.  But he’s surprised how much relief he feels at finding out that even without the gun, there’s still a thing or two separating him from the common herd.  There’s them as would call that pride, and most likely they’d be right, but he can’t help grinning up at the bloody ghost of Ben Cutler like he’s the Angel Gabriel.

“C’mon,” he says, getting to his feet.  “Breakfast’ll be waiting.”