Some men drink whiskey when they got the blues. For Jake, who drank whiskey like water, it was black coffee, the kind that woke you and warmed you on a rough morning on the trail. It alternately burned and numbed his tongue, made so strong there were more grounds than coffee in the mix.
He had made the coffee in a big ole mug and put it in the car, then driven up to a certain hill, the most wooded spot he could still get to by driving, where you could see some of the stars shining like cat eyes in the dark. The moon was hanging low in the sky, full as a momma cow's belly right before she gave birth.
Then he had clambered up on the roof of his car, stretching out with his coffee mug in one hand. Next to him, he placed a small gold sheriff's star and a picture of the best trail-rider and cattle-roper that ever lived.
"I miss you, Neil," he said out loud, then stopped and took a drink of his coffee, swallowing it down. It burned the back of his throat like campfire smoke. "Nobody roped a finer doggie in a courtroom. I'm half a trail-rider without you, half a team of horses workin' in the same harness. I can't pull my side without you."
He paused and shifted, stroking the hood of the car like it was an imaginary steed. "You were always fixin' to ask her to marry you. You should have gone and just done it, stead of waitin' around. You could have made an honest woman out of her, a real good little missus Neil Marshall. But now you ain't here and I ain't sure you would be too thrilled about me trying to ride your filly."
He took another swallow of the mug and fiddled with the gold star, letting the edges of it dig into his fingertips. "Remember after the hard ones, with the cattle dragging us all the way and fighting the rope the whole time, we'd go and get ourselves beans and grits and glasses of dude-whiskey, like the cityfolk drink?" There was no answer from the dark sky. Jake raised the mug to his lips, then looked inside at the dark liquid swirling around and lowered it instead.
"We used to raise hell like the best of them. We were the wildest posse in the West, remember?" He glanced at the picture of Neil, then up at the moon.
"The Marshall brothers were a force to be reckoned with. You were always the lead rider, the one they noticed cause when you were in court you'd shoot straighter than any of them other fancy ropers and you'd ride em down till they were hung. You asked me once if I minded I didn't get the recognition for all the hard nights and long days I spent catching those lawbreakers." Jake sat up, forming his hand into a gun. "I told you then and I'll tell you now. Me being jealous o' you is like me being jealous of myself. We ain't hardly separate enough for me to tell the difference."
He upended the half a mug of coffee onto the ground, watching it stain the ground dark. "Pow," he whispered, jerking his hand like shooting a gun. "Keep on riding into that sunset, pardner, but remember to do it slow enough that I can catch up."
