It is always loud inside my head. Since I am quiet it has to be loud somewhere. Everyone has loud voices. Was my voice that loud when I had one? It has been so long I barely remember. It must have been loud when I screamed or they would not have taken my tongue. That is what I tell myself. If I had not screamed then, could I speak now?
The road has turned more green. We left behind that burnt out town. Those bodies left to rot on the hot earth if the sun does not bake them or the coyotes devour them first.
I like the word, devour. It represents a hunger deeper than eating. Something ravenous. Something animal. Something in all the men who ever had me or wanted to have me. Something I recognize in myself. Something that was there when I fired those two shots. Whatever desire I had to devour I filled that day.
Jon does not devour. Jon barely speaks. Maybe one day he will be mute like me. Mute by choice.
We both lost things. When we sit at the fire at night we never look at one another. He looks at the ground. I look to the horizon. Where I now have hope he only bears sorrow. How it must be, to have the tongue to speak yet no words to say while I have so many words I would say if only I had the tongue to speak.
The injustice of it. Where once he had a future he now only bears the weight of bodies and the suffocation of souls. When I once saw only misery I now see freedom.
He does not keep me here. I could ride anywhere I like, go anywhere I wanted. The money is mine. He never asks for it or about it. Maybe he does not know. I doubt that though.
The only thing that keeps side by his side is that I have nowhere else to go. Mute as I am I need someone to speak for me.
If only I could speak. I am so eloquent in my mind. I borrow the voices of others, softer than I think my own voice was. I hardly remember what my own voice sounded like. There is no one left to tell me. Anyone who ever heard my voice is dead. Buried in the unforgiving earth that made this man the justice that freed me from my burden but kept him chained in his.
How ironic.
He learns to read my expressions. When things get difficult I learn to read his. He has a sign for readying my gun, holding it, and then for keeping it low to surprise others. They never see it coming. Not from a woman. He knows me better than they do. Then again, we shed blood together. You know someone when you do that.
He never touches me. At first I do not sleep until he does and then not really. I do not know him and the men I have known I could not trust. He never comes for me. He never says anything about it to me. We only speak when absolutely necessary and then only the bare minimum of words he needs so I understand.
He said my husband raped and killed his wife. I walked away not because it embarrassed me or I did not believe him that day. I walked away because I knew it was true. I knew in that moment what awaited me.
When my husband's brother came to me I expected it. I knew it from the moment I stood over the grave and they lowered his casketed body into the ground. He always wanted me. I was surprised it took him that long. Three years that my husband was in jail. But he always loved Paul more than he wanted me. When my husband's blood ran cold his ran hot.
Jon's blood is neither. He does not want me. I do not want him. In strange towns with stranger men he pretends we are married. Sometimes we are siblings. Always he protects me. Or protects them and himself from me. He sees how I hold my gun. I am not weak any longer.
It is the taste of blood. I have had it in my mouth for the last time. Shooting my husband's brother was the moment I realized I did not need to run any longer. That was the moment he knew I am dangerous too.
He does it to protect them from me.
Maybe that is why I did it. Why I put the gun to his forehead in his sleep. Maybe I was too worried he would end me before I would end him. He just opened his eyes and looked at me, almost begged me to do it. But I could not.
Why?
Selfishness I think.
Not because I needed someone to care for me. Because I wanted someone to share my burden. Someone to share the load I carried. His pain was different from mine but at least he had pain. We understood one another the way no one else would. Or could.
That is probably why he never mentioned it. Why he did not leave either. He needed someone for his pain too. I think before he hoped I would kill him to end his pain. But when I did not he realized at least we had pain together. Worse relationships have been built on less.
We built the house together. He did not act surprised when I insisted. At this point I am not sure of anything I do surprises him. I do not think I would want it to. I am too tired for surprises.
The town is small and word travels fast. They do not know what to think of us. We live together. We live apart. We do not talk to anyone and yet the rumors fly. Sometimes he tells me about them when we eat together. We are not cooks but it is food.
That is our simplicity. The food is food. The land is ours to be cultivated, cared for, and harvested. The animals are for labor. The house is for shelter. We want nothing more than these. At first.
Later I insist on a few things. He teaches me his language. It is the only way I can read the books he buys. He does not read in English. I buy the English books. Reading is how I speak. Sometimes I write but only to tell him what I need when I am not around.
I do not tell him what I want. He does not tell me either. I see the way he looks at the little children in town and remember he had a son. I catch him from the corner of my eye watching as I look at the children playing.
I think we both considered it but then he moves on and so do I. It would not have been possible anyway. The Indians who stole my tongue stole that from me too. I did not want it when I was married or afterward. Not with those men. I would have murdered that child in its crib. But now? I move on.
The years pass. We grow old. He starts to whiten and I gray. We move more slowly but we still move the same. I hold a gun on the men who try and rob us, thinking we will not fight. I shoot them both in the head. He buries the bodies. We live from that moment on like we always have: in our silence.
The silence is different now. I buried him. The only man I wanted to love but never did. The only man who never touched me once he saw me. He was the only man who saw me.
Now I live as we always did. In my silence. Now I am alone.