Tryin'
They do try. Lord Almighty help me, they do try. An' not only my patience.
JD reads his dime novels aloud... and that'd be punishing enough, but it seems the boy ain't capable of doin' just that, but has t' stop every so often an' talk the whole thing over - for what feels like hours - before he starts the next chapter. An' he tells jokes. Seems he found a book of 'em in the general store an' he's been dyin' to try 'em on someone ever since. I jis' got lucky, that's all.
They get worse by the day, but I cain't tell him that.
Buck, of course, jis' loves to talk about his way with the ladies of the town. And he sings, oh Lord does he sing! - if you'd call it singing, that it. Where he learned some of them ditties I hate t'think. I swear, if he starts on that one about Tumbleweed Tess and her tremblin' thighs... oh well, yeah it ain't dull, that's for sure. But sooner of later that boy is gonna get himself heard by one of the other ladies of the town, and havin' his mouth washed out with soap'll be the last of his worries. I'd point this out t'him, but I cain't... at least, not now.
An' he knows it, son of a bitch that he is.
Josiah jis' talks. If you've ever listened to Josiah talkin', you know how that goes, all round and twisted and sixteen layers too deep f'the rest of us. It's all between him and his Lord, an' I'm thinkin' they'll have most of the answers to life sorted out by the time I'm able to get a word in. Problem is, none of the rest of of the world will be able to make head or tail of it.
Hell, I can't make hell or tail of it now. But it sure does help me get t'sleep.
Vin don't talk at all, jis' sits and thinks. Got an idea he forgits t'say much unless we all start him off, an' right now that ain't what Ezra would call a 'practicable stratagem'. Nice and peaceful it is, though... 'course there is such a thing as too nice an' peaceful. Gets me t'sleep near as fast as Josiah's talkin'.
Ezra now, he's better with children. Does his card tricks an' magic, an' tells them stories, cheers 'em up something wonderful. I kinda wish I could talk him into doin' some of them now, I wouldn't mind it... but he'd be too uncomfortable, I get that. So he jis' reads to me from the paper, or the safe bits of his letters from Maude... an' he talks about all the happenin's round town.
Whether I can trust what he says is a whole 'nother matter, yeah, but at least he makes it interestin', and I can always check with one of the others about what really went on.
Later, o'course.
And Chris? Yeah, he reads from one of his books, and I haveta say - or I would iffen I could, which I cain't - they're better than JD's. Mind, I had to give him my word - on paper yet, seein' as I couldn't give it to him straight - that no one would hear from me 'bout how he loves all that Knights of the Round Table poetic stuff - Idylls, think it's called. F'some reason, he thinks Buck an' the others would take the piss...
Yeah, he's right. They would.
Pretty damn good it is, an' imagining Chris Larabee as one of them knights is more entertainin' than any of the stuff they're all tryin' to entertain me with. A bedside manner, these friends of mine do not have.
My own fault, it is, I had to be the one to pick up that infection goin' round town... an' it's nice that they're here for me while the damn thing works its way through an' I get my strength - and my voice - back. Somethin' I ain't used to... and awful nice.
An they are, all six of them, so tryin'...
-the end-