"You got sad eyes, mister. Like you seen sad things."
- Mickey
As Arthur slept one night, he was once again met by dreams of Isaac and Eliza.
This time he was swept into their cabin, back into the master bedroom—a room that had held many intimate moments, both sweet and painful.
He could see everything: Eliza's delicate doilies on the dresser tops, the window where the light would filter in. But something was wrong, off-kilter. He noticed the lamp smashed on the floor, the drawers open and ajar. Things and clothes flung about the place.
"Get your hands off me!" came a scream behind him in Eliza's voice.
"Mm—hot damn. We oughta take a peek at little prairie flowers more often. She's somethin' else. Think we got time to have us a little fun with miss blondie here?"
"No! Just get the job done, and let's git outta here!"
"Take it!" Eliza yelled. "It's all I got, I swear. Just leave us alone! Please!"
No, no, Arthur thought as he hung his head.
"We won't tell a soul you were here! I swear it! I swear!"
Not this, he begged inwardly as he began to turn. Please don't show me this.
"Don't you touch him! Leave him alone!" he heard Eliza scream.
And just like that he saw them: Isaac and Eliza crouched on the floor with expressions of terror on their faces and two inky, shadowy figures with their guns aimed low. When he turned to see them, they resumed movement from having been frozen, as if they'd waited for him.
"Take me," Eliza cried out, her eyes riddled with panic when she saw no other way. "He's just a six-year-old little boy! T-take me and leave him," she stammered, pressing a frenzied hand to her chest. "If you do, he'll be okay. His daddy'll come for him. He will."
Her face started to crumple as she sniffed and sobbed. "He'll be terrified out of his wits to parent alone, and he might not ever even cry for me. But he'll make it work; he'll take good care of him. He'll be a good papa. I know it, I know he will. So, you see," she swallowed, "if you shoot me and leave him, he'll be all right."
The man with his gun aimed at Isaac turned his face to her for a moment.
"You're kinda missin' the point, blondie," he said with a nasty grin before turning back to Isaac.
Bile rose in Arthur's throat. He spun to look at the drawer where he'd left the gun for Eliza—it was open and empty. He looked back in their direction. The man had two guns—Arthur's own was the one he had upright and aimed. At Isaac.
Arthur tried to move but couldn't. He looked down at his hands. He was no more than a mist here.
Eliza's blood-curdling scream pierced every ear as she reached her arms out towards their son. She frenetically scrambled when she saw the man lift the weapon and watched his thumb rise to cock it.
"ARTHUR!" she screamed. And midway through her scream, the two men froze.
Arthur watched as she gasped and caught her breath, an expression of confusion flitting across her face when she looked around but the two men didn't move.
She tried to lunge forward but was stuck. She pulled at her gown and scratched at the floor around her knees, clawing frantically to be released, but it was no use. She was glued solid to the floor. She looked up. So was Isaac.
Arthur could hear her thoughts aloud as she looked at their son, her brows knitting tight together in sorrow.
Oh, please, baby, talk to me. Please.
She locked eyes with him and took a breath. "Arthur is your father, Isaac," she said with a swallow and a solemn nod. "Arthur is."
Arthur watched as Isaac's eyes filled unbearably full with glistening tears.
"Oh, baby. I'm so, so sorry we never told you," she sobbed. "It was wrong of us. We thought it would hurt you less. But the real truth is, he didn't want you to turn out like him."
"But I… But…why? What's so wrong with that?" Isaac sniffed, his lips trembling. "I love him, Mama."
"Oh, Isaac! He loved you, baby. He loved you so much," she said as he began crying.
Arthur watched as Isaac moaned and sobbed, the tears spilling like rivers from his eyes, and Arthur's heart tore with every sound. "Tell him, Eliza."
"He loved you so, Isaac!" she said. "He did. He might not have loved me. I never was certain of that," she said quietly, gulping to get the words out.
Arthur looked at her.
"But there was never a doubt in my mind that he loved you. The world wide. He did. I saw it. It was one of the things I loved about him so much." She gasped and sputtered, beginning to weep along with him. "He loved you, Isaac. Oh, how he loved you."
Arthur watched as Isaac lifted his eyes to his mother, his frown still bent and somber.
Isaac slowly shook his head. "Not enough," he whispered. "Where is he?"
As the men started to slowly move again, Eliza's eyes darted up, and she sucked in a gasp as she realized the world was resuming course.
"No. No," she panicked, spreading her hands out to Isaac and beginning to lunge as the man finished cocking the gun.
Arthur felt himself pant and heave with her at the thought of what was about to happen.
And it all did happen, so fast. Isaac never buckled or wavered, but stood his ground. His frown trembled as he managed the frailest of whispers: "I love you, Ma—"
The man's finger tightened around the trigger, and he shot Isaac down.
Eliza's skull-splitting screech immediately ripped through the air, and Arthur dipped his head.
That was the pure, unadulterated sound of a broken heart. She'd let out a cry loud enough for the both of them.
She fell to her hands and knees, her body convulsing violently as she retched hard onto the floor.
"Ah, sick!" one of the men jeered as he quickly lifted his boot. "Who's gonna clean this up? Ain't me."
"Shut it, Jeb," the other man snapped. "We ain't gonna be round to clean up any of it, stupid. Any of it."
He reached down and took Eliza's blonde hair in his grip close to her scalp. "Come here, pretty little thing," he murmured in an awful silky tone with a sneer-like smile across his face. "Have you another gander at the good work I done."
With her eyes half-mast and weary, he jerked her head towards Isaac's dead body, where she clenched her hands and let out another piercing scream. Finally her lungs died out and her screams gave way to pathetic, guttural, animalistic gurgles and sobs as he threw her to the ground where she crumpled next to Isaac.
She crawled towards him, reaching out and cradling his body to hers with what little strength she had left.
"My baby…" she cooed in broken sobs and sniffled quietly as she stroked his cheek. "My sweet, sweet baby."
"I cain't hardly take this no more, Leroy," the other man said. "If you're gonna shut her up, do it now, will ya?"
The man who'd shot Isaac lifted Arthur's gun and took aim at Eliza on the floor.
Arthur watched her play with Isaac's hair as though he were still alive, gravity pulling her quiet tears in streams to the floor as her lips trembled.
"I tried, Arthur," she breathed. "I did."
Arthur shut his eyes tight and cringed as he heard the gunshot ring out. The clap lingered in the air for a few seconds before it drifted away, giving way to an awful, poisonous silence.
"M-maybe we shouldn'a done that," one of them said after the air stilled. "Look it. She really did love him an awful lot…poor lil gal."
"You ain't goin' soft on me, are ya?"
"N-no…it's just… Aw, let's git outta here. They cain't a' possibly had nobody in the world."
"I sure hope not. That's half the fun. Didn't she say somebody would come by?"
"I don't remember," the other grumbled as they left. "Grab the stupid ten bucks, and let's git outta here."
When Arthur finally opened his eyes the men were gone, though he hadn't heard their footsteps leaving.
Isaac's and Eliza's slain, broken bodies lay on the floor, still and silent, their blood pooling around them, their eyes open and cold and lifeless. The silence in the room, the silence he remembered only too well that they'd left in his life, was deafening.
Empty. No breath. No pulse. No warmth. No life.
"No." He shut his eyes and turned his head, his chest feeling as though it were filled with detonating dynamite.
"No." The pain of seeing them like this… Of reality.
He'd never quite understood or taken time to grapple with how the soul was connected to and housed in the body. How the body was where the soul lived, but a person was somehow both at once—no less of one than the other.
He'd seen enough people die, seen the people he'd killed. But he'd forced himself to refrain from taking a second moment to look again. Here and now, standing before the empty, broken, lifeless bodies of the people he'd held so dear, he was forced to understand it a little better.
"No," he shook his head. "Get me outta here. I didn't ever need to see this to feel like human shit!" he shouted, his voice steadily rising. He lifted an arm and thrashed against the wall, but his fist fell through it. "I'm done! I've had enough! Wake up, you goddamn son of a bitch!"
At that moment the dog he'd gotten Isaac, still not fully grown, came slowly into the room. She sniffed and kissed them, whimpering and crying when they didn't move to greet her. She finally curled up into a little ball on the floor next to Isaac.
Time seemed to speed up, and the dog's head bobbed up like she'd heard something. She rushed out into the sitting room and came back with the old mercantile owner who'd told Arthur what had happened to them. He must've been there to deliver their groceries. When he saw the state of them, he fell to his knees and cried.
Arthur watched as time sped by again and the coroner came to put their limp, thin bodies in coffins. He was swept out front where a small gathering of people were waiting by gaping holes in the earth.
The old woman who'd been there with Eliza when Arthur first met Isaac was on her knees as they lowered the coffins into the ground.
Arthur swallowed, and his jaw flared. One of them was far too small a coffin to ever be going into the earth.
He listened as the old woman wept and wailed. A preacher was there. The mercantile owner stood and put a hand to his gray head. A schoolmarm and a few children who must've been Isaac's classmates were gathered and sniffling. There was a group of four young women, one of them with bright red hair Arthur seemed to vaguely recognize. There was an old man with a scraggily beard in a fine suit who removed his bowler and held it to his chest.
I keep thinkin', Arthur… he heard Eliza's weepy words to him on his last visit, so long ago now, when my time finally does come, no one will know I was ever here, on this earth, I mean.
He watched the somber gathering and swallowed past the painful jagged rock in his throat. Oh, they knew, darlin',he thought to himself. We knew.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," the preacher said as they continued to slowly lower the caskets. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the…merciful…for they shall obtain…mercy."
The preacher closed his eyes as the coffins let out a thud when they hit the bottoms of the graves. "Mercy," he whispered to himself and sniffed. He swallowed as he opened his eyes to address the gathering. "Mercy!" he said. "We don't see a lot of it in our world. There is no sense to be made of it. For it is only the face of pure evil who could've done this. So young, they were. So young and dear."
The preacher's head sagged, but he looked back up. "But, good people," he looked around at the group, "it is one of these scriptures that reminds us: 'Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.' It is that we will cling to today."
Arthur watched as time again sped forward and the group left one by one, dropping handfuls of dirt on the coffins. A couple of the men covered the graves, leaving two crosses erect in the ground. The sun and moon rotated quickly in the sky a number of times, and things returned to a normal speed again when he heard hoof steps.
His eyes shot wide when he saw himself come over the hill on Bo. He watched himself freeze when he saw the graves and bow his head. He rode over and slid off Bo, falling beside the graves.
He could remember clearly what he'd felt in this moment: that he wanted to sink into the earth with them.
As he stood watching himself, all at once memories of them flashed before his eyes.
But all the soft touches, the tears and the comfort, the smiles, and the laughter—he felt certain none of it mattered if it was only ever going to lead them here. Because of one choice he'd made.
The words of the preacher again resounded in his head: "…who could've done this."
As Arthur looked at himself on the ground, a string of expletives erupted out of him. "You!"he rushed for his younger self with every intention of wringing his own neck. But his hands went straight through him.
"How could you?! How could you ever leave them?! They were precious!" his voice broke as his shoulders sagged. "More precious than anything you ever robbed or killed for. And y…you…" he tried to catch his breath, "you might as well have killed them yourself."
He gritted his teeth. "You turned your back on 'em! You were their family! They loved you! They loved you!" His brows pinched together, and he almost whined. "Where're you gonna get that now, huh? You sad, sick son of a bitch!"
As Arthur watched his younger self release a couple raggedy tears, his face slowly began to relax and smooth. "And you…" He swallowed. You loved 'em too.
Isaac's simple words again rang loudly in his mind, and he cringed and ducked like he'd been hit over the head:
Not enough.
He shut his eyes and let out a breath. "They were your family," he said, his own voice fed up with him. He opened his eyes to look at himself. "All she wanted was for you to remember her, to remember them. In life, or in death, if that's how things went. And here you are about to stuff it all away, to put them away like they never existed, like they meant nothin'—for your own lousy survival." He followed his own gaze to the graves. "Selfish to the last."
He shook his head. "Mercy…" he scoffed bitterly before looking back at himself. "You don't deserve it."