Dressed at the moment in only his long johns, Arthur peered down into the little bit of jagged, tarnished mirror he had propped upon the peeling tabletop. He'd unbuttoned his long johns to the waist and allowed the arms to drape loosely about himself where he sat in his wooden chair. As he brought his straight razor up to his cheek and listened to its slow, scraping whoosh against his stubble—the only sound in his quiet room—he felt another humid breeze waft in from the window that overlooked Shady Belle.
Finished with his swipe, he jiggled the razor through the water in the bowl that sat on the table nearby. And his eye caught on the ridiculous penguin getup hanging against his wall—white bow tie and all. It'd be the finest clothing he'd ever donned in his life. Finer even than what he'd watched the younger version of himself wear on the wedding day he'd conjured up in that silly little dream of his several months ago.
'Look at you,' he remembered her whispering when she'd seen him. 'My, if you don't clean up.'
Wildflowers in her hair, picked fresh from the mountain prairie. And in her plain, sweet cream little antique wedding gown, she'd had to break away to nurse their newborn son halfway through the ceremony.
Still facing the tuxedo, Arthur's eyes drifted down. Then as he lowered his chin a bit, a soft, almost imperceptible smile graced his lips. Tomfoolery. It hadn't even happened. But if anything, his dreams told him it wasn't a life of pageantry and parading around in fine silk and satin that he longed for.
Before he turned all the way back to the mirror to continue shaving, a sharp, piercing pain shot through his shoulder like an ice pick, and with a slight grimace he instinctively drew it up and rolled it until the sharpness lulled to a rumbling ache. It was yet another method of self-preservation he'd subconsciously learned to live with recently. And his gaze staggered away from the outfit back to his reflection in the mirror. He'd be a wounded man packaged in a penguin getup.
Wounded in more ways than one.
Though he tried to refocus his eyes on the mirror, refocus his mind on the task of shaving, his gaze flitted down. And he braced himself as the wave of memories of that night crashed over him.
Heat and dampness, he remembered most of all—he was sure it was due to swimming in his own sweat. And pain. The kind that itched and swamped and ebbed. Pulled him under until his vision was blurry and hazy and clouded, and his breath hitched and caught and scratched at his throat and lungs like the rabid claws and fangs of a wild dog.
"Bundle him up in the blanket, so he quits movin'," "We need to dress the wound," and, "Hand me that bottle," he'd heard interspersed with the hushed, "You're all right now, Mr. Morgan. You're all right. You're safe now."
Thrashing, he remembered. Thrashing a bit in the cot. Because reason was coming and going, which meant the united pieces made less sense than if reason had walked out altogether. And he couldn't understand much, no matter how he tried. Couldn't understand why Susan, Tilly, and Mary-Beth were crowding him, rushing around like hens, and crowding him some more. At least, that was what he could make out through sweat-soiled, bleary eyes and past the pain.
Then he'd seen them. Or thought he'd seen them. His loves. Standing just there—beyond the three frenzied women, but inside the lit canvas. Like two gracious doves, perched still and peaceful, though he could just feel the pain, concern, and sadness written in her face.
That was what it was, more than anything, through the darkness of night and the fog in his head—a feeling. A foggy sight and a foggy feeling combined.
He could make out her edges more easily; but when he began to look down, he could only see the top of his little blonde head, and no more. A macabre sight for anyone else, but he'd known—in that moment, he remembered, he'd been sure of it, had known without a doubt, had pushed away the notion that it was too good a thing to hope for—that it was because he was close.
Through his heady daze, only too late had he realized that the groaned, unintelligible grunts and calls were arising from his own throat. Whispered and hoarse, broken and airy, more than half-crazed.
"'L-Lies...?'" Tilly had scrunched her brows and nose as she and Susan had looked at each other. "Is that what he said?"
Susan had turned back to him then. "What lies, Mr. Morgan?" she'd lifted her voice a bit to try and make sure she got through, as she hunched over him and blocked the bright candlelight a moment. "There're no lies, here. You're safe, you're all right, truly."
"'Lies...'" Mary-Beth pondered to herself. "'Eyes' maybe?"
"No, there's definitely an 'L' in there," Tilly remarked.
"'But it sounds like he's sayin' 'eyes' too," Mary-Beth responded over his head. She paused a moment to continue listening to his broken ramblings and outcries. "'I-zic...' 'I-sic...'" she repeated in a mumble, then finally whipped out a guess of, "'I sick?!'"
"Yes, we know you're sick, Mr. Morgan," Susan said to him, above speaking volume again. "That's why we're tryin' to get you all better. And you will be better. But I don't want you worryin' about it; just leave that to us."
Again and again he'd called out to them, huffed and strained, panicked at the thought that they could flutter away at any moment. And he finally tried to prop himself up.
"Lemme go!" he'd shouted, his voice easily shattering as he reached out for them. "Lemme go!"
But the three women had struggled with him and gently pressed him back to the cot, unknowing that he hadn't been speaking to them.
He'd wanted to come away, to be allowed to go with someone.
And with his eyes wide, he'd tried to dodge the women's figures, to keep them in his line of sight. But when one of the women passed before him, they were gone. He'd thought then, that it was because it hadn't been his time.
As Arthur sat in his wooden chair, head hanging, cheek caressed by the humid Shady Belle evening clime, he knew well enough it'd been a delusion. Nothing more than the haunting, pathetic result of a lonely, hulled man plagued by regrets of the life he'd lived—or hadn't lived. Of the choices he'd made, the loves he'd abandoned.
It was only that the memories and regrets seemed to be morphing into delusions, and the delusions seemed to be accumulating and piling up.
First the dreams, his own longing for a life and a made-up story he'd never lived. Then the wispy vision when he'd been injured. Then with Mary, sitting on the steps of the Hotel Grand, he'd seen them in his mind's eye, so clearly. He'd hoped in the moment that that'd been simply his own projection, his own guilt and bank of memories—a very natural thing. But the lines were starting to blur; and as he dissected, he couldn't be sure now what was memory and what was delusion. Maybe when apprised all together, the evidence for aberration was stacking up too greatly.
Mary... Hunching over the edge of the table, he rested an elbow atop it and wiped a weary hand down one half of his face with a long sigh. He let his head rest there and rubbed his eye socket with his fingers. He hadn't forgotten. But he couldn't pretend the hurt and fear weren't still there, mingled right along with the tepid hope.
'Don't give your heart in pieces,' he suddenly thought he heard, spoken rather than whispered, but somehow still as near-silent as a sauntering, rolling breath of wind. And he began to lift his head from his hand. 'Won't you let it heal?'
Keeping still, he simply let his eyes slowly slide to look around the room, intent on each word he seemed to be hearing.
'I need you to be loved, Arthur. Like you never would let me do,' he heard again; and as hushed-quiet as it was, he couldn't deny this time that he heard it clear as a bell. 'Maybe that's how you can honor us.'
With that, just as soon as the last word finished, he quickly leapt up and pushed away from the table, the leg of the chair screeching as it scraped and tumbled back to the floor—all in one jerked jolt—the beating muscle in his chest leaping and flipping just as violently against his ribs. And with a hand held out before him, he stood there, frozen stiff, trying to catch his breath with huffed swallows.
For it hadn't been a memory of words spoken in reality, in his lived life; based on the context, that much he knew. It wasn't possible.
And for the life of him, he couldn't remember dreaming up a world where El— where she wasn't alive. He wouldn't want that in his dreams too, couldn't bear it.
So as he stood there alone in the quiet room, he was forced to realize it had to be either a partial memory of a dream he couldn't seem to remember the rest of—uncovering itself and rising like bubbles to the surface—or a delusion. Or both.
Clenching his eyes tight, he wagged his head fiercely to force himself to break from it, to snap out of it. He had to push it down, push all thoughts of them away, or he wouldn't make it. He wouldn't make it.
.
about a month later
.
Sitting forward in the doctor's chair, sleeked and drenched with sweat, Arthur closely watched the man go to the sink. Listened to the water trickle and flow as he carefully washed his hands. "What is it?"
"It's not good news." Without looking back at him.
"Well, I guessed that," he quipped back in a drawling tone, nearly rolling his eyes.
"You got tuberculosis."
Tuberculosis. Repeated and reverberating inside him like the boisterous, clanging, low rattle of a gong. Like silver lightning had struck his chair, ominous thunder immediately slipping in with a loud crack, rather than following from a distance; and it was all he heard.
One moment, he'd been in one world, and the next, he was in another. And his mind somehow both spun and stopped, and his head swamped, and he couldn't see more than one wiggly thing at a time. And from the top of his head, down slowly across his flesh all the way to the soles of his feet, Arthur felt as if he'd been doused with boiling hot oil—sharp prickles and wayward goose pimples, fiery blood that solidified like iron and weighed heavily in his veins, an unrelenting wave of dizzying nausea. And a heart ticking faster than the arms of any clock could manage—faster than a bee's wings—on its way to explode, right here in his ribs, right here in the goddamn doctor's office.
The doctor had seen blood and opened flesh, surely.
It explained so much.
Surely, bits of raw flesh splattered across the damn doctor's walls wouldn't be the worst he'd ever seen.
The ripping coughs, the struggle to breathe terrorizing his every moment, waking and sleeping. The taste of iron in his mouth, the unparalleled fatigue. Only made sense.
But he wouldn't be there anymore to help the doctor clean up after himself. He'd have to pardon him on that account.
"I'm really sorry for you son, it's a hell of a thing," he heard muffled from somewhere afar, as if he himself were under water.
"Well, what you mean?" he breathed with a quiet drawl as he sat back in the chair, wanting the man to slow down, if he wouldn't stop. Wanting to be sure it was himself the old fool was speaking to, that it was himself who was the patient—nobody else. Wanting to understand, wanting some kind of tether to the dark brown room, to the dark brown moment.
"You're real sick, you..." the doctor paused a beat, contemplating how to explain further. He finally lifted his hands to simply add a gesture to his words. "It's a…progressive disease. You'll be..."
No, no. No. This wasn't happening. No.
But the lack of appetite. The sensation of slowly rotting from the inside out. Only made sense. How had he not made the connection before?
"Well, the best thing is rest and getting somewhere warm and dry, and taking it easy. Now…is that possible?"
"Sure, I can just take my winters in my country club in California. No," he bit back sharply, consciously choosing to use what speckled breath he had left between the squeezed walls of his flailing lungs to deliver the sass and anger he felt at such an obtuse question. His own lungs hadn't let him off easy for it, and it produced a small cough. And then he grumbled, "It's not possible."
The doctor had quickly noted his mirthless tone of voice and had reached for his pipe and matches. And by the time Arthur had finished delivering his lip, he was lighting it and blowing out the flame. "Well..." he said, taking a leisurely puff. "Like I said, I... I'm real sorry."
A death sentence. His wages finally come due. It was happening to him.
There was no way out of it, no adventurous way to cheat it. No answer, nothing to do, nothing to say. No one to help even if they could, not truly. No one by his side. And as he sat there slumped in the chair with the weight of it plopped bluntly in his lap, it was laid out before him: in the face of his end, how truly and completely alone he was in the world—stranded, emptied, isolated—and utterly powerless to change that.
But what Arthur couldn't possibly realize, as he sat in the doctor's dimly lit office, was that he wasn't alone.
Unseen by human eyes, she stood in the corner. Rivers spilling down her cheeks, weeping and sputtering. Deeply, wholly, and entirely heartbroken for him as she watched the scene. Unable to keep from hiccupping as she softly whispered his name.
"Yeah, well..." Arthur mumbled as he pushed himself to get up.
"Now, w-wait, wait," the doctor held him back, going to a drawer and returning with a syringe. "Let me get you a little bit more…energy today."
Arthur prepared himself with a wince and a momentary grit of his teeth as he watched the needle pierce the flesh of his arm, watched the drugs seep into his vein. But his head was so hazy, in the end he hardly felt it. When it was finished, he knew the doctor had done all anyone could do for him now. He slowly lifted himself up out of the chair with a loose nod to him.
And when Arthur half-stumbled out, feeling utterly, thoroughly undignified and altogether alone, she watched as he walked right past her.
He continued out the front door and slowly down the dusty stone streets, now absent of any bustling chatter, any hurried heartbeats, though he hardly noticed. Maybe they were there, but he didn't have the extra mental space to let them matter. His gaze naturally kept itself sagging low anyway, and a yellowish hue tinged his vision.
Though he knew it shouldn't be, it was so peculiar, so dream-like and eerie. The space of two minutes, and all he knew, all he could see, all he could think, was changed entirely.
His own goddamn putrid arrogance. His apparent inability to learn anything—not a single thing—from his own life as he went on living it.
The silly monk, so bright and brimming with hope and optimism about someone he didn't know.
The disease-ridden man himself. So unconcerned with his own state, as it seemed all he could bring himself to do was care for others with the time and energy he had left.
And the same man's wife, vouching profusely for the life he'd lived, long after he'd gone. For its worth, in the face of its brevity. For the bravery he'd shown in trying.
But now that Arthur had his own life slipping away, now that he was scrambling to gather it, those things seemed to be willing to wait for him, to take a back seat. For a moment.
How very clearly he could recall all his life…all the sudden. As if it were just yesterday that he was walking lockstep down the main street of Valentine with John; watched his brother grow into a man; was introduced to him. Just yesterday that he took Jack fishing. Just yesterday that he took his own son fishing. That he held his son in his arms. Held his son's mother. Was held by his own mother.
When the tense, cramped pain in his shoulders momentarily became too much, and his feet shuffled to a natural stop, he looked up to find the strangest sight: a strong, full-grown buck in all its regalia and graceful majesty, crossing paths with him. Man-made stone paths, amidst a dense city. Even in his harried daze, that much he had the wherewithal to grapple with.
For just a moment, the buck stopped and looked up at him, as he'd just done himself. And for that moment, it felt as if he'd been caught and held before a mirror. For when he couldn't resist the impulse to bring his brows together and cock his head at it, he recognized something there—just in the glint of its eyes.
But before he could get a better view, it had darted off.
And like that, the hazy-yellow cloud in his mind gradually dissipated. But as the sounds of life around him resumed and reached his ears once again, he could still see the buck's tail where it scurried around the corner. And filled with urgent fear at the thought of never seeing it again, he tried to tear off after it. But he was brutally reminded by reality when he found that his energy was already all but sapped and drained, found that he couldn't take more than a few rushed steps before his wheezes caught up to him and tore at his chest like vinegar-laced talons.
.
Turns out, I'm not very well. Got tuberculosis. Doctor did not know how long I would last. All them bullets shot at me, all them horses threw me, all them fights and it was beating up that pathetic little fella Downes that killed me, I reckon. He's the only man I been near was real sick. He begged for mercy and I beat the bastard and he died. And now I'm dying, too. The way of the world. My mind is racing, of course. That monk and that nun, Downes's widow, Abigail, Mary, Dutch when I first knew him, Hosea, my dead Pa, the no good bastard, the whole crowd of people. And what kind of a man have I been? What kind of a man am I? What world is this we live in? A land of fury or a place of love? Am I being prepared for eternal damnation? Am I past any kind of saving? Is that all fairy tales?
Man ain't got much good in him, I ain't got much good in me, I don't think, and yet, I see goodness. I see it, if not in me, in good folk. In Abigail and her love for Jack. In that silly monk. In Downes, I guess. Begging, not for himself but for the poor, even though he was near starving himself.
Maybe I don't want salvation. Part of me has always longed for death. Well, here it comes, I suppose.
.
Dear Readers,
I am so so sorry that this short chapter is what you had to wait the last several weeks for. 🙈😓 With the holidays and everything, I tried to take it a lil easy. I'm also constantly so exhausted, bc I'm... v v sad & lonely all the time... so there's that. 😶 And I think most of all, I put off writing this chapter bc I knew it'd be so painful, and it definitely was. 💔
We still have up to 5-6 chapters to go, if you can believe it, so hang in there with me if you can. 💗
There have been a couple of you reach out to me on tumblr recently, and I've been just blown away and deeply touched to hear your thoughts, experiences, and what this series has meant to you. (I was thinking, this series has been a lot to read-really a lot-so if you've read any portion of it and are still here, you must enjoy it. 😊💕) I am so, so grateful for each of you and hope the very best for each and every single one of you, even if I don't know you're there. 💕
Please know you can always reach out to me on tumblr (rivetingrosie4) if you have a question, request, or anything. 💛🌻
Anyways, thank you so much for your generosity with your kind words. They always deeply encourage me and help me keep going.
Ariana, Will (both? unless there's one of you who reviewed a chapter twice—I didn't know you could do that! 😄), Paige, TJ, Jen (it's so so wonderful to have you here! weolcome!), and each guest reviewer (the most recent guest review genuinely put a smile on my face—thank you so much for being patient with me and at the same time sharing that you were on pins & needles for the next chapter, haha!)
Love to all,
Rosie