Of Schemes and Dreams
by AliasMe
"Look, Heyes, I told you when we started trying for our amnesty that maybe we ought to split up and go for it on our own, because you'd probably make it and I wouldn't. " (Kid Curry in "The McCreedy Bust: Going, Going, Gone!")
Hannibal Heyes slept light.
Owlhoots, twigs cracking underfoot, a tread on the stair ... any of these would bring him awake in no time. There were some things kept him awake, too. Unplayable hands of poker, for instance. Schemes and dreams. Plans and possibilities.
Tonight he woke up because something just didn't feel right.
As his eyes came open he registered several things at once -- hotel room, Porterville. Middle of the night. Lying on his right side. No sounds from below, nothing floating through the open window. Then, finally, that there were no even, steady breath sounds next to him.
And he rolled over.
Kid Curry was sat by the window, a sillhouette against the gently moving drape. He had his gun in his hands and he was cleaning it by moonlight. More than that, though. He was dressed -- boots, vest and all.
Something definitely not right.
Heyes levered his hands behind his head and lay there for a bit, just looking. As usual, the Kid was being meticulous. He cleaned his gun every day, whether it needed it or no, and it seemed to give him some peace, some thinking time. Generally not in the dead of night, though.
Clearing his throat, Heyes said across the room, "What are you doing?"
Curry hardly acknowledged him, just shifted his shoulders a little.
Heyes tried again. He got up into a sitting position and asked casually, "You fixing to go somewhere?"
"Soon enough," the Kid muttered back to him.
"You want to let me in on your plans?" Heyes pushed aside the bedclothes with his feet and swung them on to the floor.
In all the years of their shared childhood and youth, in all the years they had ridden together, Hannibal Heyes felt he had never quite mastered the art of reading Kid Curry's mind, even though the Kid thought he could. He could gauge a certain look alright, sense oncoming dangers even when Curry wore his most hooded expression. But he had never quite got the hang of interpreting why his partner would abruptly slide from his habitual affability into sharp-edged gloom. He followed so willingly along the pathways of Heyes' mind, a comforting shadow at his shoulder, that it never failed to surprise Heyes when the Kid stopped short and detached himself.
"You got an idea where we should go from here?" was Heyes' third attempt.
He got up and stretched. Lom Trevors wanted them out of Porterville in the morning, and he had considered lying awake to ponder where their first steps along the road to an honest life should take them. But weariness had overcome him around eleven thirty and he had pitched headlong into sleep only a minute or two after the Kid. Now it looked like Curry was the one doing the pondering.
"Kinda," conceded Curry, dragging his eyes off his gun at last. "I thought I might go south."
"You thought ..."
"Yes, Heyes, I thought. I thought I might go south."
"On your own?"
"On my own."
Heyes padded across the floor towards him. "What you want to do that for?"
The eyes the Kid turned on him were the eyes Heyes always hated to see.
"We have to split up, Heyes."
"We do?"
"It makes sense."
"Kid," Heyes said, leaning up against the sill of the window and crossing his arms across his chest. "When you're making sense, it's generally pretty good sense ... but now's not one of those times."
It was disturbing the way Kid Curry completely ignored his tone of voice. You could generally rely on getting a rise out of him. He was long-suffering in that way.
"The Governor said a year." Curry parted the two drapes with the barrel of his gun and peered down at the street. "One whole long year. And that's just governor-speak. He's probably thinking two years. Heck, who knows what the politics will be a year from now. He could withdraw the offer. He's the Governor ... he can do what the hell he likes."
"Seems to me like we got no choice but to go along with what he said, Kid." Heyes wondered to himself why on earth they hadn't sat down together right after exiting Lom Trevors' office and worked through all this. He had thought they were just going to start getting on with it. And that the Kid would fall into line, trusting him, as usual.
Evidently not.
"I can see you're working up to a speech," Heyes said.
"Not really a speech," Curry told him, letting his eyes slide up and meet his partner's. They got most of their best work done when they had the connection. "It's just pretty clear to me. I don't think I can do it."
"What? You want to keep robbing banks?"
"No, I don't want to keep robbing banks. I want the amnesty. I want to start again."
Heyes spread his hands. "This is the only way."
"But we gotta get through the year."
Heyes disdained the year with a little tut but Curry was shaking his head, implacable.
"Don't think I can do it, Heyes. Think you can, though."
"Why'd you think you can't do it, Kid?" Heyes asked, but he already knew. Godammnit, he already knew.
The eyes dropped back on the gun. "You're always telling me." His voice sounded weary. "This thing is trouble. And we have to stay out of trouble. I can't do that. I can't promise you I won't use it. It'll happen, Heyes. You know it will." Curry poked his way through the drapes again. "You know what I'm like."
Heyes regarded the ragged carpet underfoot. He knew he had to tread real carefully. While the Kid had the tendency to underestimate himself in everything except gunmanship and charm, one thing he was very good at was being stubborn.
"Yup, I know," he said.
"I'm a one trick pony," Curry went on, but Hannibal Heyes cut him off with an imperious wave of his hand.
"Well maybe you are -- I'm not saying yes or no, mind -- but that one trick's got us equally as far as anything I've ever done. And it can go on doing that."
"Heyes, you're the one with the brains. You know I could bring us both down with this thing. You know how I am. Why risk it?"
The million dollar question.
Hannibal Heyes scratched at a sideburn tentatively. He uncrossed his arms and re-folded them.
"You're being noble, Kid. I can't cope with that."
Kid Curry snorted. "You just don't like it that I'm right."
Heyes shook his head as if to clear it. The Kid was making this all a lot more complicated than it should be. He was trying to pick the bones out of it. Trying to get to the core of the matter, instead of just following along as usual. Heyes had to admit he quite admired him for it, but he wished he would stop.
"Listen, Kid, you've always been trouble, right from the first moment I met you. I'm not figuring on it ever changing. Your face is going to carry right on annoying people, and other men's wives are going to carry right on batting their eyes at you, and then you're going to carry right on not being able to stand down. I am the only glimmer of hope you have, my friend. You go off on your own and you'll be dead within a month."
Kid Curry hiked his eyebrows up. "Within a month? I was figuring I might last about three."
"Not a chance."
Curry looked sulky. "I knew you didn't trust me, Heyes, but I thought maybe you trusted me a little more than that."
Heyes knew it was the moment to lay it on the line, to say some things that never got said. The most dangerous mood of all was Kid Curry doing sulky and stubborn with a heavy overlay of gloom.
"I trust you completely, Kid. Trust you with my life."
The Kid just looked at him. He chewed his cheek, looked out to the moonlit street, and then back to Heyes.
"You do?" he asked eventually.
"Jesus, Kid. Don't you know that by now? I'd put my miserable life in your hands even if you were a no-trick pony. That's how much I trust you."
Kid Curry laid his gun down on the little table next to him. He shut one eye and squinted up at Heyes.
"Come on, Kid, do I have to say it all? Do I have to tell you all the reasons we have to stay together?"
Curry opened his eye. "Nope," he said. "Not tonight. Save 'em for another time."
Heyes realised he had been holding his breath. He let it out slowly.
"I think this is our first lesson on going straight," he said.
"How's that?"
"No-one's gonna help us but us. I gotta trust you. You gotta trust me. That's the whole story."
"Wait a minute ... I gotta trust you as well?"
Heyes felt relief explode inside him but he carried on looking earnest. He nodded.
"We-ell," Curry said thoughtfully. "That could be kinda hard."
"You gotta try."
Curry rubbed his chin. "Alright," he conceded. "I'll try."
Heyes leaned down and slapped him on the thigh. "Good," he said.
"And you'll really trust me, right?" Curry said gravely, pushing it one last time.
"Of course, Kid. Absolutely."
"You won't be nagging me not to get into trouble or nothing ... or not to drink too much ... or get into any fights? You won't be bossing me about all the damn time like in Devil's Hole. Because you trust me."
"That's right."
Curry nodded slowly, then his face creased into a smile, a sunny smile that travelled right up into his eyes and warmed Heyes down to his socks.
"Well maybe," he said, which for Kid Curry was a pretty ringing endorsement. "Maybe it could work. I don't know, perhaps south's not such a grand idea. And ... if you're stupid enough to risk it."
"Oh, I'm stupid enough, Kid. Just can't seem to help myself." Heyes let his own smile seep back across his face. Seemed like a long time since the two of them had been grinning together like loons. He had no doubt but that the next year or two, if they survived it, was going to be tougher than they knew. And dangerous. And they'd most likely be pulling on resources they didn't even know they had. He knew he could be as goddamned clever as he liked, as cool and canny and silver-tongued as he could possibly muster ... and he knew the Kid could be as amenable and sweet-natured as he naturally was, as fast and deadly and accurate as his reputation maintained ... but that in the end nothing would save them except their solidarity.
Yup, it was going to be tougher alright.
But for the life of him Heyes couldn't keep the smile off his face as he pitched back on to the vacated bed, aware, before he shut his eyes, that the Kid was beginning to pull off his boots.
ENDS