Heart and Soul
A day of struggle and reckoning.
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Kid Curry stood on the boardwalk, leaning his tired body against the post, tugging absently at each gloved finger of his left hand, and looking aimlessly out into the already bustling street. Three men in business suits had gathered on one corner, all deep into some meaningless conversation. A few women, some with small children in tow, moved in and out of the various shops. Men in buckboards or astride horses traveled the single two block street, their animals and wagon wheels spewing dirt and dust in the air. Half a dozen boys played stick ball in a nearby alley and the lilt of their laughter bounced and echoed off the brick walls. Store owners hastily swept dust from the walk outside their stores. Kid's eyes saw all this activity, but his mind dismissed it all as an insignificant and unsuccessful distraction.
He pulled the glove from his hand and folded it between his belt as he took a deep breath that rolled into a heavy sigh. He knew he should eat, but the mere thought of food repulsed him, bringing with it a sense of guilt. Inhaling a second, lung expanding breath of air, Kid stepped out into the street, distancing himself from the doctor's office where he had spent the last seventy-two sleepless hours in constant vigil beside his partner's bed.
Just minutes before Kid had anxiously watched the doctor hovering over his unconscious patient, moving his long, black hearing tube across Heyes' chest and belly, his thick, skilled fingers pressing and probing, while Kid's own fingers wrapped tightly around his partner's wrist. He heard the click of the ear pieces strike against each other as the doctor pulled the hearing tube from his ears.
"I've done all I can do. It's in God's hands now."
'God's hands,' a physician's diplomatic phrase replacing the cold, harsh truth that nothing shy of a miracle will save your partner from certain death...
"Watch where you're going you damn fool!"
The words didn't register, but the tone of the man's voice did, and Kid sidestepped quickly to avoid collision, but was oblivious to the driver's scowl and hand gesture as he drove on down the street.
Passing the saloon as he headed toward the cafe, Kid stopped, reconsidered his choice of sustenance, then pushed open the batwing doors and headed directly to the bar.
"You pulling an all nighter or just like to get an early start in the morning?" asked the bartender who was busy washing and drying glasses for the days impending customers.
"Whiskey," Kid replied without any acknowledgment of the bartender's observation.
The drink arrived and Kid dropped two coins on the mahogany bar, then raised the glass to his lips and downed the contents in one swallow that burned his throat as it flowed to his stomach. "Another."
The bartender eyed Kid carefully as he filled the shot glass a second time. "You appear to be a man with something on his mind."
Kid raised tired, stress worn eyes. He said nothing, but his eyes stared at the bartender as he downed the second shot as quickly as the first. He reached into his pocket and tossed another coin on the counter, then turned and walked back out into the street.
"You weren't gone long enough to eat. I'd say by the looks of you, breakfast came in the form of a bottle," Doctor Steinberg concluded when Kid returned to his vigil beside Heyes' bed. "Fever is still high. I moved a more comfortable chair in there for you," he added and Kid sat down in the chair.
His blue eyes were pale and grief stricken, but hearing the first few words that registered that morning, he he looked briefly at the doctor and gave him a thankful nod. As the whiskey began to have it's desired effect, Kid slumped down in the chair and rested his head against the cushioned back, then reached his left arm out and grasped Heyes' wrist in his hand before closing his eyes.
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A dark, black, ominous void shrouded all conscious thought. He could detect muffled sounds but could not determine their origin. Were they voices, or merely the low rumbles of silence? What was that tiny, minute speck of light far, far off in the distance, just hovering, sometimes flickering in the darkness like a distant beacon beckoning to a ship in a vast, dark sea, urging him toward some distant and unknown shore. He tried to move forward, but something held him back, something anchored him to the darkness. Something refused to allow him to move toward the light.
Then, suddenly the anchor was gone and he felt himself floundering, drifting, fading. He had no reason, nor desire to fight the slow but strong and steady current. As he drifted, the light ever so slowly grew stronger, brighter, larger. Then just as suddenly as it had vanished, the anchor returned and like an ebbing tide, the light again diminished and grew distant.
His thoughts were a shamble of obscure images he could not make out clearly, the flash of a gun, the cards for an inside straight, cell bars, a marble bust, the smoking wheels of a train screeching to a halt. The images bounced and played in his mind like a kaleidoscope, moving with such speed that none could take root and grow into any sort of semblance, and all spun around in his mind to the point of making him dizzy.
As his head began to roll against the pillow, the anchor once again was suddenly ripped away, but this time the light grew no closer and the images began to slow down, though they too, remained out of full focus.
"Doc!"
A muffled voice, familiar yet foreign and distant. Eyelids fluttered. A moan escaped his lips.
"Doc!"
The weight of the anchor returned and dissipated the images, scattering an explosion of broken pieces of color across an awakening mind.
Another voice, this one not familiar. A hand pressed against his forehead. A cold piece of metal pressed against his chest.
"Fever's broken."
He heard the words clearly, but the meaning still evaded him as he drifted between worlds of consciousness.
"Gonna make it?"
He couldn't hear the answer, but that tiny, distant light was suddenly gone and he could feel the current change direction, the anchor slowly dragging against the floor of the abyss, moving now with the current toward that familiar voice.
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For one, time had no relevance. For the other, time had no mercy.
He lay on the bed, awake, eyes open to a darkened room. To weak to move, he followed the dancing moonlit shadows cast on the wall before him. A slow, intermittent hum broke the silence. The weight he had felt still lingered against his wrist and with every ounce of strength he could muster, he pulled his arm tight against his torso.
"Heyes?"
He closed his eyes and smiled, wrapped in the security of the familiar voice. "Kid?" he whispered.
The weight of the anchor again disappeared, followed by a quick flash of light, then the soft yellow glow of an oil lamp, and the room took shape. The voice, the man, the anchor, stood like a protective guardian next to his bed.
"You had us all worried there for a while," Kid said, his soft features and gentile smile looking down at the man staring up at him.
"What happened?"
"You took sick real sudden. I got you here as quick as I could."
"I... I died."
"Came close, but I knew you wouldn't leave without a fight."
"No Kid, I really died... I saw the light of heaven... It was you."
"What was me?"
"The anchor. You pulled me back. You were here all the time."
"Yup. Pretty much all the time."
"You made me come back."
"Weren't your time to go."
"Ah... I gotta sleep."
"I'll douse the light."
In the darkness, Kid settled back down into the chair and folded his arms across his chest. "Good night, Heyes."
"See you in the morning."
Kid smiled. "I'll me here."
"Me too."
.