Fighting his way through the crowded thoroughfare, Ben walked through the doorway of the jailhouse. He expected to return to the elders. To be forced to defend what he had just seen, the underlying intentions of both his sons when they had given into their frustrated anger and allowed it to lead them into a volatile fight. Instead, he stepped into the dusty confines of Malice's arenaceous lodgings and found himself an invisible onlooker to another moment from the past—or the continuation rather, of the one which had begun in the thoroughfare.
Little Joe lay unconscious on one of the beds; his older brother's final punch had been explosive enough to render him unresponsive for what Ben gleaned had been hours. Looking through the grimy window, he could see that the sun had set, the moon had long taken its place. The room was lit by a short, stubby candle that had been procured from some unknowable location.
Seated on the edge of the other bed, his eye socket slightly swollen and blackened from his baby brother's blow, Adam looked positively incandescent in the candle's warm hue. Elbows propped on his knees, he held in his hands a piece of paper, a telegraph left worn and tattered by a ragged trip endured in his pocket.
Adam had kept the secret second message close, Ben realized. Though he had received it with glaring annoyance and disinterest, he had been intrigued enough to keep and bring it along. Examining it now, Ben's first-born son's face was set in a disinterested expression, his hazel eyes glistening with an all too familiar sheen that Ben would think and worry about later. There were much more pressing things to think about and closely examine.
In the thoroughfare, Adam and Joe had fought, and in this room Little Joe lay motionless on the same bed in which his father and middle brother had discovered him when they first arrived in town. By that time, Joe's body had been decorated in an array of scratches and bruises, his upper body engulfed in deep, purple marks declaring his ribs to be broken. His face had been swollen and marred with cuts and discoloration. His closed eyes had been the worst to look at, bulbous swelling, stretching and extending the skin covering them painfully taut, its translucence intensifying the dark, black discoloration of his forehead and under eyes.
Adam and Joe had fought in the thoroughfare, Ben thought as he stepped closer to his youngest son. And now they were here, Little Joe laying in the same place, his body in the same position in which he would later be found by the rest of his family.
Ben had to know; he had to see if the injuries Adam had inflicted were the same as the ones he would later see. He needed to know if the elders were wrong. If his steadfast faith in his oldest had been in vain. If he had been foolish to dismiss the fragmented story his youngest son had told. Little Joe had said that Adam and he had fought about everything, from the building they were going to spend the night in, to the room and beds where they were going to sleep. But night had come, and Joe still lay unconscious where Adam had put him.
"I hit him, Pa," Little Joe had said, his eyes shining with fear and shame. "He hit me back. I don't remember anything after that."
Seeing the power with which Adam had yielded his final punch, and looking at Joe's comatose form, Ben was not surprised Joe's memory had been impacted; he was, however, so relieved that he almost fell to his knees.
Joe's account of the evening had been wrong, Ben knew this now because his
youngest son was laying in the same place and the same position he would remain until he awoke in Hoss's company. He would not move until then; he would not wake until then—somehow Ben knew that. Either it was some lie born from desperation or it was the pure truth, and either way he didn't care. Joe may have shoved Adam first, and Adam may have hit Joe first, but Adam did not do what the elders claimed he did; he did not attempt to beat Joe to death. Adam's frustration with Joe may have rendered him occasionally courting the extremely abstract and decidedly theoretical idea, but he would never act on figmental impulses. He would never allow his fury to supersede his love.
The only injury Little Joe had sustained from his fight with his older brother was a broken nose. While Adam may have knocked him out, Ben supposed that it was exhaustion that was keeping him from rousing. Although, he wondered what would keep him unconscious, what would eventually allow him to wake up, and what would really happen to him in between. Leaning over, he ventured a hand only to find his fingers passed through Joe's forehead completely. If this was a memory, then he was a ghost; his presence could not impact anything at all.
He regarded Adam again, wondering for the first time what it was the elders thought he would see and what it would lead him to know. With moments like this, it was difficult to think he would glean anything that would shake his convictions. The first two events he had been shown were difficult to view—that much was true. Still, neither were damning. If Adam had chosen to embark on the drive because he was curious about a woman's strange introductory telegraph, he had every right to do so, and if Joe had been unwise enough to shove his brother with no one around to intercede and whilst they were both captive to such blazing fury, then these results were to be expected.
What was not expected, however, was what Adam did when he suddenly stood. Balling up the telegraph, he clenched it in a tight fist which hung at his side as he purposefully approached where his brother lay. Brows knitting, he scowled down at Joe's still form, clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides. The paper he held made a crinkling noise, a sound that seemed strangely abrasive and odd given the sudden ponderousness of the moment. Adam's frown deepened, etching deep lines of disapproval in his forehead, his eyes gleaming with a vehement sheen. It was unclear which he was most displeased with: Joe's current circumstances or the telegraph which had led to his own.
Message still clenched in his fist, his intense expression unwavering, Adam turned abruptly and strode purposefully from the room. The door creaked as he closed it behind him. The noise ground on Ben's nerves as he stood immobile at Joe's bedside. He looked ambivalently between the closed door and his unconscious son, wanting so badly to stay and leave at the same time. If he followed Adam, then where would his son lead him? What would he see and then what would he know? If he remained with Joe, then what would happen? Would he finally become privy to the factual truth of how his youngest son had been brutalized?
Ben began walking before he was aware he had made a decision, his feet leading him to the door seemingly by their own volition. Joe was not going anywhere; his youngest son would remain where he was. Adam, conversely, had left, and Ben was intent on discovering where his ferocity had led him.
TBC