"He's just exercising his lungs. That's why babies cry, y'know… To exercise their lungs."
"How do you know that?"
He frowned, eyeing the infant in his arms, and had scarcely opened his mouth when Mr. Cartwright trotted down the stairs. He only half listened to the conversation, fairly threw the little boy at Hoss, and left the house feeling numb and very lost.
"You alright?" Little Joe's voice was a shock to the young cowboy. He blinked at his friend, a cool shiver pressing down his spine. "Well gee, Candy, you look like you've seen a ghost!"
Candy managed to offer Joe a thin smile and shook his head. "It's nothing. Say, we oughtta get started building that-"
His own words were lost to him. He swam- half drowned- in some bitter night long-forgotten. He caught the faint chink of shovels in dry earth, and heard a baby's cry.
"Candy."
He had his hat in his hands now, turning it in a slow circle. Idly, the man thumbed the sweat-blackened band and scratched at the places where the black felt had been salted white. Joe put a hand on his arm, and the green eyes told Candy he wouldn't be backing out of this. From the house, through the open window of the guest bedroom, came the fussy wail of the child. Candy made a loose gesture toward the window.
A shaky smile ghosted across his lips, and died.
"Little Sister used to cry about like that." He wasn't sure if Joe'd heard him; he only half heard himself. But he closed his eyes and chuckled humorlessly under his breath. "Sh-she must'a had the strongest-strongest lungs in the country, the way she used to cry."
Joe swallowed, well enough acquainted with Tragedy's kisses to smell her presence right off. He patted Candy awkwardly with half a nervous grin. "You never told us you had a sister. She pretty?"
Candy brushed the hand away. "I must'a f…" He bit hard on his lip. "I must have forgotten." He gave Joe a helpless sort of look and made an uneasy shrug. "What do you make of that?" Candy breathed. "A man forgetting his own sister…"
Joe shifted. "C'mon, Candy. You had to be young- kids don't remember stuff like that. They-they-they try to forget it, y'know? It's not your fault. Mrs. Purcell's boy just reminded you, is all."
Candy bowed his head and averted his gaze, but couldn't shake the ticklish prickle of his friend's eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the waves, and gave away with a heavy sigh to peer hard at Joe.
"I don't even remember what she looked like."
He took one last long look up at the now quiet open window. And he stumbled, half-numb, through a darker land of cholera, of Indian raids. The land of a little boy suddenly without a mother. The savage, wicked land his mother hated. The land where baby sister, in a stranger's arms, quieted for the last time.
Joe watched him go, full of questions without answers and never feeling quite so far removed from the man that he called friend.