Absaroka County, Wyoming : 1981
It was the nicest day Walt had seen in a while; the sky was so blue it felt like a veil to the heavens had cracked open. A mild breeze kept the heat from becoming too much and the overhanging shade of the apple tree provided the rest. And then there was Martha, who'd asked him to picnic with her for a while by the creek winding through her family property. It was a good spot she'd chosen for them, overlooking rolling hills and the white sparkle of sunlight across the water.
Walt was a man who could appreciate a good view in a quiet spot away from the usual noise and rush of the town doings. At that moment Walt felt he was seventeen going on thirty and all of his life was stretching out ahead. Unavoidable change lingered on the horizon driving a crack between the two halves of his life. On one side of this fracture was then and all that had been, and on the other now carrying with it all the potential of what might be.
He could feel it in the air, the same way he smelt the atmospheric shift before a heavy rain came down on Absaroka. This knowing didn't make it any easier to bear. He'd never been a man partial to change.
It's why as a child he'd worn the same old boots until his feet ached something fierce. Maybe in his child's mind he'd thought if he didn't buy new shoes the world would have to slow down a bit, let him adjust before it made his voice crack embarrassingly and his limbs all knees and elbows with no muscle. A terrible fate when one wanted to be as big and strong as their father.
Or maybe the answer was simpler: his own stupid stubborn pride.
He wore those damned boots until he couldn't wear them anymore, forced by the inevitability of growth to alter course. A captain choosing the smoother seas rather than risk capsizing his ship. His feet had been much obliged even if his fathers' pockets had been poorer for it.
He knows it to be one of his many failings, this reticence to changing. To be fair his father's grumbling about having to buy new ones after Walt and those damned blue boots had reached an impasse, his ma's fussing necessitating change, hadn't helped matters none at the time. Still, like it or not change was-a-coming and he could no more halt it than lasso Pleiadesfrom the night sky.
He'd been expected to work his way through high school paying for 'extra expenses' as his father liked to call it and he was glad for the experience now, even if he hadn't been at the time. Juggling homework, studies, and working hours hadn't been easy. In fact it had been hard as hell some days, but he'd got it done.
Walt was to be eighteen soon enough. It was a prospect that excited him and terrified him in equal measure. He was mentally braced for the coming impact, it would hit as swift and sudden as a Southwest monsoon. Not all change had to be bad, though.
His ma had been right about that sure enough.
In fact, he suspected it could be really good, if Martha said yes. There was an important question rattling around in the back of his head. One he meant to voice as soon as he worked up the courage. It wasn't much of a plan, but then, Martha had always been awful good at that - the planning. She might have a few thoughts he ought to hear.
He glanced up, the bright red of a low hanging apple calling to him. It was tempting and it took some effort to ignore it. The apple wasn't quite ready to be plucked yet, it shone cherry bright, but he knew it wasn't quite there yet. He remained where he was knowing it would be ready sooner or later and then they'd come back and feast together on it. The sweetly crispness would taste all the better and juicier on the tongue for having waited to share with Martha.
Martha was running late. Walt stared up at the blue, blue sky that was a pale shadow of the beauty he found in the constellation of her eyes. He was no Shakespeare and he knew it; he kept his romantic rubbish to himself. Though, that didn't mean the sentiment wasn't there. He hoped she knew at least a little of what it meant to him, being the one holding her in his arms as the world quietly shuffled on by. He knew in his heart that she must know by now. She was smart, and clever, and equally curious about the mechanics of the world they lived in. She was more than a pretty face.
Knowing he was the one she chose? He was lucky and he damn well knew it for a fact. Wouldn't trade boots with any man in the world. Martha was his red, red apple, everything he didn't know he needed. But he, they, had decided to wait. There would be no snakes in their garden.
Walt was acting on orders to keep their plans under wraps until the eleventh hour was upon them. He didn't care about sneaking too much but it was how Martha wanted it for now and he'd abide by her decision. There was sense to it, too. They, that being Martha's parents, didn't know what she was about of course on account of them not liking him too much.
On a day like this, though, he didn't let it trouble him. In the end, Martha was her own woman who made her own choices. If he proved himself to be the kind of man she could spend her life with, well, then they'd be fine he supposed.
It was sultry enough outdoors that his shirt was beginning to stick to his back and Walt spared a moment to be glad for the Axedeodorant he'd seen fit to slap on before heading out the door. Still, for Martha he'd take up picnicking in the muddy, crocodile-infested bayous of Louisiana. A little summer sun wasn't going to keep him away, no siree.
Walt felt eyes on him and switched from sky-gazing to admiring a heavenly sight of a more earthy sort than could be spied by looking to the Gods. She looked prettier than a Sunday Church decked out in a simple white sundress that showed off her knees and the shapely line of her calves. Her blonde hair was all loose and wild in a way her mother most certainly hated but Walt adored.
"Hello, sweetheart," he said in greeting, lazily rolling to his feet, taking the basket from her hands and placing a chase kiss to her offered cheek. Walt caught hints of Jo Malone perfume on her blond, Shirley Temple locks and smiled. He loved that stuff on her, which was just as well because it was the only perfume she ever wore.
"Sky-gazing again?" Martha asked, laying out the blue-checkered tablecloth they used on these little secret rendezvous of theirs.
"Mmhm," he replied, watching her set up the picnic.
They'd done it properly at first, with him coming around the house for Sunday dinners and meetups at the town's cafe but Martha's parents were bound and determined to dislike him. They kept hoping their only daughter would choose similarly. It hadn't happened yet so they didn't make a fuss anymore but they sure didn't do out of their way to be sociable either.
Walt didn't hold it against them too badly, supposing they thought she could do better than a Longmire, without much to his name besides his good word, and forgot to ask Martha what it was she wanted out of all this. Martha would get this flustered look of patient annoyance when they were acting out like this and he hated seeing her put out. So here they were instead.
Martha was laying out their stolen feast as they took to enjoying their stolen time. Perfectly cut ham and roast-beef sandwiches dressed with mozzarella cheese, red onions, pickles, and bits of crisp lettuce and small glass jar brimming with her special, homemade peach jam. She'd won town fairs on the stuff, too. He'd been there, among the spectators, clapping her on from the sidelines when she was awarded the first prize.
Walt knew it could just as easily have tasted lemon-bitter, sour on the tongue, and he'd have grinned and borne it with the good manners his parents instilled in him to be a gentleman. Martha could serve him up burnt toast and runny eggs and he would have the good sense to not complain. She was the only woman other than his mother who had bothered to cook for him from time to time and wasn't about to get finicky about details. That would have been in poor taste considering she always looked at him when he took the first bite as if he were the judge declaring first prize.
He could stomach burnt toast but not her disappointment.
Walt smiled at the feast appearing right under his nose and his stomach rumbled its appreciation, too.
Martha plucked another glass jar from the assorted goods packed into her little basket and Walt's eyes widened. "Well now, is that what I think it is?" he asked.
"I know how fond you are of peach - and of eating it straight out of the jam jar!" she laughed, passing him a small spoon to go with the small jar. It felt a bit unwieldy, tiny and thin in his big hands, but he made do. He had a weakness for the damned stuff and Martha indulged it.
"Have you thought about what comes after, Walter?" Martha asked, sliding over to join him in leaning against the wide trunk of the apple tree.
"Some," he said.
"Have you?" Walt asked, half turning his face so he could see her better.
"Some," she shot back, elbowing him in the ribs until he cracked a smile.
Walt relented, folding like a stack of cards, until her soft, questioning eyes. It was hard to refuse her anything, even his rambling thoughts.
"Maybe take in some college experiences now that high school is over…" he said, feeling his words out and knowing the truth in them the moment they were spoken. She was good for him in that way. Always gave him room to organize his thoughts but didn't let him wiggle out from actually saying them, either.
"But eventually I want to get a job at the local police department, maybe see if Sheriff Lucian will take on a greenhorn deputy."
"That sounds like a really good plan," Martha replied, leaning her head against his shoulder. "I think you're just the kind of man this county needs, Walter Longmire."
"Lucien won't be sheriff forever you know. You could be the one wearing that badge someday if that is what you want?" Martha asked.
Walt mulled it over in his head as his hazy might-do thoughts began to solidify into a plan of action. He also realized that h e did want that, a lot. It would be a good way to help the people of his town and to give back some of the good will he'd been shown over the years.
"You know what, sweetheart? I think I do."
"Hmm, good, you'd be good at it, what with how you're always figuring out 'who's done it' in the books we've read, you could just do it in real life instead."
He nodded along as she spoke and not because he wasn't listening, but because he was and she was right. There was a lot of practical sense to what she was saying. Martha wasn't one for hollow words and empty flattery. It was one of the things he loved about her aside from her cute smile.
He was good at solving those kinds of things, which meant it might be worth looking into more later on down the road.
"Walt?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you ever feel like something's missing?" Martha asked, twining their hands together.
Enjoying the chaste intimacy he almost didn't hear her question, lost in the scent of her, and the feel of her hand. It was so much smaller and daintier than his own, which were big, sun-tanned tanned and rough with callouses. She had a faraway look in her sky-colored eyes looking like she was a million miles away for all that he held her hand in his own.
It set his heart racing in a quiet panic.
The picnic had even been her idea this time.
"Missing? What do you mean by that?"
"Like...there's a shadow where you know someone ought to be? But they're not there, so there's this little empty space where their shadow falls...Oh," she broke off, looking at Walt's confused, alarmed face.
He tried his best to school it into something other than deer-in-the-headlights confusion but he didn't imagine he did a good job of it.
"Oh, never mind me, I was just wandering with the fairies thinking about nonsense," Martha sighed, shaking her head.
"Are you...not happy?" Walt asked because it had never once occurred to him that Martha might not be as sure and certain about them as he was.
"Happy? Oh, honey, I'm plenty happy with you."
"Then…" Walt began, wetting his lips as he tried to figure out where her thoughts were coming from. What was it that she felt was missing? There were times he wondered if he would ever really understand the working of her mind. Sheriff Lucien, when he'd been into his cups, was fond of saying it wasn't for man to understand the fairer sex. The rest had devolved into gently intended vulgarity that didn't beat repeating.
"Sometimes I walk through the town or look out at the road leading to the Rez and I have the strangest feeling come over me - like I ought to know the path better than I do. Or when we're handing out at the bluffs I sometimes turn to your left - as if…"
Walt closed his eyes because he began to understand. It would seem old Lucien could be wrong - sometimes. Walt knew what Martha was talking about, having experienced the phenomena himself. It was if the world, for a single instant, was off-kilter. It had a singularly unpleasant feel.
Absolute loneliness often followed in the wake of those happenings. He suspected he would never know why, too. Hamlet, the poor sod, had gotten one thing right, there were more things in heaven and earth than the philosophers had managed to yet dream up or explain.
Walt nodded, picking up where Martha had left off. "It's turning to speak to someone who isn't there, was never there in the first place. You do it and you don't know why because you're alone, or it's just us fooling around at the bluffs," Walt finished, the words tumbling out in a mad rush as he vented something that had been on his mind for a while.
"Yeah, like that. Do you think I'm crazy, off with the fairies again as mom likes to say?" she asked, peering up at him through her lashes, an open vulnerability in her heart-shaped face framed with a golden halo. It made him want to protect her from everything in the world.
"No, you're not crazy, Martha, not any more so than I am."
"But do you get what I'm trying to explain? I don't think I'm doing a very good job of it, to be honest. It's just... a feeling. You get those don't you, something you just know in your gut?" Martha asked.
Walt pursed his lips, faint lines puckering at the corner of his eyes as he considered Martha's words. He had a fair notion of what she was talking about - more so than he felt comfortable voicing. Every now and then he'd stop what he was doing and look around himself with this bone-deep idea that something was just a little off. His thoughts would turn to the Cheyenne reservation, or as the local Indian kids called it the Rez, and a feeling washed over him.
He knew a few of the kids from the Rez but none of them well enough to instill this deep nostalgia over a place and people he'd never really been allowed to know. He couldn't miss something he didn't have or know but there was a shadow, a blanket draped over his mind, where he imagined that missing something might have belonged, in a different time.
"I don't know, honey. Maybe?" Walt finally said. He didn't like thinking about it too much so he put it off to the side. Buried it in a box that would remain unopened.
As they reclined under their apple tree the air around them grew thick and charged with energy. Walt noticed the change; it was a sweet earthy scent. Walt felt a lightheadedness wash over him as he lay with Martha curled in the circle of his arms, their bodies propped by the apple tree. It was then that he saw something from the corner of his eyes.
He squinted, leaning forward as he scrambled to get a better look and immediately lurched forward placing his body squarely between Martha and the newcomer. His hand dropping to the small caliber gun he carried. Wyoming wasn't so small a town that bad things didn't happen, and their were more dangers in the world than the bear and coyote that occasionally popped out from the woods.
A man was standing no more than three feet away. It was odd to chance across someone else way out where they were but not cause for alarm. The problem was this man didn't look like anyone from around Absaroka. Walt prided himself on knowing the faces in town; this was not one of them.
The other odd thing was the man looked like something from out of an old western film poster.
He had copper toned skin and wore traditional Cheyenne clothes. Like he was dressed for the seventeen hundreds. It looked a bit like something the original Plains People of Wyoming before General Custer and the Battle of Little Big Horn might have worn. Walt couldn't be sure but it appeared authentic, the clothes, the fringes, everything. But that only made everything about the situation stranger.
Walt was quick to notice the Indian had sharp clean-cut features and an athletic build. They were the kinds of whipcord muscles and sharply defined leanness that didn't come from a weekly gym workout.
Black hair fell down past his shoulders with a lone eagle feather hanging from a Henry Winchester Rifle. That's what really caught Walt's eye. An old model, from the look of it. He eye-balled it and suspected it to be a .44 caliber rimfire breech-loading lever action.
He barely resisted the urge to whistle. Might have anyhow, if he didn't think his actions might be misconstrued. Hell, if he were in the other man's moccasins he'd definitely be misconstruing all the staring. The Indian currently had the weapon slung across his back; the mahogany wood stock rested against his shoulder blade.
A thrill shot through Walt at seeing such a piece from the days of antiquity.
It was a beauty, that's for sure, Walt thought. Then it registered. How was he seeing it? Or this strange Indian? Walt knew he hadn't nodded off under the apple tree. There'd been no sign of this man's approach, no sound, and there should have been because of all the dried grass and summer brush. Between one blink and the next he had simply been standing there, staring at them.
The Indian was staring back at Walt now, too. He was stock still, unblinking, almost unmoving but for the steady rise and fall of his bare chest. There was something awfully familiar about him, too.
It was something about the dark, piercing eyes boring into him. Walt didn't know how it could be possible. He didn't know any Indians who wore traditional clothes outside of historical reenactments. Hell, he didn't know many Indians at all. Though, he wished he knew someone with a piece like the one this man had slung over his shoulder like every day armament.
Walt's eyes tripped their way down to the blood-smeared knife the Indian clutched; the red splashed across the other man's knuckles and felt his own face pale.
He was so vividly real Walt's heart began racing like a pack horse being driven uphill and his eyes widened. But he wasn't scared, which was the damnedest thing of all. Walt didn't know what he was, but he wasn't scared.
The Indian looked at him, frowned, his brows drawing like thunderclouds before the expression smoothed out and he said a name Walt had not heard since he was a gangly boy.
"Wally?" the Indian asked, as if he knew him. Or at least thought he did. The childish nickname sounded doubly strange coming from his mouth. English hardly being his first language, made the name over pronounced and stretched but it was unmistakably his name.
Walter opened his mouth, to say what, he would never find out.
"Walt?" Martha called out and he turned, snapping back towards her direction. In the second it took for him to turn his head and check on her whoever it had been, whatever it had been was gone. In seconds the Cheyenne warrior, and he knew that man was both, had vanished like a mirage or illusions trick.
"Did you see that? Tell me you saw that too?" Walt asked, breathless with excitement and wonder over the strange experience.
Martha nodded, curiosity gleaming brightly in her eyes.
"Yes, I did," Martha replied with a small grin curving the cupid's bow of her mouth. "He spoke your name, Wally, that's what he said, wasn't it?" Martha asked.
"Yeah, I guess he did. I don't know how but he knew my name," Walter muttered, still staring at the place where the Indian had stood. "He knew my name!" Walt repeated, trying to unravel the mystery of the vanishing Indian.
He got up and walked so he was standing close beside where the apparition had stood and knelt down to inspect the ground. There were tracks in the dirt. Moccasins didn't leave much of a mark on the earth but they did leave some if one looked close and Walt had his face parallel to the ground as he searched for a logical solution to an impossible happening. One minute the Indian was there and the next he was gone like so much mist and fog.
"What kind of ghost leaves tracks?" Walt asked, flicking a look toward Martha who had risen to peer down at the dirt with him.
"I really don't know Walt," Martha admitted with a shrug. "Most people see the Woman in White or Wendigo's if they're really unlucky, but not us," she chuckled, taking the events in stride. It was a very Martha thing to do, although, he felt jealousy stir at the hot blush of her cheeks and the mischievous grin perched on her lips.
"Wendigo's, huh?" Walt asked, muting his skepticism for Martha's sake. He might not believe every hair-brained account people reported but it always seemed to him that there must be a flesh and blood creature that inspired the local myths about monsters roaming the edges of the Rez.
The trouble law enforcement faced was no one wanted to talk about it. He knew this from hearing the sheriff bitching about mystic mumbo-jumbo keeping him from getting anywhere with the animal attack that half blinded a man walking back to the Rez at night last week. He hadn't crossed into Indian territory when the attack occurred leaving the problem with Sheriff Lucien instead of Tribal Police. The victim was reportedly so terrified that he'd been shaking worse than an addict chasing his next high.
'Couldn't have gotten anything out of him with pliers,' Sheriff Lucien had complained. 'You never go walking down that way after dark Walter, I don't know what it is but there is something that takes people, just snatched 'em up and drags 'em off into the dark and the families never see them again, so don't you got out that way after dark, kid,' Sheriff Lucien had said, a little drunk and a lot more sentimental than Walt was used to the older man being.
Walt had given his word and he'd kept to it. No use tempting trouble.
Walt chewed on his lip and folded his arms across his chest, watching Martha from below the brim of his tan-colored Stetson. He didn't think Wendigo's were supposed to look so human in proportion. The Indian they'd seen tonight had not looked like any kind of monster, just a man. A handsome man - nothing more.
And nothing less, a little voice in the back of his head whispered. He grudgingly conceded that much and recognized that what they knew now about this incident was likely all they ever would know. Whoever the Indian had been he died a long, long time ago.
"I think I like our handsome, half-naked Indian warrior much better than either of those, don't you?" Martha chuckled, still musing over their encounter. Her eyes excitedly scanning the surrounding area as if she thought the apparition might just pop back into their lives again.
Walt did not think he would but he kept his thoughts to himself. Martha was cute with her nose scrunched up in thought, pink resting high on her cheeks in breathless excitement. He couldn't even be properly jealous.
The man, whoever he was, was a ghost. It seemed in poor taste to harbor resentment for the long since dead.
Walt arched his eyebrow. "Our?" he asked with hard emphasis when her words finally caught up with him and his own internal musings.
"Yes, our, Walt. Now, I wonder if there is any history connected to this plot of land…" Martha muttered, thinking aloud.
Walt sighed, knowing that she would spend the next week researching the family property and any Indian connections. Which meant he would be spending the next week helping her to do it, too. Still, there were worse ways to spend a week. Martha liked to know things just as much as he did. Besides, he was curious.
In the weeks to come, the Indian haunted his nights and his days as they dug through Martha's newest obsession; historical records of the indigenous peoples who had inhabited Wyoming before white settlers conquered the land, and in due course, the peoples who lived off of it.
He learned many things, most of which were sad, that public schools didn't offer.
'Taming the west,' they called it oftentimes citing 'Manifest Destiny' as the great cure all for any moral quandaries over stealing land or breaking treaties with the Native Americans.
He learned, 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian,' as quoted General Sherman and felt deeply unsettled by the forgotten past. He turned the page so he would not have to look at the words.
They were not unknown to him, living so close to the Rez, he could not help noticing the disparities between them.
It was unsurprising that he fell into dreams of the Cheyenne. What did surprise him was how he'd wake in a fevered state with the impression of the warriors face burned into his retinas even when his eyes were closed.
Walt found his head was now engulfed in the visceral impression of those high cheekbones, sharp eyes, and indisputable raw masculine strength. It was an alarming cocktail of lust that he couldn't fully shake once he'd awoken. He had to wipe sweat from his brow and clean his sheets after such awakenings. It became one of the rare secrets he kept from Martha, these nighttime emissions of pent desire.
He had to takecold showers after he woke from those dreams. His prick was often hard and aching with a need so powerful it almost stole his breath. It was all very strange and embarrassing so Walt kept it to himself.
The Indian man, whoever he had been, was attractive and Walt could, however grudgingly, admit that even he could see that. He was not given to lying to himself which left him no choice. He had to accept the fact that, however unexpected, he had found the man to be striking.
Martha would be quick to agree, he was certain of it, which didn't help matters.
He hadn't missed her sharply indrawn breath at all that bare skin, or the other man's fine clean-cut features. Walt viciously stamped down his jealousy as it had no place between him and Martha. It was both hypocritical and misplaced. The Cheyenne warrior had been at best an apparition of a man long since dead.
Walt consoled himself with the knowledge that he had nothing to be concerned about. Neither he nor Martha would ever see the Indian again and that was something he was dead certain of. With a will, he set aside his growing curiosity. He loved Martha and there was nothing on this earth that would ever change that fact. She was his heart and his hope, the woman he planned to build a life and a family with.
Whatever strange draw had compelled him to look at that man like that? It was a one-time deal.
To be sure he'd observed a few of the other boys horsing around in the streets. Sweat had been beading on their skin and half-naked bodies as they took to stripping off their t-shirts for the three pretty girls watching from the sidelines. The boys he objectively conceded were as fit and attractive as any other of the male persuasion.
He had felt nothing; no stirrings of interest were roused in his belly by this unobtrusive watching and he considered the matter closed. A one-off fluke and a few wet-dreams did not make a habit. He loved Martha and there wasn't anything in the world that could change that - he was sure.
Martha, however, was still very much in academic thrall of the Indian apparition they had spied from below their apple tree. She wanted to know who he was, feeling certain that if she just knew his name somehow that would make it all make sense.
Walt, for his part, wanted to leave sleeping dogs, and Indian apparitions, to rest in peace but he also wasn't going to let her investigate alone. Which is how he ended up tagging along to her trips to the small town library carrying her bag and a chin-high stack of books.
By sheer dumb luck, he and Martha stumbled across a history book that mentioned, in the margins, that a massacre had occurred on the land where the apple tree grew and that there had been no recorded survivors. He imagined the Indian how full of life he'd seemed and felt a little sad. But soon his stomach set to rumbling and he decided he kneaded food for his belly, and not his brain. Which, all told, had had enough of musty old books for the moment.
"Aren't you getting hungry?" he asked, gently trying to tug her away from where she was hidden behind her barricaded paper and books.
"Not yet, Walter," she insisted, flicking him an indulgent glance of chastisement.
"We'll go soon," she promised.
He let the matter drop knowing that there was no changing her course once it was set. He and Martha poured over it for hours trying to find out the faintest clue about the tribe involved but in typical settler fashion, the politest term used in the book was Indian, when it wasn't employing less politically correct language, which was as distinctive as the writer felt they needed to be. In the end, they knew neither name nor tribe, ending their search much the same as when they had begun it.
"Can I ask why you're so determined about this business?" Walt asked, pulling out a chair across from her. "I'm not saying I'm not curious too, but you seem…"
"Obsessed?" Martha asked.
"No, just driven."
"I don't know, I just don't know," Martha admitted. "It felt like the right thing to do somehow, that's all I can say, and that's the honest truth, Walt."
Martha sighed, quietly closing the book, and Walt knew that it was done. There would be no more late nights spent pouring over pages or carrying stacks of books. Walt could honestly say he was sorry it ended this way for her, no name and no answers, but he was also awfully glad to have her beautiful blues turned back towards him instead of lines of words and strange Indian men who vanished into thin air.
Having her attention back was a relief gently circled by tendrils of regret that whispered tantalizing 'what ifs' in his ears. Martha had led the charge all right but he hadn't minded tagging along. Still, he knew that the closing of the book and the shrug of her shoulders said she was done with her quest for knowledge having exhausted all the available resources.
Martha had decided, finally, to let sleeping bears lie. No more chasing after Cheyenne warrior apparitions for them. It was kind of a shame really. He'd wanted to have a name to place with that face. The man had left something of a lasting impression. He'd been the only man that had caused Walt's blood to quicken like that. It was hard to forget - an incident like that.
Martha's obsession passed hands and the irony of it was not lost to Walt.
He kissed Martha goodbye and left her at the doorstep to her house before turning and finding his own way home for the evening. His parents were spending a rare weekend vacationing in Durant leaving him alone in the house. He was glad for the quietness tonight as he set his wayward thoughts in order.
Walt spent a long time just staring absently into the crackling fireplace before he made up his mind about what to do with the face haunting his nights. Walt pulled out his old art class utensils, pencil perched between his fingers and charcoal laid to the side as he set lead to paper. He would purge the image by putting it to paper. Memorialize it, too. But he wouldn't come to figure that out until later.
He threw the first three attempts into the fire watching the white paper blacken and curl as the orange flames devoured it. It frustrated him that it still wasn't close enough to what he recalled. Drawn in clean black and white lines the apparition took on a frightening countenance and Walt didn't like it. For all that the experience had been uncanny he had not felt threatened. He'd had loaded firearms waved in his face before; he knew the adrenaline rush of fear for one's life. This had not been that.
It just wasn't right; what he felt hadn't been fear. He didn't have a name for it as of yet, but it wasn't fear.
Besides, a lack of understanding on his part shouldn't devolve straight to fright, right? There were lots of things in this world that he didn't understand; this apparition was an unsolved mystery the universe had seen fit to drop in his lap. As he stared at his drawing pad he realized he was grateful, it was heartening to know there were still things to learn and that for sixty seconds he had seen into something impossible and strange and frighteningly wonderful: a glimpse into the forgotten past.
The fourth attempt at a sketch was no good, either. Walt tore the sheet from his notepad and threw it into the fireplace with a grunt of frustration.
It still isn't right, Walt thought to himself, closing his eyes as he replayed the moment over and over.
He was no Michelangelo, but he could do better, he was sure.
The fire was fed well that night.
Walt drifted off, warmed by the fireplace that cast shadows over the bruises smudged below his eyes and a seemingly permanent scowl stamped across his face.
In the onset of sleep the last rendering he created was spared the fire.
Consciousness leisurely drifted back in like a low tide lapping at the sand banks and Walt shook off the sluggish lethargy of sleep. His attention was immediately drawn to the notepad clutched in his hand. A slow grin spread across his face, a hint of teeth showing as he nodded to himself in his bedroom. There, finally, he'd gotten it right. The Indian from the Apple Tree Incident stared back at Walt, grim and unsmiling with piercing dark eyes that seemed to follow Walt around the room.
Fierce, but not fearsome. And if a person looked close, leaned in and squinted hard, there was to be seen the faint curl of what might have been a grin. At least, Walt liked to think it was.
Walt pleased with his rendering tucked it into his hardback Whitman book so it would remain safe from unwanted scrutiny. This undertaking had just been for him. Someday he'd show Martha. But for now?
It was just his.