Ino Johnston was one of the towns bums, if you were being unkind. His entire life was dedicated to getting by with as little work as needed to put his next drink down his throat. Even his name was a reflection of laziness. When the Decennial Census taker had knocked at Jack Johnston's door and asked the father what the baby's name was, the drunk had belched heartily and responded
"Damned if I know."
The Census take, a man of phlegmatic temperment unwilling to chase a vanishing hare down a warren, had shrugged and listed the occupants as Jack Johnston father, Valentine Johnston mother and baby Ino Johnston. The rest of Ino Johnston's childhood was filled with a similar amount of effort. At age 6 his mother decided she was tired of supporting both her sot husband and her snotty nosed child and moved to San Francisco to work in an opium den.
Ino had to sneak food money from his father's pants when the man was passed out from cheap liquor. If he mis-judged his fathers' level of inebriation he received a vicious beating with a belt. With a face that already regrettably resembled a weasel, he took on even more of a resemblance by his habit of slinking everywhere.
He became known, and relentlessly harassed for his habit of digging through garbage looking for thrown out food or clothing. He also, inevitably, acquired his father's drinking habits by age 12 and dedicated his life to proving his abhorrence to sobriety. Since he despised all work he was known to eternally search for objects to sell; and on this day had pulled an old box of his father's belongs from under the bed and dug through it looking for something-anything of value. To his astonishment, he discovered an ancient six shooter that might be worth a few bucks and decided to test it to see if it actually fired.
So, he wandered outside his home, loaded the gun and started firing in all directions. Jarrod's attention was immediately captured when a bullet entered his office and drilled a hole through a painting he was fond of. He came outside just in time to see Ino, who had been so surprised at the kickback that he was on the ground, get up with a bloody gash on his face and resume firing. It was at just that moment that Doc Marten also left his office, ducking as he heard the gun fire several more times, before carefully approaching Johnston.
"Hey buddy, is that thing empty now?" He asked, eyeballing the open injury on the man's face.
Ino thought about the question with the intensity of the stupidly drunk. "Yeah." He finally said.
"Great." Doc Marten walked carefully forward. "Let's get you stitched up and taken care of."
Ino was horrified at the thought. "You ain't sewing no holes in me!" He declared, throwing his arms up. As he did so the final rusted bullet in the faulty gun fired and went straight through Doc Marten's chest into his heart, ricocheted off his backbone and buried itself in a balcony at a nearby hotel.
Doc Marten was dead before he hit the ground. Ino Johnston, stupid but not malicious, was shocked into sobriety for the first time in over twenty years and stood unresisting while the sheriff placed irons on him and led him to the jail, charged with murder. Six months later, a twelve year old boy who had just gotten a pen knife for his birthday and was idly hacking at the balcony found the bullet and carried it around as a good luck piece until he died in his bed 72 years later. And Jarrod had to go home and tell Nick that his Doctor and friend was dead.
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Jarrod and Victoria sat in the drawing room, waiting for Nick. Victoria holding a book in her hands but not reading it. Jarrod was still holding his hat and, in a rare example of nerves, was revolving it slowly in his hands; the sort of revealing habit he had tried to eliminate. They had been waiting for over an hour and time dragged slowly by. The scent of dinner was drifting through the house and on any other day they would have been hungry. They were waiting for one specific set of footsteps to enter the house, and they tightened apprehensively when the door was opened and they could hear the jingle of spurs.
"Jordan!" Nick's familiar bellow echoed. "I'm home, honey." He stepped iinto the drawing room, and his expression grew faintly wary at seeing the two waiting for him. "Evening Mother, Jarrod."
Victoria winced at the vague defensiveness in his stance.
"Nick, I need to tell you something." Jarrod started.
Abruptly Nick's expression brightened visibly and a glance over the shoulder told Victoria that Jordan, trailed by Angela, had entered the room. "How's the most beautiful little girl in the world?" Nick said happily, picking her up.
"Fly!" Jordan said. "Fly! Fly! Fly!"
"Oh you want to fly, do you?" Nick glanced at Angela for permission, then swung the toddler around in a circle as she squealed in delight.
"Nick, I need to tell you something important."
"So, tell me already. Wanna go again, Jordan?" Nick swung the little girl again, somehow carefully keeping track of his feet.
"Nick, sit down for just a moment. Please." Victoria commanded.
With a sigh, Nick put the little girl on the ground and sat on a chair, impatiently.
"Horsie! Horsie!" The little girl scrambled into his lap and he balanced her, smiling happily.
Jarrod wished there was some way to cushion the blow.
"It's Dr Marten, Nick. He was killed today."
Nick's smile vanished, and he looked blankly from Jarrod to Victoria. "Killed?" His face whitened with shock. "I don't understand. Who would kill Doc? Why would..why?"
"Ino Johnson got drunk and found an old pistol somewhere. He was firing it off and Doc got hit by one of the bullets."
There was a long silence, only punctuated by only by Jordan's cries of "Horsie! Horsie!"
"I'm sorry, Nick." Jarrod added gently.
Nick just sat there on the edge of the chair, his shoulders slumped and broken looking. "Doc didn't even carry a gun for self-defense."
Jordan scrambled down from his lap and started pulling his hand in the direction of the door.
"Nick, if you want to talk?" Victoria offered, hoping he would accept.
"No." Nick, looking 100 years old, got tiredly to his feet and let Jordan pull him in the direction of the door. "I'll be alright."
"Nick-" She tried again.
""Don't hold supper for me." Nick said, following the little girl outside. There was a moment of awkward silence, then Angela followed behind and the door closed.
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Silently Nick saddled Easy and gave Angela a lesson, before placing Jordan on her back and leading her around the paddock. Only when the little girl was tired and asleep did they adjourn to the barn to groom and feed the gentle mare.
"Ah'm sorry about yo friend." Angela offered finally. "Ah knows he meant a lot ta ya."
"yeah." He said finally. "Yeah, a friend like the Doc comes along once, maybe twice in a lifetime. He understood me." He bit his lip. "I could talk to him and.." Nick could feel his control slipping and turned his back to her. He felt her hand on his shoulder and was undone.
"I feel like everything may come apart now. H…" she waited patiently while he groped for words. "He was my friend. I could tell him anything, anything! And he wouldn't judge me for it. He wouldn't think me less of a person; he wouldn't tell me I was acting like a bull in a china shop, or tell me I was wrong. A lot of times I was wrong. I was being hot headed, or stupid, but he never said that. Doc would just ask me questions about what I was feeling or thinking and as I answered them I'd realize…. There was a better way to handle something, or I'd realize what I'd just said or done wasn't right. I'd realize. No one telling me I was wrong, just me answering Doc Martin an' understanding it for myself. Like he was teaching me how to stop an' think."
He stopped and gasped for breath, feeling a sharp pain in his throat as fought against the tears that were slipping out of his control, falling down his face as he lowered his head in shame.
"I'm so selfish. I'm such a selfish bastard, Angela. It's not just that I lost a friend." He sucked in a painful breath past the knot of grief choking his throat. "I lost a teacher. I lost someone…who was helping me figger things out, important things. Things I have to know to keep going. And I don't know how I'm going to do it on my own."
He gasped for breath again, drowning in a freezing well of sorrow and grief, then felt warm hands cupping his face, pulling his head up to meet liquid brown eyes as pained as his own.
"Won' be on youh own. Ah'll help ya. We figger things out, tagether."
He grasped her hands feeling their warmth under his icy fingers and sensed the heat kindle something inside him. So beautiful, and he wondered why he hadn't noticed before. Gold glinted hazel eyes met gentle brown ones and his head started ringing as his world narrowed down to the face in front of him.
A soft clearing of the throat made them both jump, and Angela moved guiltily away.
"Mr. Nick, your Mother is looking for you." Silas' voice was carefully neutral, and Nick realized with a jolt that the man disapproved. Odd how that hurt.
"Ah hav 'ta finish up in th' kitchen." Angela hurried away with Jordan in her arms. Silas, his expression chillingly blank, followed her, leaving Nick awash in so many emotions it took hours for him to sort out.
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Journal Entry
I Love Angela.