2. The Motel
She turns down the offer of a ride back to Harlan. She's had more than enough of the hospitality of the Marshal Service and the thought of spending a few hours more with one of them in a car is more than she can bear.
But after her taxi has taken a few turnings she decides to make a stop for the one marshal to whom she does have something to say. Only courtesy, after all, to thank him for saving her. Helping to save her. And for that she is grateful. The picture builds, the little speech that she works out in her head: she'll be dignified, businesslike, and he'll feel small and regret what he did to her.
She tells the driver to wait and gets out of the taxi and it isn't Raylan she sees outside of the motel, but another figure even more familiar. Arm strapped across his chest, he fumbles with keys and tries to get the door of his truck open. He hears her approach, looks at her and it's like he isn't really seeing her. Not something she's used to with Boyd and that difference unsettles her.
'Raylan isn't here.' The words come out slow, voice soft.
Her eyes drift to the closed door and the crime-scene tape; she catches her breath. 'What the hell?'
'Two of them were after Arlo. My daddy's men. Raylan shot them.'
'Of course he did.'
He leans heavily against the side of the truck and his breathing is laboured. She looks at him uncertainly, fiddles with the strap of her bag, her fingers closing around it. The leather is worn, cracked, dry and flaking under the pressure of her grasp.
'Shouldn't you still be in hospital?'
'I discharged myself.'
'Does the hospital know that?'
There's a twitch at the corners of his mouth, fleeting, or maybe it's just the play of shadow across his face. 'Well, I'm sure that by now they do.'
The air is thick, laden with diesel and the threat of rain and her skin tautens against its chill. She tosses the hair back from her shoulders. 'You going back to your ... church?'
Everything in him shivers, coiling back to a dead centre and he looks at her from eyes that used to burn. 'My men-' His voice sinks lower, a breath of agony she can barely hear. 'My men are all dead. My daddy, he strung them up in the trees, he shot them. They believed in me. They believed in me, Ava.'
He seems to see her then and looks at her as though she has the answers. An answer. Anything. He'll take anything and she doesn't think that she has any of it to give. She's never seen a man flayed before but now, she thinks, now she has. That is what it's like to be so raw, every nerve exposed and screaming. What she sees behind his gaze hurts too much and she looks away from him.
'So,' she asks of the piece of path that leads to Raylan's steps, 'where will you go?'
'I don't rightly know.'
She looks at him again and the rise and fall of his chest and the white bandage stark against his sombre clothes. She pays off the taxi and comes back to him, taking the keys from his hand. 'You're in no state to drive, wherever it is you're not going to.'
They drive largely in silence. Every now and then his head nods down on his chest, eyes closed, until he wakes with a grunt of pain, shifts in the seat. She should take him back to the hospital, she thinks, no matter what he says, but she knows he'd just take himself right back out again and God knows what would happen then.
She turns on the radio. The song isn't one that she recognises but she likes it. She glances at Boyd and despite the prolonged silence he isn't asleep; he's listening to the music, staring at nothing in particular. They drive.
When they reach her house she climbs out of the truck and doesn't give him the chance to say anything, doesn't give herself the chance to think anything, just heads for her front door. She still has his keys. He can follow her or not, as he chooses.
He's still moving slowly. When he does finally make it into the house she keeps her back to him. 'You can stay here tonight,' she says. The screen door whines, then the front door closes softly, locks clicking into place. She goes into the kitchen.
A bottle of Wild Turkey that she's tried to hide from herself at the back of a cupboard is brought back out, and a glass. Two glasses. She needs a drink and he looks like he could do with one. Or ten. And perhaps she owes him the same courtesy she does Raylan: Boyd also helped to save her, after all.
It's a different speech that she has in her head but still one that she doesn't get to give. He's slumped sideways on her couch, face pressed into the cushions, and she experiences a moment of fear, a sudden stab of it, but then she hears his ragged breathing. Even asleep he still doesn't look at peace, pain and exhaustion etched too deeply into his face. The bruises around his cheek and jaw look livid, angry purplish-black, but there are no marks on his hands; she wonders why he would take a beating and not fight back.
Ava stands over him, stretches out a hand to wake him then pulls it back. She kneels, pulls off his heavy boots, lifts his feet until he's lying fully on the couch and covers him with a blanket. He barely stirs, muttering something that she doesn't hear before sinking back into his own private hell.
She takes the bottle back into the kitchen, returns it to its hiding place behind the tins of soup that she never uses, replaces one of the glasses in the cabinet, fills the other with water from the tap and goes upstairs.