THE GHOST OF PRESENTS PAST
1871:
"Good to see you up and about, Mr. Hex," Malloy said to the customer that just stepped into the general store. "Been wonderin' when you'd be back in town."
"Just tryin' tuh take it slow, is all. Don't want tuh go an' bust muh damn leg all over again." It had been six weeks since Jonah Hex had been injured while hunting up in the mountains, and though his leg had healed enough to bear his full weight, there was still an obvious limp in his walk as he made his way to the counter.
"You're lucky a busted leg is all you got. Ain't many folks that've walked away intact from bein' jumped by Injuns."
"Thet may be so, but they ain't the reason muh leg got broke. Not directly." Jonah leaned against the counter. "Put a decent hole in muh arm, though, but it weren't nothin' tuh write home about."
"That's not the way the Hartley gal tells it," Malloy said. "She makes it sound like you was bleedin' like a stuck pig while you fought off the whole damn tribe barehanded."
"Miss Hartley has exaggerated things a touch." Jonah paused, then asked with a slight amount of apprehension, "Whut else is she sayin'?"
"Not much, least not about herself. She talks to damn-near everybody about you, though." He waved a hand towards the street, saying, "She's workin' at the hotel in exchange for room and board, if you want to see her."
"No, Ah don't." Outwardly, Jonah tried to show no emotion, but inside was a different story. His mind had been fixated for six whole weeks on what happened between himself and Emmylou Hartley up in those mountains, part of him wishing that he could wipe away that indiscretion while another part of him reveled in the memory of it. He supposed that, if he was a more religious man, he'd go have a sit-down with a priest and confess his sins, but the last thing he wanted to do right now was tell anybody about this. Good Lord, if word of what he did ever got back to...
"...Mei Ling?"
"Whuh?" Jonah snapped out of his rumination at the sound of his wife's name and stared at Malloy. "Whut did yuh say?"
"I said, 'How's Mei Ling?'"
"Fine...Mei Ling's fine." Suddenly remembering why he'd come into the general store, he said, "She sent me tuh pick up a few things."
Malloy nodded. "Figured this wasn't just a social call. Got a list?" Jonah produced one from inside his coat, and Malloy set about tracking down the items. As he plucked things off the shelves, he asked Jonah, "So, the two of you gonna come into town for the New Year's party?"
"Reckon thet depends on her. The baby's been makin' her feel a mite poorly the last few days."
"Well, there's still a couple more weeks 'til the party. A lot can change between here and there." Malloy set some items on the counter. "Surprised that young'un ain't popped out yet: your wife was lookin' pretty close to ready last time she stopped in."
"Ah know, but the doc says the baby won't be gettin' here 'til early February."
"Well, if that's the case, he's gonna be pretty dang big when he finally arrives."
Jonah answered, "Thet's because he's half-Texan. Yuh know everything's bigger down there." The two men had a good chuckle over that, and Jonah felt some of his unease fade away. As Malloy walked off to get some more items on the list, Jonah let his eyes wander over the other merchandise displayed nearby on the counter: jars of brightly-colored penny candy, a stack of woolen blankets, and a single wooden box. To Jonah, the last item looked to be about the right size and shape for cigars, and not being one to pass up a good smoke, he opened the lid to see what kind they were. The items that lay inside, however, were certainly not cigars.
They were soldiers, two dozen in all, each about three inches high and cast in lead - half of them resembled Colonial minutemen, the other half British redcoats. A few of the tiny men were on horseback, and a few more were kneeling down to take aim at the enemy with their miniscule flintlocks. There was even a pair of cannons nestled within the felt-lined box. Malloy saw Jonah looking at the box and said, "Oh, I see you found my little battalion." He came over and pulled out one of the soldiers, saying, "I got them from a company back east, along with some other toys. There ain't a lot of kids livin' in Cheyenne yet, but I like to keep a few things on hand for Christmas, just in case. Rest of 'em sold, but nobody really seems interested in these fellas."
"Thet's a shame," Jonah said quietly, his gaze not moving from the box's contents.
"Yeah. Reckon the War's made a lot of people think twice 'bout lettin' their boys play with toy soldiers." He shrugged. "Christmas ain't for another week, though. Might be able to sell them before that." Malloy put the figure back in place, then went back to work.
Jonah continued to look at the soldiers, pulling off one of his gloves so he could run his bare hand over them. There was a series of scars across the palm of that hand, once very evident but now stretched and faded as his hands had grown and acquired newer wounds. He could still remember how those scars looked when they were new, however, and what it had felt like to receive them. It's hard to forget your first battle.
He closed his eyes, and it all came back to him...
1841:
He keeps his eyes closed because Ma tells him to, but she doesn't tell him why, even though he keeps asking her as she steers him down the hall very early in the morning. Jonah is three, and he is always asking questions, like why does snow melt inside the house but not outside, and where does Pa go when he puts all those bottles in the wagon. It's been a long time since Pa last rode away with the bottles, but Jonah doesn't mind because Ma seems happier when Pa isn't home. She smiles, and she dresses pretty, and sometimes somebody will visit with her while Jonah plays outside. Jonah doesn't always know who they are, but they're always men. Jonah thinks they might be friends with Pa, but when he asks Ma about them, she doesn't tell him, just like she won't tell him why he has to keep his eyes closed right now.
He knows when he reaches the main room, because he can feel the warmth from the fireplace (and that's why the snow melts inside the house, he remembers that), and Ma tells Jonah to stop and turns him just a little to the right, and then she says Open your eyes, so he does. He opens them very wide because he doesn't understand what he's seeing, and he asks Ma why there is a tree in the house, and Ma tells him that it's a special tree, a Christmas tree. Jonah knows what Christmas is, and he knows about baby Jesus and the manger and the special star in the sky, but he's never heard of a Christmas tree before, and says so. And then Ma tells him about how her grandparents came from a place called The Old Country, and that they would always cut down a tree and decorate it for Christmas. She calls it a tradition, and though very few people outside of The Old Country do it, she wanted to teach this tradition to her son. This doesn't make a lot of sense to Jonah, but he thinks the tree is very pretty with the little candles sitting on the branches and the ribbons wrapped around it. Then Ma brings him closer to the tree and sits him down and hands him a wooden box tied with ribbon like on the tree. She says This is for you, and Jonah pulls off the ribbon and opens it. His eyes open even wider now when he sees the toy soldiers, all blue and red, and he looks up at Ma and asks if all of these are really for him and she says Yes every one of them, and Jonah throws his arms around Ma's neck and kisses her.
After breakfast, Jonah sets up his soldiers all over the floor. They march in straight lines in front of the fireplace, and they fight battles beneath the tree, and around midday Ma joins him and tells him about another Christmas a very long time ago when General Washington (who Ma says is the man in blue on the little horse) took his soldiers across the Delaware River to surprise the British. So they make up a new game by laying a blue scarf of Ma's on the floor and putting a small piece of kindling on it for a boat, and Jonah plays Crossing the Delaware until suppertime. Ma serves up a whole chicken for just the two of them, and Jonah eats very fast so he can go back to his soldiers. He plays until Ma tells him it's time for bed, so he carefully puts his soldiers back into the box and places it back under the tree. He asks Ma how long can they can keep the tree in the house, and Ma says As long as you want, and Jonah says he wants to keep it forever, and Ma scoops him up and hugs him and carries him down the hall to his bed.
In his dreams that night, Jonah is riding the horse and the blue soldiers march behind him and their guns go pop-pop-pop and make the red soldiers fall down. He laughs and claps his hands and all the soldiers get back up so they can play again under the big Christmas tree with its ribbons as wide as a country road and candles that sparkle like stars. They're halfway through their third fight when Jonah hears thunder rumbling over the battlefield, and suddenly he's not a brave blue soldier anymore, he's a scared little boy, because the thunder isn't thunder, it's Pa yelling, and Jonah sits up in bed and he can hear Ma crying as Pa calls her a whore, a stinking whore. Jonah doesn't know what the word means, but he's heard Pa say it many times before, especially after Pa's drank a lot of those bottles that he puts in the wagon.
Jonah gets out of bed and creeps down the hall to the main room, where he sees Pa standing over Ma, and he still has his coat on as he hits her and says that he can't leave her alone for one damn minute without her spreading her legs for any man she sees. Ma denies it, but that just makes Pa angrier, and he starts grabbing things and throwing them and making an awful mess. Then Pa grabs hold of the Christmas tree and knocks it right over onto Ma, and then he kicks the box of toy soldiers and it flies into the fireplace and breaks apart. Jonah screams NO! and runs towards the fireplace, and he sees that the little lead soldiers are melting from the heat and their fine paint is burning off. Then he sees one of the soldiers laying on the hearth and it looks okay so he grabs it and it's HOT but Jonah won't let go, not even when Pa smacks him and knocks him to the floor. Now Pa is yelling at him and hitting him and Jonah is so mad at Pa that he yells and hits back, but it's useless, he's only three, and soon he can't stand up anymore and he falls to the floor again but Pa doesn't stop hitting him. Then he hears Ma shout and she gets up and grabs Pa's arm, and Pa turns his attention back to her while Jonah lays on the floor and cries because his hand hurts and his body hurts and he wishes that Pa would just go away and never ever ever come home.
1871:
"I'm glad you're home," Mei Ling said as Jonah entered the bedroom. She was laying on the bed, resting on her side to try and take some of the pressure off her legs and back. "I kept imagining something terrible was going to happen to you."
Jonah sat next to her, saying, "Yuh gotta stop doin' thet tuh yerself, sugar. Just 'cause Ah had one little accident don't mean thet Ah cain't take care of muhself no more." He leaned close to give her a kiss on the cheek. "Feelin' any better?"
"Still tired, but I'll be all right." She rested a hand on her ample belly. "Some days it feels like I'll be pregnant forever."
"Thank the Lord thet it ain't gonna be so." He laid his own hand over hers, then said, "Think the two of yuh are up fer makin' some supper tonight?" She nodded, and Jonah helped Mei Ling to her feet. As they made their way down the hall, Jonah spied Ironjaws padding across the floor towards the kitchen table, and before he knew it, the wolf had its front paws on the table and started nosing around inside the satchel Jonah laid upon it. "Hey, quit thet!" he shouted, but Ironjaws was too absorbed by the interesting smells in there, so Jonah grabbed the wolf by the scruff of its neck and yanked it away. "Dammit, if'n yuh want tuh stay in the house fer the winter, yo're gonna have tuh learn tuh listen." The lecture went right over the wolf's head, and it tried to go back to the satchel the moment Jonah let go. Grabbing Ironjaws again, Jonah knelt down in front of the animal and stared it right in the eye, saying, "Ah'm gonna lock yuh in the barn if'n yuh don't quit. Yuh hear me, yuh damn flea factory? Ah'm gonna march yer furry butt right out there an'..."
"What's this?"
Jonah turned his attention away from the wolf and saw Mei Ling pulling a wooden box out of the satchel. Before Jonah could say otherwise, she opened it and looked at the tiny soldiers laying inside. "You bought toys?" she asked.
"Just...just the one," he replied quietly.
Mei Ling smiled at him and said, "I would have thought you were a bit old for toys."
"It ain't fer me." He stood up and walked over to her, paying no mind this time to when Ironjaws went back into the satchel. "Ah thought maybe it'd be nice fer the baby. Not right away, of course, but maybe when he's a few years older..."
"What if he's a she?" Mei Ling interjected. She'd been teasing him about the possibility of it being a girl for months now.
Jonah shook his head, refusing to be baited. "Ah don't care whut the baby is, Ah just...Ah want them tuh have it. Thet's all."
Mei Ling could see something lurking in Jonah's eyes as he spoke. He'd been acting a little odd the past six weeks, and while this was odd as well, it was a decidedly different sort of odd. She could tell that there was some meaning behind Jonah's desire to buy the soldiers, and though he didn't voice it now, perhaps he would later on. "Okay," she said, and set the box down upon the table. "I don't like the idea of our child playing with such a thing, but if you want them to have it, I suppose I can agree."
Slowly, Jonah drew her into a hug, and after standing there together for a while, he said, "Ah was thinkin' on the way home."
"About what?"
"Well, Ah know yuh ain't Christian an' all, but Ah was wonderin' if maybe we could set up a Christmas tree."
"What for?"
A rare expression of warmth came over Jonah's scarred face. "It's a tradition," he said.