Disclaimer: I own none of the characters presented in this story. Red Dead Redemption and all associated with said property belong to Rockstar Games.
Disclaimer: Strong depictions of violence, murder, and other such heinous and repugnant acts, very harsh language used throughout, and some taboo and offensive material occasionally presented.
Act Four:
The Return, the Unrequited, and the Last Stand of the Van der Linde Gang
Part Seventy: Javier
6:42 PM November 26th, 1899
It was Thanksgiving. Before Arthur had died, Dutch had promised they would be feasting on some foreign food far away when the date rolled around. Perhaps satiating themselves on peacock or chinstrap penguin instead of turkey.
Now, they were thankful for the lanky goats Kieran and Sadie had bought from Butcher's Creek—without them, they would've starved.
Javier took a small swallow of the thin leg of meat. It was flavorless, but the place smelled so awful he couldn't really taste it anyway. He was on the second floor of the barn, keeping an eye out the window for signs of intruders stalking closer in the dying light. The falling sun scared him; the dark made them hard to spot, and the hearing in his right ear hadn't come back since the valley where Paytah was captured, so if any bastards revealed themselves by stepping on a twig, he wouldn't pick up on it. Kieran sat across from him, shaking his head doggishly to stay awake—they'd been on shift for a while. Bill and Sadie were downstairs, standing guard on the bottom windows. This way, no one could sneak up on them. Javier wasn't thrilled about his partner; Kieran got distracted easily and wasn't nearly as good a shot as the others, but with Micah, Charles, and Uncle gone, beggars couldn't be choosers.
Behind them, feet went thud thud thud against the ladder as they climbed up the second story of the barn. Javier recognized the sound—the boots clicked, so they weren't worn down completely like most everyone else's were.
"Hey, Dutch," he greeted without turning around. He couldn't get too distracted; he needed to patrol where the grassy field met the tumbledown houses across from them.
"How ya doin', Javier?" Dutch asked, unwrapping his tattered pink handkerchief. "I got a bite more. A rib, I think."
"I'm doin' good. And no, thank you, give it to Kieran."
"Alright."
Their rations hadn't lasted since Langton's men attacked them on the road. They were barely a day out from the reservation when it happened. James Langton was many things, but a liar was not one of them. He had returned with the cavalry. At least fifty men; bullets went around so thickly it might as well have been raining. They would've died, certainly, if not for Dutch. Crafty bastard had managed to outflank them by leading them uphill before clearing one of the gang's two wagons and sending it packing down like a battering ram.
A battering ram stuffed with the last of their dynamite.
It killed at least a dozen or two, and stunned the rest. Gave them enough distance to limp the last wagon here, the nearest settlement they found. It was abandoned, thank god (or Javier, I should say, you'll see why soon enough) and they holed up in the barn, hoping Langton's men would pass them by; they'd covered their tracks well enough and even cut all of the horses loose with some of their clothing to confuse the bloodhounds and push them in the wrong direction—the barn wasn't big enough for those animals anyway.
Hadn't mattered. The bounty hunters had tracked them down and now dwelled in the ranch's main two houses, its shed, and had fashioned a whole tent city around the perimeter to box them in. The barn was against a goddamn mountain, so going backward wasn't exactly an option unless Bill was secretly a mole-man (tragically, he wasn't). They were trapped. The first two nights were the hardest. Langton's men had tried to attack in one great coordinated effort, but they'd been able to force his guys back—they had cover and some of the best gunmen (and women) in the country. Now, they faced an even deadlier foe, maybe the deadliest they'd ever fought: cabin fever.
Langton was waiting them out, till they ran out of food or the scent of their own shit drove them crazy—at this rate, Javier wasn't sure which would materialize sooner.
The canned food had bit the dust first, then Billy—that was Jack's name for one of the goats—, then Goat—another pet name—, and finally, Gruff—the last goat. Soon after, their jugs of goat milk, water, and worst of all, booze, ran dry. Now, as Javier sat at the window, starving and sick to his stomach all at once—the barn was small with few windows, so the cooking fire needed to be quaint or else the smoke would choke them all or make scouting for enemies impossible; raw meat is not good meat. They had maybe three days before the lack of water and food got to them, made them turn against each other, or give up altogether.
He remembered Langton's pudgy, cat-like smirk as he flipped the silver dollar at Strauss.
"That's my deposit," he had said. "I bet ya two dollars that I'll have this entire gang dead before Thanksgiving."
He was wrong on that front; they had made it to Thanksgiving. If they would last until it was over, that was the question.
"... Javier?" Dutch repeated, snapping Javier out of his partially thirst-induced delirium. "Wanna relieve yourself? I want to talk to Kieran here about something."
"Sure, Dutch, thanks." But it wasn't really a request. He knew that.
Javier climbed down the ladder, losing his footing twice; he was never good at descending those things—he couldn't see where the steps were.
There was no more straw littering the ground, it had all been burned up in Tilly's bonfires. Now the ground was laden with scraps of tin, patches of clothing, chips of wood from their sole remaining wagon. Grimshaw made her rounds, which only looked like the manic pacing of a loon, around and around and around. Tilly kept a smolder alive near Sadie, near the window where the smoke could dissipate, to help ease the cold borne by the darker and darker nights. Jack was huddled in one corner with Jack, and Mary-Beth, who was reading to the boy. Javier smiled a mite seeing John lucid again, coughing, complaining, being himself. They'd lost the blankets in the firefight, yet John insisted he wasn't chilly, in contrast to practically everyone else.
Javier shivered as he walked away from the fire over to the bunker buried deep in the heart of the barnhouse. He remembered it from the last time he'd been to this ranch. He and Arthur were hunting down a lead which had brought them to Chez Porter and his fucked-up family. They'd fought hard, they'd lost hard, and Arthur and he had searched the place for their valuables, discovering a secret door at the bottom of the barn leading ten feet down in a pillar of space to a small crevice with a few crates of ammo and gold.
Now that trap door was their toilet. Javier unbuckled his belt, squatted, squinted, and let fly his bullets of dry, crusty shit. He shut the hatch quickly when he was done, lest too much of the stink leak out. Not that it helped. They'd been here for days, they may as well be conducting their crude business anywhere. The odious odor was floating in the air above them, combining with their increasingly smelly, unshowered bodies to form a vile cloud of pollutants worse than the smog of Saint Denis.
He didn't have enough liquid in his system to piss, so he returned to the ladder. He wished it would rain soon—he was thirsty. He yawned and found he was tired too, hadn't slept asides a three-hour respite two days ago. His leg slipped from the ladder, and then he was on the ground, head resting on his arms, the only thing warm and soft in this claustrophobic shithole. The next thing he knew he was asleep.
His dream was rapture, a bright and sunny day on the lakeside, green fish flopping in and out of the sea, a robin gliding by with a worm in its mouth. Javier mirrored the animal, sucking back a sausage that was dripping with mustard and beans. The meat popped in his mouth, exploding with flavor. Smiling, he glanced down at the crystal-clear waters, soaking in his healthy face; it was full of color, not as it was in reality. Suddenly, the wind blew, and the water rippled until his reflection had been marred. He was staring at Charles now, Molly, and Abigail too.
They were screaming, bubbles drifting upwards, sprouting out of the lake, and snapping.
Javier! the snaps seemed to shriek, at his left ear, his good ear.. Javier! Javier! Javier!
Javier turned away, ignoring them. Reflections can't talk, he told himself. And besides, this is just a dream. In the real world, Charles, Molly, and Abigail aren't on the coast somewhere, they are in maximum security jail. That's what Dutch said.
"Are they?" cooed a man in black. He stood under the shadow of a tree, his entire physique masked with inky darkness. The only thing that could be made out was a book's cover distending into the light. It was earth-brown, with jagged streaks of rotten, parasitical green weeding across it in patternless spirals. "Then why aren't you going back to them, Javier? You've been to Sisika, hell, you've shaken the warden's hand, remember? He thinks good ol' Dutch is a rich benefactor, you could doubtless explain away what happened with Charles as a misunderstanding. He bought it once, why not twice?"
Javier's head shook in confusion. "N-no, we're trapped."
"And why is that?" the strange man asked him. "Dutch won't tell y'all his plan, presumably because he doesn't have one—"
"He does! M-maybe not a plan, but an inkling."
"And how convenient it is that this inkling flows in the exact opposite direction of Sisika. Heh, y'know if it wasn't just some stupid coincidence, it would be rather brilliant, wouldn't it?"
"Shut up…"
"Dutch eliminates Abigail and Molly, the two women who've nagged and fought him every step of the way, and Charles, the feller who gave away all your hard-earned money, in one fell swoop…"
"Stop talking!" Javier demanded. The wind mushroomed into a tornado, and it blew his food from his fist. Green lighting sparked in the distance. "You ain't real, you're just a dream!"
"No, my friend," the strange man said, "I'm a memory, a forgotten one. Forgotten a bit because of someone outside the lines, and a bit cuz you just don't want to think this way. But you have to, Javier, you have to, or else all your friends will die—"
"No," he cried. "No, no, no—"
"NO!" a high-pitched voice shouted, waking him up at once, even with his deaf ear.
He blinked several times, adjusting himself to the foul scent and low lighting—night had fallen as well as Tilly's fire. Its fingers danced only an inch tall now.
Dutch and Kieran stood in the corner of the barn now, the first tall and dominant, the second sunk and submissive. Ahead of them was Mary-Beth, Jack at her side, John at her feet. She stabbed Dutch with her finger.
"No, you ain't pullin' this shit again."
"He ain't pullin' nothin'," Kieran pleaded, "I want to do this. I do."
Dutch sighed. Even facing his back, Javier could hear the fake smile in his tone. "Mary-Beth, we cannot be gettin' emotional right now. I know this is just the hunger and irritation talkin', but you have to be reasonable. This is our only shot."
"No, it ain't, quit talkin' that way." She waved her hands around as she spoke, pacing a few steps forward and back. The men's heads followed her like a clock's hands ticking all around. "You always do that, talk like it's either your stupid, empty-headed plans or nothin' else."
"I take it you got a plan, then," Dutch remarked icily. "If my plan is so stupid, I trust you'll need to work very little to put something better together. Well? Let's hear it."
She glowered at him with a pout, hating that he was right. "You are not doin' this again," she repeated, "you did this with the O'Driscolls and he got maimed all black and blue."
"This won't be like that," Dutch spat at the same time Kieran said, "I'm practically good as new."
"And you," the woman scorned, hands on her hip, scowling down at John. "You're okay with this? Lettin' him use your goddamn son as a prop for one of his plays?"
The words hung in the air. Their new home wasn't what you might call roomy, so while only five sets of eyes were on John, the whole gang was waiting for his answer.
After a time of picking a scab, he licked his lips and whispered his response. "If… if Dutch says it's for the best, it is."
"See?" Dutch affirmed, not able to hold the complacency from sliding onto his tongue. "You're makin' a problem when there is no problem."
Mary-Beth's nostrils flared. "Dutch—"
"Jack," he interjected, pointing at the boy, "do you want to help us out with a special errand?"
"I guess," the boy muttered, playing with his shoelaces in the same fashion John played with the scab on his arm. "Sure."
"See?" Dutch repeated, crooking his head as he smiled. "We're all clear."
"How about I do it?" she offered. "Alone. No Jack, no Kieran. Just me."
"No!" Kieran protested. "Dutch, tell her no."
"Jack is the finishing touch of authenticity," he told her. "He's required."
"Dutch, tell her she can't do it!" Kieran cried, bouncing with anxiousness.
"I was gettin' to that, son," Dutch coaxed with a shadow of irritation. "Just calm yourself down. We almost cut off your balls, remember? Blade didn't touch, so don't be playin' like a little girl when you're a goddamn man."
Javier cringed at the memory. He wasn't sure why. It was Dutch who gave the order on that one, and Bill who carried the hot pliers. He'd just stood back, hadn't done anything. Hadn't done anything at all.
"Mary-Beth," their patriarch continued, "it can't be you. Now, I appreciate that spark of enthusiasm, but it simply can't be. You're great, don't get me wrong, but you're soft. I don't mean that as a slur, but it's the truth. Plus… I mean… heh, let's be practical here. Them bounty hunters, they still primarily men, and you'd be a pretty young thing, all alone in the woods…"
"No!" Kieran was pale as a sheet now.
"You would know a thing or two about that, wouldn't you, Dutch?" Mary-Beth's voice was a whisper, yet it rang across the narrow walls, cold as ice.
"He-he would know about raping a girl?" Javier found himself blurting stupidly. That was impossible…
"No," Dutch growled, leering at the girl until she shriveled down to a husk. "She's sayin' I would know 'bout killin' a girl, and that's cruel of you to say, Mary-Beth. Heidi McCourt was not somethin' I took any pleasure from, but the Pinks had us cornered. What was I supposed to do? Die." There was an edge to his words, as though they were only a mask.
Her head shook. Her teeth bore into her lips. "You can't do this…"
"I can't?" Dutch said incredulously, closing the gap between them. "I can't? Why exactly can't I? No one's fightin' this but you, girl. And if it's your will against mine who's do you think wins? Every. Single. Time." He stood over her, a dark giant over a pink orchid. The gang was staring at them, even Sadie and Bill, who were supposed to be watching for intruders. In his peripheral vision, Dutch noted their dumbstruck expressions and smiled merrily. "I'm jokin', jokin' obviously!"
He coughed. "But… Mary-Beth, there ain't no other choice, seriously. Them hunters seen me, you, Sadie, Bill, Till, everyone."
"They've seen Kieran, too," she agreed. "They'll smell him out in an instant! He'll be shot dead! For nothing!"
"No," Dutch said gently. "They have seen him, sure, but not up close. The O'Driscolls did, Milton and Ross did, but not Langton. We was doin' recon when he pulled up at the reservation, remember?"
"They've shot at us for days!" she objected, stomping her foot. "I'm pretty goddamn sure they saw who the hell was firin' back at 'em!"
"That's unlikely, they ain't got no scopes or they woulda put one between his eyes days ago from a mile back. But, hey, I'm a reasonable guy, we'll give him a quick shave. That, plus Jack—a boy they can't possibly know about? That'll seal the deal. They'll never know."
"I can do this," Kieran alleged, slipping his arm over her shoulder.
Javier clutched his own right—deaf—ear as Mary-Beth clasped Kieran by his own, dragging him to an abandoned corner of the barn to talk in private. It was pointless because everyone could still hear them—except for Javier, who could only half hear them.
"You did your move with them—the—O'Driscolls," she hissed at him in a raspy murmur. "They beat you, tied you up, threatened to kill you. That's it, that's your stupid stunt of the year. I ain't lettin' you do it again."
"But Dutch needs me," he complained, gazing back at the gang. Javier and the others glanced away awkwardly.
"And I need you to not get yourself killed!" She pulled him tighter, so his ear felt the wind on her teeth. "Is Dutch your girl? Is he your sweetheart? Answer me."
"N-no," Kieran grumbled.
"Who is? C'mon, who is?"
"You."
"Righto. That means I have a certain input on what you do, and I'm tellin' you, no. You do this and we're through, I'm puttin' my foot down here."
Kieran shared a look of defeat with Dutch before muttering, "Sure. Yes, ma'am."
"Good." She let go of him. "I'm gonna be sittin' over there with John and Jack, and I won't sleep a wink all night. Don't you even think about tryin' for the window, mister."
She stormed off, asking the gang what they were indeed staring at until they turned to face the rotten gray walls of the Porter's barn.
Normality returned soon after. Javier and Kieran resumed their posts, John went back to grunting at his wounds, Mary-Beth read to Jack, eyes darting occasionally to ensure Kieran was where he was supposed to be. The man himself was goggling out the window in the night; shadows shrouded his bearded visage, so Javier couldn't tell just what the hell he was thinking. The Mexican continued pondering over his peculiar dream, and to whom that strange man under the tree was—I must've made a hash of the erasure with him, oh well, you live, you learn, it's doubtful the memories of what we talked about will emanate into his waking life.
He held the hammer on his revolver down, aiming it up in case it misfired, so there was no chance of anyone getting struck. A snowflake flitted from outside and melted on his nose. Sleet fell soon after, and Javier hugged his thin poncho to try (and fail) to keep warm.
Pale smoke leaked from his cold lips; he felt his eyelids grow heavy until a sharp whistle cut through the room, and he turned his head.
Dutch stood beside Grimshaw, gyrating so everyone heard him. He removed his fingers and licked his lips. "I feel… I feel like we're all feelin' pretty bad right now, and I ought to say somethin'." He sighed. "There were twenty-three of us. Twenty-goddamn three—twenty-four once we got Kieran and Sean. Now, it's just the nine of us. Less than half…" His fingers scratched against his overgrown mustache. He seemed like he might cry until he clapped his hands, shaking the blues away. "But… but when me and… where is he, oh there, Kieran over there, ya see him? When me and Kieran were talkin' earlier he told me somethin 'bout perspective, and I think that's somethin' I should share with you.
"I can look at what's happened to us as some horrible tragedy, but I choose to alter my perspective. I choose to see us as down but not out. The best thing 'bout rock bottom is there's only one place to go: up. I don't see half of what we had a few months before, I see thrice what me, Hosea, and Arthur started all them years ago. I don't see another dead end, another wall, I see another opportunity to make it rain with cash! More cash than we woulda gotten on that dumb train anyhow. Way more!"
Javier cheered, but it was rehearsed. He felt nothing. Not even hope.
"One more job!" Dutch whooped. "One more goddamn job and we're gone, en route to a tropical island! Imagine it, just imagine it, close your eyes: warm sand between your toes, a cool drink in your hand, the sun overhead, so bright…" His eyes snapped open. No one else had bothered closing them. "I can bring us there. I have a plan, I have the best crew a man can have, and I have faith. I have faith."
How many times, Javier wondered. How many times had that word wiggled from his mouth? Does he think it still means anything anymore? Arthur had faith, Pearson had faith, Sean had faith, Mac and Davey had faith, Lenny had faith, did it help them?
His stomach twisted in his chest, and the half-digested nibble of goat fought against him as he struggled to force it down.
It grew worse as Dutch shot his trap, a mile a minute. "You may feel like we're lost and trapped, but allow me to change your perspective. No matter how much trouble you get me in, no matter how much you may get on my nerves from time to time—not lookin' at you, Mary-Beth, heh—I promise I'll always be here to lead y'all straight when you're astray. We've all done some things… we ain't proud of. But we've done them for us, for our community. And I tell you, I haven't lost a second of sleep over it!"
Javier's poncho fluttered as a malevolent draft crept in, wrapping him in a blanket of icy pain. The acid in his belly burned.
"I promise," Dutch kept on, "everything I do will always be for you, you people are my family, my flag, my everything. I promise, I won't do like Hosea gone and done, I will never abandon you. We will always be together, forever and ever."
Javier collapsed to his knees as the green vomit filled his throat and burst out, dripping down the floorboards until he gasped for breath, chin sticky with the putrid juice.
And outside, the wind howled fiercer than ever.
Langton's back! Hope you didn't forget about him. He's got them locked in, but don't worry, Dutch has got a plan. Involving a child and a man who stutters. What could go wrong?
The horses are gone, too. I hope there's no need for a fast getaway.
Not sure who hasn't played Chez Porter mission in the game, if not I'd recommend it; practically the only nugget of time you spend with Javier. But yeah, that's the location we're at now. It was the closest abandoned settlement to the reservation I could find big enough to house them all. By this point, Arthur and Javier have cleared it out, killed the family, and looted it for gold, so it's empty. Until now...
Will Abigail, Charles, and Molly be able to get out of jail and convince the others to stop this clownery? What else will Micah rat out? What does the title of this act mean? Can the gang escape all the guns hounding them? Who is going to die?
Find out this act!
