Chapter 5: Poor Ole’ Detrick

Michaela stared up at Vernon, her bowl of stew empty in front of her. It had been very tasty. She decided she liked food.

“How do you know all that?” she asked Vernon. The people all sat behind her listening quietly. “You make it sound like you were there.”

Vernon shook his head. “Well, I wasn’t.” His arms folded across his chest, he gestured with his chin towards the large fireplace. The crackling fire gave off a comforting warmth. “But I remember—and many of these other folks here do too—Deet sitting right over there, on that very hearth.”

Vernon’s eyes drifted slowly back to Michaela’s. “He sat quietly, just hold’in his mug of ale and stare’n,” Vernon said. “He didn’t stare into the fire. No. Deet stared just to the left o’ the fire.” Vernon lifted a finger, pointing to the spot.

“I remember, someone asked him what he was looking at,” Vernon said with a distant look in his own eyes. “He said, ‘A nightmare that follows me everywhere.’”

Vernon’s eyes focused then on Michaela’s face. She sat on his stool with both of her arms resting on the bar, listening intently.

“I remember that he never looked at us or moved much at all. He just stared at that spot while he talked.”

Vernon swallowed. “He started telling us abou that day on the battlefield. The day he met his demon. Honestly, it explained a lot,” Vernon said with a nod.

“It sure did,” said Martha. She had sat in a chair just off to the side of Michaela the entire time Vernon told the story. “He’s always been an odd one, Detrick.”

Michaela turned to her. “How so?” she asked.

Martha nodded up towards Vernon. “I’ll let him tell ya. He’s much better at tell’in stories,” Martha replied.

Michaela turned back to Vernon. He gave Martha an appreciative nod. Then he took a deep breath and looked around the tavern again.

“Ya see, Deet acts real peculiar when you’re around him. He’s always looking off to the side. He’s real jumpy. Talks to himself. He wears this sort of big silver armored glove on his right hand. And the strangest things happen around him,” Vernon explained with a shake of his head.

“Like what?” Michaela asked.

Vernon scratched at his chin. He had an apron on, tied at his waist, and a dish towel hung from the waist loop. He wore a dark, elbow length shirt, laced up at the top of his hairy chest. He had thick arms, a cleanly shaved bald head, dark gray stubble covered his face, and looked at Michaela with worn gray eyes.

“I’ve seen his ale mug go flying out o’his hand and clatter across me floor more than once,” Vernon said earnestly, looking deeply into her eyes.

“I once saw,” the young woman that had interrupted Martha earlier suddenly blurted out, “where his dinner knife got torn from his silver hand, and plunged into the back o’ his otha hand. It was awful. He started ta scream and it was a real mess.”

“I once saw him shouting at nobody in particular for over an hour while he was out in the forest with me” yelled a young man from the back of the room.

“Really?” asked Michaela, turning to look at him. The boy’s eyes went wide when Michaela’s eyes fixed on him.

“Where was that?” she asked.

At first, the young man didn’t react. Transfixed, he stared at Michaela. Then he lifted his arm, pointing toward the door of the tavern. “It was out in the woods,” he said. “We were out huntin and Deet got real mad. Started shout’in at noth’in.”

The boy shook his head, but never took his eyes off Michaela. It was as if he didn’t want to waste a single moment of this opportunity to see her. “Deet was so upset,” the boy finished.

Michaela turned back to Vernon. The tavern keeper continued, “He trips sometimes over noth’in. Things come fly’in at him as if someone’s thrown them at him.

“He’s seen the worst of this world over and over again,” Vernon continued. “But I’ll tell ya someth’in. He’s always there for ya. He’s about as consistent as a man could be.”

Michaela saw as the townspeople around her nodded in agreement with Vernon.

“We’re lucky to have ‘im!” the man sitting alone in the corner yelled.

“Here, Here!” yelled another man from the other side of the room. At that, the entire tavern filled room lifted their mugs in salute to Detrick. They took deep swallows.

Michaela looked down at her mug. She hadn’t touched it since her first sip. But now she lifted it and held it out for all the townsfolk to see.

“Here! Here!” she yelled in her sing-songy voice. “To Detrick!” She put the mug to her lips and took a deep swallow of the ale, finishing nearly half of it. Afterwards, she smacked her lips. For some reason, the ale tasted much better this time around than when she had first tried it.

Jan gave a hoot, and the entire tavern erupted in cheers. Michaela turned and smiled at all of them. Inspired by their enthusiasm, she put the cup to her lips and finished the whole draught.

When she finished the cup, she slammed it down on the bar. “You know what?” she said. ‘I think you’re all wonderful!”

More cheers erupted all around her. She liked that.

She turned back to Vernon then. “Sir, I have no money. But if I may, I’d like another one of these here ales!”

The tavern erupted again in cheers. Chuckling, Vernon reached for her mug and began pouring her another.

While he poured, he started talking again. “Now, Deet moved up pretty fast after that awful battle with the Reds. Even though he had developed a severe limp from the spear wound he had suffered, every lord wanted Detrick on their payroll. He fought valiantly, often recklessly, against odds no reasonable man would ever take on. Yet, somehow he always survived.”

Vernon finished filling the mug, beheaded the ale, and set it in front of Michaela.

“Ya see,” Vernon said, resting both of his hands on the bar while he spoke. “Deet became famous. He faced impossible odds over and over again, and won every time. There are many tales surround’in him. But I know the one you wan ta hear.”

Michaela let out a squeak of excitement, looking around to see if everyone was paying attention.

Vernon took a breath and shook his head. “But another thing to know about Deet—as the stories go—is that he was a miserable, haunted man before he met Cilia. Supposedly, you’d never met anyone more unhappy than Deet, although I never saw that side of im.”

Vernon shook his head some more. “And it’s no wonder.” He looked up at Michaela then. “Thank the gods, Cilia showed up. That was about ten years after the battle for Shaw. It was around the time when they first came here to our little town too.”