Chapter 317 - Utah, One Week Ago part 2

Sydney Meadows was a shy and unassuming young man who rarely raised his voice and sometimes had trouble looking a fellow straight in the eye. Killer was the last thing a person would think if they'd only just met the boy, but a killer was what Sydney was, and it was the reason he fled his home on the afternoon of April 26, 1882.

He was running from the hangman's noose. This after gunning down a boyhood rival in the middle of the street in a little town called Green Gulch. He was hardly more than a child at the time and knew very little of the ways of the world, but he was smart enough to know they'd hang him for what he'd done, and he didn't intend to give his fellow townsmen a chance to string him up.

Dutch Jacobson was the name of the young man he killed. Both boys had lived in Green Gulch their whole lives. They were nearly the same age, Dutch being a year older than Sydney, and attended the same church and the same little one room schoolhouse. In a town as small as Green Gulch, that made the two boys intimates, though you wouldn't have called them friends by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, for as long as he could remember, Dutch Jacobson had had it in for Sydney.

Sydney was a small, sickly boy before he got his growth. This had brought out the tyrant in the hale and hearty Dutch Jacobson. Their animosity began on Sydney's very first day of school, when Dutch forced Sydney facedown in a pile of moist green horse apples, and persisted until early adulthood, when it ended in blood and thunder on a warm spring afternoon.

Dutch drew his pistol early—the dirty cheat!—meaning to catch Sydney by surprise, but haste and nervousness, and a few too many shots of the swill they served down at the Regal, spoiled his aim. His shot went high and wide, sending the dentist's sign swinging wildly back and forth with a crack of splintered wood. Even as he flinched from the older boy's shot, Sydney drew his father's Colt .45 and felled his rival with the one and only round he would fire that day, a feat most of the townsfolk would later agree was right up there with turning water into wine. Dutch clasped his hand to his throat, eyes bulging in disbelief, and then dropped to his knees. After a moment, blood began to trickle through his tightly clenched fingers. An instant after that, a bladder full of piss gushed down the left leg of his trousers. Dutch ogled the boy at the other end of the street. His brain wouldn't let him believe what his eyes were seeing, that Sydney Meadows was still standing, and there wasn't so much as a scratch on him. And then he slumped forward onto his face. His last sight on earth was his blood running out into a shallow puddle that had formed after a brief morning rain.

A small crowd had gathered on the boardwalk to watch what would turn out to be the only proper gunfight their village would ever host. They gaped in mute astonishment as Dutch Jacobson pitched forward, dead as a dog turd, then turned their gawping faces towards Sydney, who was in turn staring at the pistol in his hand as if he couldn't quite figure out just how it had gotten there.

It was dead quiet for several long seconds—just the squeak-squeak of rusty chains as the Doc's sign swung in ever diminishing arcs-- and then someone in the crowd exclaimed, "The sheriff is coming!" and Sydney scrambled for his horse.

Sydney fled from Green Gulch before the lawman could slap the boy in irons. He hadn't meant to kill Dutch Jacobson, or so he said to himself as he galloped away from town. He had only meant to stand up to the lad, maybe put a little fear of God in him. Shoot him in the arm or lame up one of his legs. His miraculously lethal shot was just as much an error as Dutch Jacobson's had been. Unfortunately, Sydney's wild shot had gone through Dutch's throat rather than the signboard of Green Gulch's one and only dentist cum barber cum telegraph operator.

When Sydney got home, he found that his mother had saddled a fresh horse for him. She had known, in the mysterious way women always seem to know what the men in their lives mean to do, that he was going into town that day to confront the boy who had been tormenting him all of his life. She had read his intentions in the hard planes of his face, the cold gleam in his eyes. That look was Death, she knew. As a pioneer woman she had seen it often enough in her life to recognize it in her son's eyes. She didn't interfere because she knew something inexpressible and precious in her son's soul would perish if he didn't stand up to the bully, and she would rather Dutch Jacobson die in the flesh than that mysterious something die in her son's spirit.

He didn't have to tell her what had happened. As soon as she heard him coming, she rose from her rocker, set aside the Bible she had been praying over all morning, and carried his bags out onto the porch. Her face was grave and expressionless, her tears long dried on her deeply lined cheeks. Her son dismounted and then just stood there looking at her, eyes dull with shame.

"You kill 'im?" she said. She didn't need to ask. She already knew. But he wasn't going to speak until she said something first. He was too shocked, too ashamed of himself, to be the first to talk.

"Yes'm," he admitted, looking down at his boots.

"Well, I can't say as I'm surprised," she sighed. "I felt it coming, Syd, the same way I can feel a storm a-comin', only it was an ache in my heart instead of my bones. You know we ain't got the money to hire you a lawyer, and without a good lawyer Judge Sheffield will hang you sure as the sun rises in the east. The only thing you can do now is light out for the wild country. You're an outlaw now, boy. You need to fix that in your mind and get used to it. You're gonna have to live with it 'til some time has passed and it's safe for you to come home again… if that day ever comes."

She didn't care that Sydney had killed a man, least of all that no-good Dutch Jacobson, who sometimes muttered foul words under his breath whenever she passed near, words like whore and bitch, and for absolutely no reason. Just pure meanness, she supposed. She was only relieved that her son was still alive. Sydney's father had died in the Great Conflict and she had always feared Sydney would die by violence as well, as if bad luck could be inherited like his pa's blonde hair or pale complexion. Now she meant to keep her boy alive, and that meant flaunting the law and helping her son escape before the sheriff could round up a posse and come looking for him, but that was just fine with her. In Anne Meadow's veteran opinion, having lived on the frontier most of her life, there was the law and there was right and wrong, and the former had always been more a matter of economics than ethics. The Meadows were poor. They always had been and they always would be, and that meant justice for her boy would be swift and without mercy, as it always was for the underprivileged.

"Outlaw," Sydney murmured, looking down at his hands… hands that had taken a human life little more than an hour ago. There was no blood on his hands, just a lot of dirt and callouses, but at the same time there was, they were dripping red, and no amount of scrubbing was ever going to wash it away.

It didn't seem real until that very moment, until his mother's speech made it real.

From the moment he woke up that morning, meaning to ride into town with his dead daddy's gun, he had felt like a boy in a dream. Nothing had seemed quite real to him—looking for Dutch, finding him in the Regal Saloon and calling him out, even the shootout. He could barely remember the details now. Their heated exchange in the middle of the street. Sydney's rage. Dutch's jeering contempt. The whole chain of events were disjointed, seemed fantastical in his mind. He remembered Dutch reaching for his gun, even though Sydney had not finished counting to three yet, and then the report of his own revolver. He had looked down at his hand to see his Pa's .45 in it, barrel smoking, as Dutch collapsed to the ground and twitched out the last of his life. Sydney didn't remember drawing the gun. He didn't remember pulling the trigger. But he did remember the shocked expression on Dutch's face, the way the blood coursed over his hands and down his chest, the way he pissed his pants and died. That last had been terribly satisfying, watching Dutch piss his pants. Pity he'd have to hang for it.

"Outlaw," Sydney said again, wonderingly.

Not just an outlaw… a murderer!

His mother: "Judge Sheffield will hang you sure as the sun rises in the east."

It was well known that Judge Sheffield was a hanging judge. They didn't call him "Judge Scaffold" for nothing. If the law ever got their hands on him, they'd hang him for what he did today. They would hang him by the neck until there wasn't a Sydney Meadows no more! No growing up. No getting old. No girlfriends. No wife. No young'uns. He'd never know a woman's touch. Never see the world. Never be any wiser than he was today. And who would take care of his ma when she got old and couldn't look after herself anymore? He had killed Dutch Jacobson, but Dutch had killed him right back, even though he'd shot nothing but the dentist's sign. He'd killed the Sydney Meadows that might have been, the future life he might have had if Sydney had just swallowed his pride and took his lumps and didn't ride into town looking for revenge.

As he stood there thinking all those things, Sydney's hands began to quake, and he shot his mother a plaintive look. "Ma!"

His mother's eyes went flat at that, and she remorsefully shook her head. "No, Syd. It's too late for take-backs. You ride out to the river. There's a lot of rough types pass through that way. Some are outlaws. Some are just drifters or cowboys looking for work. Fall in with a band of 'em if you can. They're not all bad. A lot of 'em just got a raw deal like you. Do what you got to do to survive. But just remember: you ain't got to be bad. You ain't got to let it get inside you. You ain't got to let it spoil the good person I know you are. The good person you've always been."

"What about you, Ma? Who's gonna look after you?" Tears were starting in his eyes and he wiped them away angrily.

"Don't worry about me," his mother said. "I learnt to take care of myself long before you came trotting along. Now, don't tarry, son. This is no time to get sentimental. The law won't be long in coming for ya."

He nodded and moved to transfer his belongings to the horse his mother had saddled for him, a nettlesome beast they'd named Black Devil.

"Head for the unsettled country," his mother said. "I'll get word to you if this ever blows over. Let you know it's safe to come home. I don't expect it ever will, but I'll send word if it does. More like as not, this is good-bye. Good-bye and I love you. Now come here. Give your ma a kiss and get your fool self out of here 'fore the sheriff comes and I have to watch my boy dance at the end of a rope. That would kill me sure as a bullet in the head, if I had to witness such a thing."

Sydney kissed his mother good-bye. She squeezed him tight for a moment, her bony arms strong and steady, and then she pushed him away. "Go on, now. Git," she said, as if she were chasing a mutt from the door. "I'll tell your sisters what's become of you. Give 'em your love."

Sydney swung up onto Black Devil's saddle, looked at her regretfully one last time and then rode away.

He never saw his mother again.