Gunlaw

Gunlaw 2

Mikeos scrambled up the stairs to his mother's room. He crashed in, forgetting to listen first for a client. She lay under a heap of covers on the bed, alone and sprawled out in the death-sleep. A bar of dusty light from the gap in the drapes crossed her arms and face.

He went to the clothes chest and rummaged for his other pair of leggings. The wet pair he threw into a corner. The room stunk of sweat and old sex; a bit of piss wouldn't make much difference.

"Mikey? That you?"

He jerked upright at her voice, still jumpy from the business downstairs.

"Yes, Ma." Mikeos tied off the laces at the front and turned to the bed.

She watched him in a half daze, blinking, not lifting her head from the bed. "Is it night time?"

"Three past noon."

"I . . . I dreamed about your father," she said. "He told me you were in trouble."

"No trouble, Ma." He put his fingers to the back of his neck. The skin there felt dry and blistered.

Her eyes found sudden focus. "Did you get it?"

Mikeos sighed. "I got it." He tossed her the little pouch. He wouldn't tell her about Grum. She probably didn't even remember him.

She sat up, cross-legged, and took the pouch from the bed. White fingers fumbled at the tie. "You're a good boy, Mikey." She didn't look up from her work.

"I gotta go, Ma." She looked so old, grey in the blonde, hair thin on her scalp. "The gunslinger's in the bar." He remembered her strong and laughing, a time when she could throw him in the air. And catch him. But that was . . . how long? Two years? Before Jim Bright put a bullet through his father. Before his Ma found her comfort in dead dreams and the dust that gave them.

"I gotta go."

She didn't hear him. 

                                                                                                   *** 

Mikeos came down the stairs one slow step at a time. Grum had been removed. The crowd was as packed as ever.

Take someone away and they don't leave a hole, not in the Bullet and Rye. Not anywhere maybe.

The gunslinger sat where he had been before, the child with him. Mikeos looked away when she turned toward him. She left her table and met him at the bottom of the stairs. He tried to walk past.

"The clan took your friend away."

"He wasn't my friend."

"He died for you," she said. "They'll put his skull up by the pillar. A warrior's right."

"He died because he was a bull-head. A stupid cow-brain that never backed down, ever." He pressed his hands into his eyes, hard, and looked away from her.

"Maybe he knew when to back down. Maybe he just knew that this wasn't the time to do it."

Mikeos sniffed and watched the crowd for a moment. He turned to answer, but the girl had gone back to the table. All of a sudden he wanted to be out of the heat and the noise, out of it all. He dived into the crowd and fought a path toward the street doors.

                                                                                                          ***

The street lay empty save for a lone cart heaped with barrels, and a few prospectors straggling in, dust grey and trailing picks.