Boils and Sores - a short story

 Rachel removed her revolver from her holster and stood atop the ridge in a stance of particular disdain.   On the other side of the valley she could see the encroaching riders in a scattered line, kicking up dust as the neared.   She raised her arm and steadied a bead at the head of one of the incoming men, and prepared herself to shoot.   When she pulled the trigger the gun clicked with an unsatisfying ping and there was no expulsion of any projectile.   Save for the bullet in her head.   She readied the weapon back on her hip and made her way back up to her homestead and settled at her place at the table knitting the blanket she'd been neglecting for those last few moments of make believe.

Outside the sounds of the horses galloped into a steadily declining clop-clop until it was nothing but the sound of a rider heavy with fatigue landing upon the heavy earth.   There were three such sounds, each one bigger than the last, and Rachel kept her eyes on the knitted blanket as the heels of their boots clamored upon the wooden porch.   Then the door flung open in a bout of violence, and she smiled at her visitors.

"Go'dam Rachel, you ain't got no fire for the kettle.   You knows I like to have my tea, I'm parched."  The man with a rather large moustache smacked his lips a little bit to emphasize their dryness, and licked at his lips.   Behind him entered two other fellows, one a tall scrawny man the other giant in both height and width, he being barely contained in his trousers.  The mustachioed man appeared agitated at Rachel's non-response and so he sat himself at the table and removed his buckled hat, placing in front of him.   As he folded his hands, with elbows secure on the table he spoke, "Why don'tcha got no tea whisslin on the kettle Rachel?"

Her attention cast upon her work she muttered, "Didn't right feel like it Howard.   Don't feel like you woulda done felt like it either on account of how hot this here house has gotten.  Mine as well be in the fires of hell.   That's the truth."  She chuckled at herself.

Howard looked back at his companions who shrugged at him as if to say they didn't know what to make of such backward talk.   As if to say they didn't want to take no chances in chuckling or correcting the wife of their friend and employer.

"Rachel?"  Howard said as if to a child.

"Yes Howard?"  Rachel said as if to a ghost.

"Could you make us some tea, deary."

"I don't think I will."  She responded.

Howard chuckled and once again cast his eyes up towards his compatriots.   The fatter one chuckled, and shrugged, "Women.  Even my Peggy done say the darndest things when shes left alone and all."  He relinquished the volume of his chuckle until it trailed and faded away into an almost whimper.

"Rachel?"

"Yes Howard?"

"Why won't you make tea for me and my friends.  We be riding for days on end, our water run dry, our bones be weary.   Just a kettle of tea.  Please, deary."   His manner of manners was less polite and more demanding, he spit upon his floor and shot but a short glance to his partners, and returned and waited for a response from his dear young wife.

"No I won't.   There's kindling in stove, there's flint near by, and you got two hands to use, and eyes to see, your legs though weary can carry you 'cross the room.  With a scratch and a blow you can start your own fire goin'.  Easy.  Deary."  It almost appeared her attention was far more absorbed in her work, even letting out a smile, and what sounded like a pleasurable giggle at her neared success.

The lanky boy with the great stature and shifty eyes chuckled slightly, and Howard cast his eyes up to him, "What's funny boy?"

The boy swallowed a lump of nerves down his throat, and remarked, "She's got a wit.  Wit is peculiar, my fiance back home had wit, and her ma and pa had to lock her up in asylum.   Give her a good lesson in being human, good lesson in knowing her place.   She come out more ladylike, more quiet, I just think she got wit is all, its just peculiar is all, strange."

"Wit.  Right."  Howard spit at the boys feet, and once again turned to his wife who was picking at a stray piece of string protruding from her blanket.

"Rachel?"

"Yes Howard?"

"Make me some tea.   I'm weary, and sore, and now in more ways than one."

"I won't make no tea, I'm busy."

"You'll put down that useless mass or else I'll make you put it down.  We done been through this already."

Rachel's eyes shot up and she scolded him, and said in the calmest tone she could muster, "You touch my knittin' and I'll prod you in your fucking eye, pluck it and gouge it out then who will follow you, just a blind man riding."

Howard needed little less provocation and he reached across the table and with a violent hold he grasped the blanket and true to her word Rachel freed up her hand and tool, and used it as a rod to pluck out her husband's eye.   But, not to its complete freedom.   It dangled and dabbed against his coarse cheek and he exclaimed a line of expletive expulsions as he stood and backed up knocking over his dining chair.   He held a palm over the eye and moved it up to try and adjust it back into its socket, but it slipped and fell from his fingertips until his maneuvering loosened it so that it fell freely down his chest to the bottom of his frantic boot.  And then, squish.

"Seven hells Rachel, seven hells."  He was exasperated in his panic, and breathed in a spent heave.   "I'll kill you for that."  He looked at her properly then with that one attached eye and saw her with her revolver drawn and focused on his compatriots who had been attempting to draw their own weapons.

"I'm gonna give you an order or two Howard, an order or two.   But I ain't gonna be you, I ain't gonna use a fist or two.   I ain't gonna make you bleed, but I'm gonna give an order or two."  There was a quake in her voice but her hand was steady on her trigger, and her eyes focused, and trained on the lanky and pronounced giants.   Howard knew she could shoot.  He'd trained her, helped her, back when they were both younger, and foolish.  Back when he was kinder, and she was less wistful.

"You boys are gonna put your pieces on the table now.  Just right here, right next to me.  Right here, in front of me."

"You shoot one of us honey, the others will just drop you dead."

She turned her pistol on Howard, "Not if I shoot you dead, you're boys are dumb and dumbest, ain't got no two wits in them aside from what you show them they have.  I kill you they die anyway, useless as they both is."

The two men, giants as though they may have been looked at one another and at their boss and reached a consensus with their eyes that what she said was true.   They made ready to remove their weapons from their places.  "What's gonna stop her from shooting us all dead then," Howard tried to reason.  The men haltered their unholstering, and examined Rachel for a new confirmation.

"I just need y'all to let me leave her.  I just need your horses, but if you trigger I trigger you and you and you.  Do you get my meaning by trigger?"

The men nodded like infants.  And placed their revolvers on the table.   Then they slowly backed away as though that might impact the painful quality of a gunshot.

Rachel smiled at Howard.   "Now you deary.   Won't you deary?  Its on your left hip i'case you don't see it."

There was a thin layer of blood enveloping around Howard's fingers that covered over his socket, and a constant grimace of pain on his face, but there was also some level of admiration that his dear little Rachel wasn't so dear.   Fist to cheek, fist to stomach, fist across neck, and she'd never showed signs she'd been this strong, this fiercely animalistic, and he felt a twinge in his loins, and a thump in his heart, and he wanted her more, wanted her to attack him with all that ferocity but he'd make her bleed first, punish her first, take out both eyes for his one, and then mount her and take her as he would.  She had to know her place, had to find it amongst his submission, but damned if he didn't love her more than ever.

He lifted out his revolver and dropped it at his feet.  He smiled, "Get along bitch, ride as long as you can."  He raised his hands in the air, his momentary surrender.  Then she pulled her trigger.

Click.  Empty.   And she smiled.  And he moved on her, but she lifted up the fat man's shotgun and blew a hole through her husband so that his chest was a hollowed splatter of a former heart.  She shifted the gun on his mates, and she said, "Go on now, and be good to your wives."

They turned tail and ran without another second thought, if they even had had a first there was very little time to get it passed instinct.  They moved out the door and the horses soon followed into a faded gallop away from the foundations of that house.

Rachel removed her revolver from the pile on the table, and dropped the shotgun there.  She holstered her piece, and returned to her blanket.   A stray piece of thread protruded from the top and she held it in delicate palms and plucked at the thread till it loosed.   She turned it over in front of her and was satisfied with her work.   The smell of blood hung thick in that room as she laid the blanket in an empty bassinet.