First, you'll probably remember (I hope you'll remember) that in the previous chapter, I said Charlie remained unconscious until after Will was asleep. This was true, until I decide that I'd scratch that itch I've been having to add some actual conversation. Hope you'll forgive me.

There's also a bit of a supernatural element in this chapter; I tried to make it subtle and not corny, but it was completely intentional.

So I updated pretty quickly this time, right? Maybe deserving of some reviews, right?

Maybe?

Chapter Ten: Don’t Forget

She had to hold both of his shoulders to pull him into a sitting position, which she imagined was more painful than Charlie Prince let on. From there, she hauled him to his feet, standing close enough that she could brace his weight if he fell over, though he wouldn’t let her take it otherwise. He staggered his own way over to the wagon and found his own way up, half-walking, half crawling back to the place where his original pool of blood lay, where he sat beside the water canteen, his chest heaving. Will leapt up lightly after him and opened his jacket and the underlying shirt. When asked, he told her which trunk he kept the blankets in, and she opened it up to find them stacked untidily, still covered with dust from the previous night’s camp. She pulled one out and ripped it with her teeth, tearing out first squares, covering each opening of the bullet’s trail through Charlie’s shoulder, then stripes, tying them around tightly to hold the bandages in place. By this point, Charlie’s head was rocking, his eyes rolling, and when she’d finished and took his place behind the reigns, he had passed out of consciousness. She had told him to try to stay awake, but she wasn’t about to enforce it. She only needed him alive.

The main street was still deserted when she left town, but she didn’t expect it to stay that way for long; somewhere, someone would get up the guts to leave their shelter and go for help, at which point she was sure more people would be coming after them. She could no longer hide behind her innocence; she had shot those men, too.

It was dark by the time they were far enough that Will thought it fair to stop. She couldn’t judge what time it was, nor where she was; she could scarcely see her own hand in front of her face. She lit a lantern and started a fire as the temperature began its steep descent, the sweat from the day cooling and encrusting her skin. She badly wanted a bath, but she wasn’t about to waste water when they had neglected to pick any up today. Instead, she poured some into two of the glasses in the trunk Charlie kept near the front of the wagon, one for drinking, the other for soaking the dust out of new rags for Charlie’s wounds.

The silence was more uncomfortable than she would have predicted; she thought she would have become accustomed to it after the many hours she’d now spent in Charlie’s presence. His words were seldom and none of them friendly, and usually when he opened his mouth, she preferred that he didn’t speak at all. Now, though, in the flickering light of the fire, she felt as though she would have killed again (and again and again) for someone to be breathing next to her, not even talking, just existing in a conscious state. She’d never missed Terry so much in her life.

She imagined him now, sitting beside her, lighting a cigarette on the fire, his long legs splayed wherever they’d happen to fall when he flopped to the ground in the careless way he always did.

“You’re work, Will,” he said. “I can’t even count how many times you told me you couldn’t stand the sight of me. Now I’m gone, you can’t think of what to do with yourself.”

Will looked up at him, studying what little of his face she could see in the dim light. He was exactly as she remembered him.

“I didn’t mean it,” she said softly. “Every cruel word I ever said to you was a lie.”

“No it wasn’t. Not in the situation, anyway.” He laughed. “You have such a temper, you know that? How’s a husband ever going to love you, if you get angry at every little thing? You need to learn to take life as it comes. Ride the river.”

“What is this, a fucking life lesson?” She tossed a log onto the fire, tears brimming in her eyes. “I don’t need any more of those. I don’t need any more of this character building bullshit. I don’t need you here to preach, I just need you here. I need you.”

Terry shrugged, stubbing out the remains of his cigarette in the ashen ground. He left enough of it that he could have continued smoking. He always did that.

“You’re doing fine,” he said, and chuckled. “You’re doing everything right.”

“Then why am I here?”

“You know why. Don’t tell me you don’t. It wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t supposed to.” Terry glanced back at the wagon, as if it were about to spring on him, and turned back, shrugging his coat further up on his shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he added. “He’s going to die.”

Will looked away from the fire. “What are you talking about?”

Terry stood, brushing dust off of his pants. He took a deep, hearty breath of desert air and shook his head rapidly, as though he were a dog trying to get dry. He then turned down to her and smiled.

“I love you,” he said. “Don’t forget.”

She stared him out into the darkness, and then he was gone.

“Who are you talking to?” Charlie asked, making her jump. He was sitting at the end of the wagon, his legs dangling over the edge.

“No one,” said Will, turning around. “I hoped you weren’t going to wake up again.”

He gestured to the clean bandages she was drying by the fire. “Then what’s that?”

“Prudent planning. Are you going to get down from that wagon, or do I have to help you?”

Charlie pushed himself off the edge of the wagon and walked over to where she sat, sitting across from her, his back to the fire.

“You’re going to have to turn around,” she said, moving. “I need the light.”

They switched places, his face to it, her back to it, and she pulled back the shoulder of his shirt so she could see the bandages she’d tied on earlier that day. The blood hadn’t even soaked through. She began peeling them off. Charlie watched her quietly, but he was itching, and when he couldn’t take it any longer, he said, “Where’d you learn to shoot a gun like that?”

“How come you get to ask questions and I don't?"

“This isn’t an equal sided situation,” said Charlie sharply. “If I ask you a question, you answer it.”

“What’re you going to do if I don't?” asked Will, laughing. “Really. I’ve got it figured that you’re not going to kill me. And trying to make any sort of peace with you is torture enough. What have you got to threaten me with?”

“Say I don’t get you home okay,” said Charlie coldly. “Your father will die.”

Will tied a knot in the bandage she was wrapping, snapping it against the wound in a way that she knew would hurt, even if he didn’t say anything.

“You keep your mouth shut about my father,” she said. “You don’t know anything about him, or fathers at all for that matter. I know your kind. You all may as well have come together in a gutter somewhere.”

Charlie pulled back and hit her across the face, calm as you please. Will felt her lip cut against the sharp edge of her tooth, and, when the aftershock had died, wiped the blood there, glaring at Charlie with flint in her eyes.

“Women don’t talk to me like that,” said Charlie simply.

Will’s hand shot out like lightning, striking Charlie’s brow. He felt his head jerk back in an explosion of pain and recovered, reaching out to hit her again. She caught his wrist.

“Men don’t hit me,” she said, the blood welling on her lip and crawling down.

Charlie stared at her incredulously. “I’m not going to apologize.”

“I don’t expect you to." She picked up the bandages she’d dropped and continued with her methodical work, her hands moving fluidly.

For the life of him, Charlie couldn’t think of a thing to say. Then, grudgingly, he said, “So where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

Will, just as cool, replied, “My brother. He’s dead. Where’d you learn?”

“My father.”

With this out, there was little left to say. After Will finished, she put the rest of the bandages back in the wagon and rolled out the mats beside the fire, curling up with her knees pulled to her chest. Charlie waited until her breathing found its rhythm before sitting up to look at her. Asleep, her brow was still creased as though she was deep in thought, her lips in a taut white line.

Men don’t hit me.

What was he supposed to do with a statement like that? If he couldn’t control her, he’d have to kill her, but he’d never been wounded and on his own.

He hadn’t been on his own, period, for a long time. He’d always had the outfit surrounding him, the boss in front of him, something to do, someone to look to. Being alone out here under the gigantic sky made him feel like losing his mind might be just as easy as drinking or breathing or falling asleep. Maybe even precisely like that, like falling into a sleep from which there was no waking, rolling over and finding himself in an ocean of incoherent thoughts and women whose men did not hit them.

And how, for God’s sake, did she still smell like roses, after how many days of sweating out her skin?

He could smell her over here, feet from her, could smell her from the wagon, where he’d lain unconscious. The smell filled his dream with flowered nectar like blood and the long green stem, the thorns and the rubbery leaves.

He rested his forehead on his knees and covered his ears, breathing in the musky scent of his clothes, the cigarette smoke from saloons passed through, the sweat, the fresh air that was rarely more than still in the oppressive heat of the day. He wanted to squeeze the tender necks of the roses, hunt them down to the last petal and destroy them.

Sleep came to him like an old friend, put its arms around his shoulders and eased him down, whispered something in his ear that could be anything but English. Charlie listened anyway, as he listened to everything around him, as words he’d never been intended to hear ate away at him.

What was it she’d said?

I didn’t mean it. Every cruel word I ever said to you was a lie.