legends steeped in blood

He arrived sometime in the middle of the simmering eternity that was high noon in the desert. No shadows in the withering heat – the entirety of the world still and silent in the roar of the sun.

There wasn't the slightest sigh of wind.

Beneath the leather jacket he wore jeans so beaten and patched they were no longer the same pair as when he'd found them. The belt cinched at his waist with the blue cotton polo tucked in, the collar an unlikely bright yellow. The leather of the jacket itself was chapped and cracked in some places.

At his hips, belted criss-cross in their red leather holsters, sat the automatics – hammers back and primed. More than the cold metal that made them. Ornery old murderers, enraged at their irrelevance, that remembered a time when there were things for which it was worth killing.

Below the black hat, his face sat in shadow, his eyes behind a pair of black, perfectly circular shades. His eyes were the color of burnt wood, his hair and neglected stubble jet black.

The boy watched from the open window of the shack as he passed beyond the house. The mother looked up and scattered into the back room. No thought for the boy she had given birth to – not even the animal instinct remained to protect what was hers.

The boy ran out the front door. He only saw the man's back as he passed down the town's main street. The saddlebags hung across his shoulders, a black nylon courier bag swinging from a strap at his shoulder, rhythmically bumping against his backside as he walked.

He hadn't been sure the town was here, and wasn't still. He heard the padding of the boy's footsteps in the dust behind him and turned. Looked into the open face of the boy – the eyes filled with wonder, the mind too blank and inexperienced to understand fear.

Real, then. Real enough for him to drink something. Maybe real enough to spend time, if it was safe.

A place. Hidden out here in the middle of the nowhere, waiting for me to find. If I believed in my own importance any longer, I might think it was a trap. That time is surely over.

He moved up the street, his pace never slowing, the brown leather boots beating a quiet trail across the unyielding hard-pan that maybe had asphalt buried beneath it.

The main street had short, squat buildings on either side of it. Some of them from the old world. Those were falling apart. No knowledge remained to maintain them, nobody with skill or materials, and nobody to care when they eventually fell into their own footprints to be forgotten forever. In their place, ramshackle constructs of wood – nails exposed, those that had paint were flaking from the wind that had long since past.

His instincts scanned the streets, took in the layout. Cased the joint. Three main streets running east-west with a few cross-streets that weren't really. Dust everywhere. At the end of the street a large, flat building with an empty pool gated in by a fence with posts sagging like rotted teeth, rust-eaten chain-link stretched out of true.

It was the largest thing there, so he walked toward it. It seemed to be the only thing there was to go on.

If there is anything left that makes any sense.

A flash of brightness at the corner of his eye, and he turned with an unsettling speed, the boots scuffing in the perfect silence surrounding.
He saw it, and dropped the saddlebags. A shaking thud in the stillness, dust flowing from the point of impact and ghosting lazily away.

It was off to the left, slightly recessed between two other stores – the middle child of a small strip-mall structure with two bigger stores jutting out in front of it on either side in order to create a small courtyard with a little fountain in the center. The bowl of the fountain sat dry – all moisture plundered by the greedy desert air. A withered group of trees hid it, or might have had they any leaves. Between the bare branches, the golden emblem of the store – posters of gods, monsters, and heroes plastered sun-bleached in the windows that made up the storefront.

He abandoned his burden in the middle of the street and moved into the courtyard. It stood in the lea, out of the wind when there was any. No dust in the grout of the red-brick paving. Little bubbles that housed floodlights embedded in the concrete surrounding the fountain, aiming upward at angles to illuminate the water at night. The trees were circles of cracked earth in the brick – dead leaves crunching under booted foot as he moved through the miniature circle of them to the door.

He tried the handle. Unlocked. It swung open with a great creak, and he passed into the cavernous darkness within.

The air conditioning had been running since before eternity, and stepping inside was like surfacing from a pool and taking in that first breath and everything blurry and yet in the sharpest relief.

The lighter had the two of diamonds engraved in it and was one of the best things he thought of himself as owning. Two motions of the thumb and a flickering orange glow brought the inside world to his eyes.

He nodded his approval.

Huh.

Everything as it should be – up front at least. The front display was precisely as it should have been – the summer blockbusters in their little DVD cases lined up and faced perfectly. He knew it was a different story once you got into the aisles and near the back. That was where managers many times neglected things or didn't bother to keep up to date with the plan. Eschewed facing in order to leave for home early. Forewent vacuuming in favor of endlessly walking the New Release walls, as if somehow hoping for there to appear that one film that they'd never seen or hadn't noticed or that would make them glad they were working there.

He reached behind the front counter and felt around for the light switch on the wall out of view. The lights hummed, the fluorescent tubes holding dim for a full ten seconds as if dragging themselves from slumber before finally lighting up all the way. The shelves stood in their aisles, the movies undisturbed and pristine and everything was exactly as it should be.
Waiting for me, as if I never left. Welcome home. Clock in, and never leave again.

He walked around the counter. The candy displays were completely barren, of course. That was a matter of complete practicality. He wondered if the back rooms would be just as empty – there were entire classes of people too stupid to realize that the stuff up front had to come from somewhere, and barren as the front shelves invariably were, there was that odd stockroom with everything intact even still.

He walked through the sensors to get behind the counter and looked around. The desk behind the partition had some random detritus scattered about – paper clips, pens, sticky notes, rubber bands. None of it worth anything any longer.

In pieces on the chair, a newspaper. 12 Sept 2001 – anarchy, chaos, the end of innocence. He'd read that same issue sitting on every newsstand in every market along every dusty highway – written always the same way. He left it where it was.

There might be cash in the miniature safe beneath the desktop. He knew the code to be a 4-digit one. It would take a maximum of ten thousand tries. He hadn't used cash in at least a thousand miles, so he didn't suppose it was worth anything, either.

He moved past the front of the store and walked down along the main aisle running through the center of the store. The second-to-last aisle was the one where he noticed the inevitable struggle.

One of the shelving units had been completely overturned, the movies laying in a random pile on the stained carpet. The telltale smell of iron – a deep, solid pool of rusty blackness. A bunch of the boxes covered in it.

Somebody always leaves a mess.

He shoved the shelving unit upright with one effort. The noise disturbed the thrumming of the air conditioning, sounded like a gunshot in the empty interior of that forgotten place.

He looked down. It was the Western section of course. It would have been. Gary Cooper in the white shirt and black vest, the tin star on his chest, his tall, doomed form walking along the street.

Why can't he just leave?

Leaning back in the chair, his old face illumined by the black-and-white images on the TV, not paying attention to the boy, eyes dully transfixed on the thin figure marching grimly up the street. It's like he says. If you don't know, there's no explaining it to you.

Why won't anybody help him?

It isn't what people know. People would rather be protected.

He's a person though, isn't he?

He laughed at the child, taking another slug of beer. He's not a person, he's a hero. Shut up and watch or you'll miss the best part.

Back in the video store, the video box in his hand. He placed it with exaggerated care in its rightful spot. Second shelf, third from the right. He looked down into the pile again. A pack of men in long leather coats, rifles in their grip, descending upon one lone boy amid his slaughtered family.

She came over to be nice – she wanted to do something else and he knew it. She was nice and rested her head on his shoulder because she knew how he felt – both of them too young to know what to do next, and it was nicer of her still to agree to watch a Western, especially one as long as this.

Is that Henry Fonda?

His eyes did not leave the screen as he answered. Yeah, that's him, all right.

I don't get it. Why do they just stand there and wait? Why don't they just shoot the kid?

It's atmosphere.

But why?

In real life they probably do just shoot him. They're stretching out the moment... making it longer than it is so you have plenty of time to feel it, you know?

No.

Well, they are.

The barrel of the gun pointing at the screen. One shot, dissolving into a train whistle.

Why did he have to shoot the kid?

He's a bad guy.

But why? What will the kid do?

The kid heard his name. He'll grow up and track him down, take his revenge.

How does Henry Fonda know that?

That's how it works.

Oh. But...

He covered her mouth with his hand and kissed her on the forehead. You're missing the best part.

He stood looking at the bleak greens and greys and bieges of the cover for another moment before realizing where he was, and then he placed it on the bottom shelf, first spot on the left where it belonged and had always belonged.

His eye fell upon another, this one submerged in the blood, but the unwavering outline of the hero on the cover seeming almost to burn from beneath the sheen of red.

He lifted it as a preacher the newly baptized.

Sick, in bed, his throat flaring, his forehead burning, snow outside heaped to knee-height against the sliding door that lead to the back porch. Ice without, fire within. His eyes transfixed by the three immortal beings poised to strike like rattlesnakes amid the silence of the wooden graves. Around them and within them the stirring blare of horns signaling their impossible battle. None of them could be defeated – each of them a titan and no more of them in the whole of that bleak, war-torn world.

It was the very first time he'd viewed it.

First shelf, middle slot.

He'd lost time. He had so little. He stood to his full height and headed out the exit door, back into the jackhammer of the heat. The boy stood watching the saddlebags, awed at his approach. The rider took hold of the burden and slung it over his shoulders in a single motion, saying nothing to the child, continuing toward the motel in the center of the town.

The boy called after him.

What's in there?

He did not look back as he answered.

Nothing.