In the Shadows
By Badger (maryinmarshall@cs.com)
Category: Missing Scene
Episode: Season Two: Men In Shadows, after the death of Dixie Howard but before
the 'epilogue' scene where Julie departs
Summary: Slim and Jess talk about Dixie Howard; from Slim's POV
Thanks to Nan for being a 'tough-love' beta and always making me think and
re-think!
----------------------------------------------------
As I step out of the house and onto the porch, I pull the door
shut behind me and pause for a moment, letting my eyes slowly adjust to the
darkness. Jess has been out here alone all evening; he even skipped supper and a
Jess who's off his feed is a Jess who's seriously out of sorts.
I can see little more than vague shadows in the dim light of a waning quarter
moon. Jess is sitting perfectly quiet, his chair tipped on its back legs to lean
against the house and his feet propped up on the railing.
He doesn't acknowledge my arrival in any way, he doesn't look up or speak; he's
still and silent, two things Jess rarely is.
Not that I expected him to greet me warmly. It's been a rocky week, a tussle
between his old life and his new one, and a hard test of our friendship. I think
that friendship has survived intact, at least, I hope so, even though I know
it's been battered and bruised by his actions, and yes, by mine, too.
"Mind if I join you?" I ask.
"It's a free country," he answers, still without looking at me.
His voice sounds raw and I know he's hurting, but I take heart from the fact
that he didn't flat out say no. Jess is a complicated man. He might not seem so
on the surface, but once you look beyond the attitude and the quick temper he's
a man composed of many layers. Each time you peel back one, you discover
another, deeper one.
And some of them, I've learned, are pretty surprising.
Even more surprising is how far he's come in the past two years. Don't get me
wrong, he's still a far ways from being settled, much less domesticated. He's
wrestled the demons of his past and tamed most of them, though on occasion, like
in the last few days, they explode in his face like a green-broke bronc throwing
a sudden, flat-out, rip-snortin' fit.
Making life difficult. For both of us.
Being Jess' friend isn't easy. Most days, though, I'll admit it, he's worth the
effort, in spades, ten times over. But with this whole mess with Dixie Howard,
Jess has pushed me to the edge, and we both know that; I've pushed him to the
edge, and we both know that as well.
I sit down in the chair next to his, stretching out my long legs and trying to
get comfortable. We come out here to talk fairly often. It started way back when
there were things we didn't want to say in front of Andy, or even Jonesy, and
it's grown to be a place where we can speak about important things that most
other times are difficult to put into words. There's something about the
darkness, I reckon, that makes it easier for us to speak our minds.
Of course, it's usually me doing most of the talking, and Jess doing the
listening. I think he listens anyway. Or at least he pretends to.
The night is quiet, the small slice of moon shining thinly in a sky sprinkled
with stars that glitter as bright as diamonds. The darkness is rich and deep and
wraps itself around us like a cloak. It's late, well past his usual bedtime, but
I doubt Jess is gonna find any sleep tonight, not the way his hands are twisting
around and around in that way they do when he's seriously bothered by something.
I'm patient, waiting quietly, giving him first chance to say what's on his mind,
but as the minutes pass by I can see he isn't about to start the conversation,
so it's up to me to break the silence. "I'm sorry, Jess."
His hand reaches up and rubs his bruised jaw, right where I landed that haymaker
earlier today, but his answer is light and touched with a tiny speck of humor.
"You do pack a punch, Slim, I'll give you that. But I'll live."
Oh oh. Bad start already-that wasn't at all what I wanted to talk about. I sigh,
and wave a hand at his face. "I wasn't apologizing for punching you. I told
you that before, that I was sorry 'bout that, and I meant it." He raises
his head and looks over at me and even in the near darkness, I can see the worry
lines on his forehead, a sure sign that Jess has been thinking dark thoughts
tonight. "What I meant to say is that I'm sorry about Dixie Howard."
He's clearly caught by surprise by that statement. "Really?" There's
disbelief in his voice, and I can't fault him for that. We for sure didn't see
eye to eye about his old friend.
I need to explain myself real carefully here, so I chose my words with caution.
"Don't get me wrong, Jess, I'm not sorry that Dixie Howard is dead." I
see him stiffen and start to rise, it's plain he's about to bolt, so I reach out
a hand and grab his arm. "Hold your horses, Jess, and hear me out, would ya?"
He glares at me but gives in. Slowly, he sinks back down into his chair, but
he's not relaxing - the tension in his shoulders is still plain to see. He's
like a broomtail ready to stampede off into the hills at the slightest excuse,
so I take my time saying what I need to say. "I'm not sorry about Dixie
Howard bein' dead, Jess. Whatever he was once, for whatever reasons, he'd turned
into a killer, and if killin' him was the only way to stop him, and I believe it
was, then so be it. If it hadn't happened here, it would have happened somewhere
else, and sometime soon. You know that."
Jess gives a little half nod that tells me he's listening, but not enough of a
nod to indicate he agrees.
I know that, despite his friendship with Howard and the debt he felt he owed the
man, Jess was shocked by what the outlaw had done when he shot Kramer in the
back. True, Kramer had been a bounty hunter, and to Jess, there's not much lower
form of life than a man of that sort, someone who makes a living hunting down
other men, preferring dead over alive. Yet shooting a man in the back goes
against everything Jess believes in or has ever believed in - that's something
I'd bet my life on.
Jess Harper would give the devil himself a fair fight.
"What I'm sorry about, Jess, is that you had to be the one to kill him. I
can see that it hurt." Jess had been grim-faced and silent all day, going
with me to take Howard's body to town, avoiding all the folks who wanted to
congratulate him and buy him drinks, and riding home wearing a dark expression
that told me in no uncertain terms that he was not ready to talk about anything.
Not much had changed in the hours since then.
Jess lets out a long, slow breath and his voice is so soft and low that I have
to strain to hear his words. There is as much sadness and regret in his voice as
I've ever heard, at least, as I've ever heard when he is sober. "You were
right about him all along, Slim. That man I killed, he wasn't my friend. The
real Dixie Howard died a long time ago."
It was all I could do to stop myself from slapping him on the back and giving
him a bearhug. He's such a stubborn galoot, waiting for him to change his mind
about someone, especially about someone he likes, requires a mighty deep well of
patience. Once Jess gets an idea fixed in his head, a pick and a shovel won't
budge it; you need a whole trainload of dynamite to dislodge it, and even then,
it ain't a sure thing.
Jess had obviously spent his time on the porch this evening thinking things
through, and I was mighty relieved at the conclusion he'd reached. True, I'd
have been happier if he'd figured it out a whole lot sooner, but this is Jess
I'm talkin' about. His mind works differently than mine, and as long as in the
end we'd arrived at the same conclusion, I was satisfied. I have to admit,
though, that he'd scared me with some of his talk today, talk about leaving and
going back to his old ways; saying that a gunfighter couldn't change, because
Jess is walking, talking proof that a man can let go of his past, even if
sometimes he doesn't see his path very clearly for himself.
Jess' voice is rough when he adds, "It was like puttin' down an old grizzly
who'd gone mad with the lust to kill, not killin' for survival, but just to see
blood shed." I could hear sorrow in his voice and resignation, and over it
all his disappointment with Dixie, and finally, with himself, for not seeing it
sooner. "I should'a seen what he'd become."
He hadn't told me what Howard had said in those final moments before they drew
on each other, standing face to face in the yard, but Julie had. She'd told me
that Jess had tried to take Dixie alive, but Howard had said he'd enjoy killing
Jess. Maybe he'd really meant those words, maybe he was jealous of the visible
sparks between Jess and Julie. Maybe he'd uttered them as a goad, preferring to
be shot dead right then and there rather than get hung. If that had been his
intention, it had been a final cruelty to lay his death on Jess' shoulders, to
put that burden on a man who had looked up to him, who had risked so much to try
to help him, and who had defended him as a friend long after everyone else had
turned their backs on him.
What had happened today had clearly torn up Jess in ways no doctor could stitch
back together.
He never quits on a friend, Jess doesn't, and I purely hate to see him feeling
this way. "You were still seeing your friend, Jess, the good man who'd
helped you, the man you wanted him to still be, not the man he had become."
"I was livin' in the past," Jess answers bitterly, sitting forward in
his chair, his shoulders slumped. "I learned better'n that a long time ago,
that wishin' can't change the truth, but I guess I forgot it." He rubs his
hand along his jaw, and when he speaks again, his voice is softer and full of
apology. "An' I shouldn't have said what I said to you. I deserved that
punch in the mouth. I'm just surprised you didn't do it a long time ago."
I very nearly had. I'll admit that he'd left me at my wits end ever since I'd
figured out the depth of his involvement with Dixie Howard, hiding that outlaw
and his girlfriend at a line shack on the ranch, even getting them supplies and
horses. I do admire Jess' loyalty, it's one of his best qualities, but at the
same time I wanted to kick him clear to Laramie and back for his stupidity. If
he'd been caught he would have gone to jail, and for a long time, for what he'd
done. He'd have thrown away everything he's worked so hard for these last two
years; thrown away the good life he deserves.
Still, I felt bad about hitting him. He'd never seen that punch coming, never
expected it from me. "I shouldn't have let my temper run away with
me," I admitted. I'm usually a much more levelheaded man than that. I
believe in thinking things through, in using reason and logic, and that violence
should be a last resort. Oh, there's been many a time when I've wanted to hit
him, and many a time when he's probably deserved it, and maybe even a few other
times when I really should have decked him, but I've always before held my
temper in check. There's that old saying, about how you can lead a horse to
water but you can't make him drink. It's that way with Jess-- show him
something, and then you have to leave him be to figure things out for himself.
Push him, and he's apt to dig in his heels and push back. Waiting for him to
change, however, can be almighty trying.
But there was more to that punch than my anger and my frustrations boiling over
on him. I didn't hit him just because I was mad at him, which I purely was, but,
I realized once I'd stopped to think about it, I'd hit him because I was so
scared for him. He was a hair away from ending up on the wrong side of the law,
of facing what Dixie Howard had faced. I know that there's nothing that could
ever push Jess to be what Howard had become, he's a much stronger man than that,
but the outlaw trail is still a road I hope he'll never have to ride.
Underneath all that stubbornness, Jess has so much good in him. Sometimes I
wonder how that ever came to be after all he went through at such a young age,
losing his family and his home, going off to war when he wasn't much more than a
kid, and living with the bitterness of that lost cause. In the war, we all saw
so much death and dying around us, day after day, that if a man wasn't careful,
it was easy to decide life was cheap and empty. The war, especially defeat in
the war, left a lot of men hard and full of hate, capable of unthinking
violence.
And I'm afraid that I must admit that I was a mite disappointed in Jess, too,
that he did what he did, helping that outlaw. Not that he and I haven't tangled
over things, and people, before, because we have, real often, and we probably
always will. But I've seen him grow so much in the past two years, I sometimes
forget that he hasn't always been who he is today, that his foundations aren't
set as deep as mine, that he's still trying and struggling and working to live
up to his own expectations of himself.
And my expectations of him.
And to be honest, a big part of me is wrapped up in him making a success out of
his life, because I helped set him on this new path. I gave him this chance and
if he fails, then I've failed, too-failed to be the friend he needed.
Not to mention the fact that, different as we are, Jess is the best friend I've
ever had. And that I love him like a brother. It's not the same sort of
brotherhood there is between me and Andy, because Andy's so much younger than I
am, it's almost like I'm raising a child. But with Jess, we're closer to equals.
He's taught me plenty about life, about cutting loose and having fun, about
loyalty and perseverance and trusting your instincts. He's made me consider some
things that I'd never really thought about before, and made me more deeply
appreciate what I have, like my home and my family.
Jess' voice is rough when he says, "You didn't need to apologize, Slim. I
gave you plenty of cause to hit me."
Even if some days he is a rock-headed fool, Jess can be forgiving when he wants
to be. "I shouldn't have done it anyway," I tell him.
"Don't matter. It's done with, and I'll still be able to chew my steaks.
Eventually." He works his jaw back and forth in what I know is an
exaggeration of how much it hurts.
We sit quiet for a while then, listening to the soft sounds of the night. I'm
thankful that he is still here, sitting on my porch instead of out there
somewhere on the dodge from the law, that I can still count on him to have my
back in any fight, and that he'll be around a while longer to remind me that
there's more to life than work. "Jess, just don't let what happened change
you."
"Huh?"
I've surely surprised him there. "Don't quit believing in people because
Dixie Howard disappointed you. Not everyone you trust will turn on you like he
did. There are good people in this world."
His answer is quick and sure and shows me that we're still friends. "I
know, Slim. There's you." Then his hand is on my shoulder, and for the
first time in days there's a flash of a genuine smile on his face and a lighter
tone to his voice that lets me know he really is going to be all right.
"Just don't let that go to your head, huh?"
/~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~\ (9-3-09)