Forty-two

Jake was a bit overwhelmed by how much Brownsville had grown. When he’d fled this area at fifteen, the city had been an infant, barely two years officially a town. Before that, it was nothing more than a dusty, lawless, unorganized hodgepodge of farmers, ranchers, outlaws, saloons, and whorehouses, as well as an almost evenly mixed population of whites and Mexicans. He had a vague memory of his father being good-looking, tall and strong…brutally strong. And his personality when drunk had made him an ugly, ugly man. Someone had once said his own toughness came from his father’s beatings…and maybe it did.

He searched the business signs, riding up and down every street until he found what he was looking for…a mortuary. It was set back off the road, several headstones of various shapes in front. He trotted Outlaw up to a hitching post at the front door and dismounted, aware that a couple of women outside, looking at headstones, now stared at him instead. He tipped his hat to them. “Ladies.”

They looked him over, appearing wary of the guns he wore, yet curious. The younger one smiled at him. Jake smiled back and went inside, surprised at how calm he felt. Maybe it was knowing that, if he was lucky, he could finally do something to honor his mother. Or maybe his brain was fooling him. At times like this, he didn’t trust his own emotions.

Inside, he found a tall, bony man dressing out a corpse. He looked up at Jake and nodded, stepping aside. “Doesn’t he look nice?” he asked, indicating the dead man. He smiled through yellowing teeth, and the black-silk suit he wore appeared to have seen better days. “I think the blue suit is best on Mister Clay, don’t you?” the man asked Jake. “Are you a relative?”

“I’m a possible customer,” Jake told him. “I want a headstone made. I just don’t know where it will go yet.” He took a piece of paper from a shirt pocket and handed it to the mortician. “That’s what goes on the headstone.” He lit another cigarette as the man read the note, frowning.

“‘Evita Ramona Consuella de Jimenez,’” he read. “And”—he squinted—“‘Thomas.’” He looked up at Jake. “Just Thomas?”

“I don’t remember his middle name,” Jake answered. “He was my…” There it came. The rage! He had to keep it at bay! He wished Randy were with him. She could always calm him in moments like this. “…my little brother. The woman was my mother.”

“Thomas doesn’t have a last name?”

Harkner. It was my mother’s last name too. “I don’t want the last name shown. It would memorialize my father, and I don’t want to honor the sonofabitch in any way! Just put ‘Beloved Mother and Brother’ after the names and don’t ask questions.”

The mortician scrutinized him, noticing the guns, the size of the man. “I’m Orlando Bruce, and I own this place. And you don’t look like any ordinary man. Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Jake Harkner, and I have to get across the border tomorrow, so I need this settled today. How much will the stone cost?”

“Jake Harkner?” The man stepped back a little. “The outlaw? The gunfighter?”

“Once upon a time, mister. I’m just a rancher now. Promise me that stone will get engraved and properly set. My problem is to decide where.”

“Sure, but Mister Harkner, I’m considered the official historian for Brownsville, and you’re a part of the history down here. Nobody ever thought you’d come back, and you never did. Then some of us saw that book about you and learned the truth. I mean, for a while you were wanted for murder, you know. Over your father’s murder, and the young girl he was found with.”

Jake turned away. My God, Randy, I need you. He hadn’t expected this…hadn’t expected to run into someone who knew so much about it. “I figured that story faded years and years ago,” he said, struggling to find his voice. Fifty-four years since I helped bury my brutally beaten mother and brother! How could it possibly suddenly be so clear in my mind? How could it feel like it had been only a few days ago? It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He’d had it all figured out. It would be easy. He’d just find where his mother and brother were buried and put a headstone there and feel better about it all.

“No, sir,” Bruce told him. “Everyone knows the story, and of course, every town has its old ghost tales or sensational stories about its beginnings. The famous Jake Harkner being raised right here in Brownsville, that’s one of the draws here. You know—like the birthplace of Billy the Kid or Wild Bill Hickok, or the Coles and the Youngers. Nobody ever figured you’d actually show up here. The little stone-and-cement house you lived in…where your pa was found with that girl…it still stands. Once in a while, a traveler goes to see it.”

A blackness enveloped Jake’s heart and mind so heavily he thought he might pass out. He grabbed hold of a support post inside the mortuary and bent over.

“Mister Harkner?”

“Where?” Jake groaned the words. “Where is the house?”

“Out of town a little ways. If you stay on the main street and head east, you’ll see it on a little hill. There isn’t much left of it—no roof or anything, and no interior but one wall—otherwise, just the outside walls. The city took over the property and kept it for storytelling, an attraction, so to speak.”

The man’s eyes widened at the look on Jake’s face when he turned toward him. “An attraction? An attraction?” Jake roared.

“Mister, you asked, I told. Don’t take it out on me if it upsets you.”

“Do you own a maul? Some kind of sledgehammer?”

“Yes, sir…out back, standing against the wall.”

Jake headed into the back of the business.

“Hey! That’s where I live back there!”

Jake ignored him and charged through the man’s living quarters, ignoring a woman peeling potatoes in the kitchen. She gasped and watched him, then looked at her husband. “Who is that?”

“Jake Harkner, that’s who!”

“The famous one?”

Her husband didn’t answer. He followed Jake through the back door, where Jake tore through tools in the backyard until he found the sledgehammer.

“Mister Harkner, what the hell are you doing? That stuff belongs to me!” He stepped well away when Jake whirled, sledgehammer raised.

“Mister, I’m borrowing this. I’ll bring it back.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills, not even counting them. “There’s your pay for the headstone. I’ll tell you where to put it when I get back, and then I’m leaving for a few days. When I come through here again, that headstone had better be where I tell you to put it, or I’ll use this goddamn sledgehammer on you, understand?”

Orlando swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“And is my father buried somewhere around here? And the girl?”

Orlando stepped even farther away. “The parents came and got the girl, or at least that’s what the historians tell us. They took her to Mexico and buried her there somewhere.”

Santana! I’m so sorry.

“Your father was buried in an old graveyard that doesn’t exist anymore. It got flooded out bad in a hurricane a long time ago, thirty years or more. A lot of the graves got washed away, and the old, decayed bodies mixed up together. They had to be reburied in a mass grave in the new cemetery. There aren’t even any headstones.”

“Good! That’s how John Harkner should have been buried, with no kind of acknowledgment.” Jake struggled not to throw up…not to scream…not to cry out in anguish. It was all here. It was all right here, not the past any longer.

The little boy in him wanted to go to his knees and weep. Randy! My God, Randy! You said you’d be with me if this happened.

He had to think of that…only that…Randy. He charged away, walking around the building and still carrying the sledgehammer. He headed for Outlaw and mounted up, then noticed Cole a few yards away. “I told you to get a hotel room!” he shouted.

“Sorry, Jake. Lloyd told me that no matter what you said, I should stay with you when we got here, maybe lag behind but keep an eye on you. And from the way you look right now, I’m guessin’ he was right.”

“This is personal!” The words were growled from somewhere deep inside.

“I know, Jake. I know.”

Jake turned Outlaw in a circle, wielding the sledgehammer. “Follow me if you want. We might have to get out of Brownsville tonight after all.” He charged away on Outlaw. People stared as he tore through the main street and headed out of town. Some had to jump out of the way, and one woman screamed. Cole followed, bringing the packhorse along. After several minutes of riding, Jake finally pulled up, staring at a huge hackberry tree on a hill. Partway up the hill sat a completely deteriorated stone house and nothing else. It looked naked and lonely.

Naked and lonely, like I felt at eight years old when you made me help bury my mother! John Harkner might as well have been standing right in front of him, and Jake wished he were. Because then he could beat him until he broke every bone in his body, then bash his head in with the sledge hammer. He dismounted and walked up the hill, walked around the house. He removed his hat and tossed it aside, then unbuckled his gun belt and tossed it aside also. He removed his vest, his shirt, leaving on only a sleeveless T-shirt as he let out a roar unlike Cole had ever heard, like a wild animal. He started wielding the sledgehammer against the crumbling stone walls still standing, battering them with a mighty strength Cole didn’t think the man could possibly still have in him. He slugged and pounded and hammered and battered for what must have been two hours, growling with each hit, demolishing every stone and the cement that held them until there was nothing left but a pile of rubble. He went to his knees then, tossing the sledgehammer aside. He put his hands to his head and sobbed.

Cole dismounted and slowly walked up the hill, not sure what to do or say. He picked up Jake’s gun belt and hat and clothes, then dared to step closer. “Tell me what to do, Jake.”

Jake bent over, keeping his hands behind his head as he pressed his face against the ground. “God forgive me,” he sobbed. “I had to do it. I had to do it. I didn’t mean to kill Santana. It was an accident! The bullet went right through my father and into her. I didn’t know anything about guns then!”

Cole realized Jake probably hadn’t even heard him. He sighed and stepped back, feeling like crying himself. Everybody knew the story. Everybody knew killing his father had been a weight around Jake Harkner’s neck his whole life, and the source of all his lawlessness. He wished Randy were here. She’d know what to do, what to say to him. This was the dark, ugly side of Jake Harkner that no one but his closest kin could handle.

Cole walked back to the horses and took the reins, leading them up to the big hackberry tree to give them some shade. He sat down there and waited, letting the horses graze on some soft, green grass.

Their train had arrived that morning, and it was deep into the afternoon before Jake finally got to his feet and came up the hill. He dropped to his knees in the cool grass.

“This is where he made me help bury my mother,” he told Cole in a gruff voice, “after he beat her to death and then killed my little brother. They’re buried here together. I remember this tree. I was only eight then, but I remember it.” He breathed deeply, obviously still highly distraught. “I was forced to throw dirt on their faces. He didn’t even put a blanket over them first!” He brushed his hand over the grass. “I wanted so badly to be in there with them.” He wiped at tears on his face with his fingers. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe I found them. God, I need my family, Cole.”

“I know.” He’d seen Jake do some incredibly ruthless things to those who’d threatened or hurt his family. Now he understood why. Jake Harkner had lost all that was dear to him as a little boy, and he wasn’t about to lose what he’d found in his new family. This was the source of his fierce protection of those he loved. It was why he’d killed most of the men who’d so horribly abused Evie, why he’d blown Mike Holt’s head off in Denver after Holt shot Lloyd, why he’d gone after those who’d taken Randy and tortured Brad Buckley. Every time he did those things, in his mind he was probably defending his mother and brother and killing his father all over again. Pity the man who harmed any of them.

A few people had gathered at the bottom of the hill. They were pointing and staring. A man started up the hill. He looked like a lawman. “Hey, what’s going on up here?” he called.

Cole jumped up and headed down the hill to intercept him. “Don’t go up there, mister.”

“I’m the chief of police here in Brownsville, and someone said a man was destroying one of our landmarks. That’s destruction of public property! This is the house where Jake Harkner grew up.”

“That is Jake Harkner up there, mister, and the mood he’s in right now, you’d best leave and take those people with you. He’s in a killin’ set of mind, if you know what I mean. That man suffered mightily in that house as a child, and right now it’s best to leave him alone.”

The man frowned and backed away. “You get him out of here by morning.”

“I will. But he claims his ma and little brother are layin’ under the ground up there under that tree, and he was forced to bury them after his pa murdered them. I believe him. A man don’t forget somethin’ like that. Jake’s already been to see a mortician. I suspect he asked for a gravestone he’ll be wantin’ to put up there, so I suggest the city let the mortician put it there and leave it there. If I know Jake Harkner, he’ll come back to make sure it is, and he won’t be a happy man if it’s not there. When he gets in a killin’ mood, there’s not much anybody can do about it.”

The policeman scowled. “I’ll see what I can do.” He turned and walked back down the hill. Minutes later, he’d cleared out most of the onlookers.

Cole went back up the hill and poured some water from a canteen into his hat to water the horses, then led them to a grove of small trees on the other side of the hill, away from where people could see them. He took down his bedroll, made camp, and waited. Jake needed to be alone.

Sometime in the night, Jake came to the campsite and took down his own bedroll. He opened it and stretched out on it, then lit a cigarette.

“Coffee’s still hot,” Cole told him.

“Thanks.” Jake took a deep drag on the cigarette. “In the morning, I’ll have you return that sledgehammer to the mortician and tell him where to put the headstone I ordered. I’ll leave town the back way and wait for you. I’ve drawn enough attention. We’ll head on into Mexico. There’s a man down there who needs killing.”

The mood Jake was in, Cole had no doubt Sidney Wayland didn’t have long to live. “I’ll be ready.”

Jake smoked quietly, laying his head back on his saddle. “I’m trusting you with that girl, Cole. I’m staying behind to kill Sidney Wayland after we get Annie out of there, so it’s possible I won’t be going back with you.”

“Don’t be talkin’ like that, Jake. I ain’t leavin’ without you.”

“You do what you have to do to make sure Annie is safe. That’s all that matters.” Jake took a deep breath. “What happened here today needed to happen.”

“It’s okay.”

“I just want my mother and brother to be remembered. Someone should know they existed.”

“I can’t blame you there.” Cole wasn’t sure what else to say. “Your mother produced a fine son, Jake. I’m guessin’ she’s watchin’ and she’s happy you found her again and you’re honorin’ her this way. She’s happy for all the joy you’ve found in that family of yours. She’s probably with those grandbabies right now, thinkin’ how proud she is that they came from her blood. You remember it’s her blood in you and those young ones too—not just your pa’s.”

Jake felt for his mother’s crucifix under his shirt, something of hers he’d kept ever since she died. He’d hidden it from his father because he knew the man would try to sell it for whiskey money. He’d worn the cross next to his heart through all his outlaw years and all his married years, those awful years in prison, all of it. Lo siento, mi mater. Favor perdoname. Que Dios te acompane. He rolled to his side and fell asleep with his hand wrapped around the crucifix. He wished the town hadn’t buried his father all those years ago. He should have been stripped and left for the buzzards to feast on.