Page 23 of Repentance and Absolution
“What should we do?” Oscar asked.
“Well, now, this ain’t the town or a city. This here’s wild country, and God knows who you’ll find out here. Folks have a different way of doing things. I don’t fancy coming at the wrong end of a rifle, do you?”
“No, sir,” Oscar replied.
“Then let’s go home.” I turned Dixie around. “We can ask Carson or Tim about them, maybe. See what’s what before we put ourselves in harm’s way.”
“Good idea.”
“Let’s loop around and go back the way we came. We got time, and I’m not ready to be done ridin’ yet.”
By the time we made it back, the sun was on the decline. Once the horses and mule were tended and fed, we walked to our small house in the fairy light of a charming sunset.
“You suppose we’ll get some snow soon?” Oscar said.
“Yeah. I reckon we’re long overdue.”
Chapter Six
Regrets
The snow did come.
It arrived the following day in plump white flakes that drifted down from a gunmetal sky. More came the next day and another inch or two a few days later, until there was enough that stayed on the ground to make a scene out of one of them fancy greeting cards. By that time, t’was December, and I realized we were gonna have our very first Christmas together, all nestled into our cozy little half-house in the thick forest around Port Essington.
T’was amusing to watch the animals in the paddock after the first fall of fluffy white hit the ground. They pranced about and whickered at the snow, as if asking it why it had taken so long to come. They snuffled their muzzles into it and snorted, then shook their heads as if the snow had played a trick on them.
“So, what do you want for Christmas, little boy?” I said one afternoon as my thoughts became tender and sentimental.
Oscar’s head snapped up from where he sat at the small table on a wood stool, going o’er some letters and easy words I’d written out for him. It had taken me some time to discover Oscar didn’t know how to read or write. He had a bigger vocabulary than he realized, and the fact that he hadn’t had much schooling didn’t hit me until I’d asked him. I’d bought him a slate and a slate pencil in town, and he was letting me teach him the alphabet and some basic words. Sometimes he’d get frustrated and tell me t’was no use, that he was too old to learn it, but I stopped that kind of talk right quick. I’d tanned his hide for it enough times that he only did it now to incite me—and in a deliberate and teasing way. He was really trying to learn, and I was proud of him for it.
“Excuse me? What do I want forChristmas?”
I couldn’t tell if the look of shocked indignation he threw me was because I’d called him a little boy or because I’d mentioned Christmas. I stared back at him in silence for a moment, then raised my eyes, uncrossed my legs and half sat up from where I’d been lying on the bed, reading a weekly I’d picked up in town.
“What? You tellin’ me you didn’t have Christmas in Dawson City?”
He huffed and turned back to his slate. “Not much of one. Not me, anyways. Maybe other people.”
He lifted his gaze to me and screwed up his forehead. “You tellin’ me you had Christmas with them outlaws?”
I blinked. Then I smiled and straight up laughed, picturing it.
“Of course not. But I did with my family for a long time…before everything went bad.”
He kept looking at me, probably deciding if he wanted to ask me about that.
Instead, he turned back to his slate. “Just a lot of Godly nonsense, I figure. What did Jesus e’er do for me?” He sounded like an old man who’d had enough of the world, and I couldn’t blame him. Oscar had lived a long life in his twenty-one years.
“Now hold on a minute,” I said, not willing to give up my dreams of making a cozy celebration just between the two of us, with some of the traditions from my childhood. “Just because religious people thought of it don’t mean it has no value.”
He snorted.
I sat up. “Come on now. What do you got against feasting and merriment?”
He looked up again. “Feasting, Jimmy? What the hell are we gonna feast on?”
T’was true, our diet was a little sparse. We wanted this money to last, so we were making do with basic foods that we could get easy and cheap. But that was even more reason to splurge on a special dinner that we might remember for a long time.
