Re: The Tin Cowboy
We stepped inside and I watched her slight frame disappear into the central chamber. I quickly followed, but by the time I was off the ladder, she was already at the bottom.
“Wait, did you write the article about Marlene? I read one in the archives.”
She nodded. “It’s always been a pet case of mine. Even if I can’t find anything new about it, I come out here at least once a year, around the time she died, to commemorate the loss of a great life – and the birth of a wonderful mystery.”
“Gosh, and I was starting to think you were sentimental,” I said, making my way down the stairs. “Here, you want to meet my – my acquaintance, Dylan?”
“He’s here?”
I nodded. “Yeah. He decided to sleep on the mattress downstairs.”
“That’s odd,” she muttered under her breath. “Are you sure he’s still here?”
“Well,” I started down the stairs to the cabin, “Pretty sure. I don’t think he’d –“ I was going to say ‘ditch me,’ but when I looked in the cabin and found the bed empty, I choked on my words. “He was down here last night.”
“Is he not there now?”
“No.”
“Maybe the Black Ghost got him,” Josephine said from behind me, brushing my neck. Chill bumps rose on my arm and I turned, smiling, despite the situation.
“Oh, shut up. He’s got to be around here somewhere.” The stair well was narrow and I barely had enough room to squeeze by Josephine, but somehow we made full contact. It was pleasantly awkward, and she followed me up the stairs.
“So, where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he went back to the grove, or went to go tell Wesley something. I don’t know.”
“Maybe he left you here,” she chided playfully behind me as I stepped out the front door, down the rock steps, draping my shirt over my head.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I sighed.
As we walked through the field, I noticed that most of the flowers that had been in full bloom the night before had since died off, leaving nothing but frail stems and dried out petals on the ground. They crunched like dead leaves under our feet as we made our way to the grove, which I could see clean through in the sunlight. It had seemed so all encompassing the night before, and now it looked like it took up less space than half of a football field.
“Here, let’s split up. You check the left side of the woods, I’ll check the right,” I offered.
“Okay,” Josephine said. “But I don’t think we’ll find anything.”
“You sound confident.”
“Women’s intuition,” she said, breaking to the left.
As with the flowers, the mushrooms that had been puffing out the white fog were now dead, although not quite in the same state. They seemed to have hardened almost to the point of petrifaction in the time between then and now. I kicked one and it barely broke at the base, but still managed to hurt my foot, before it toppled over. It looked more like stone than a mushroom, like the same artist that had smattered the trees over the landscape had taken all the mushrooms and replaced them with small statuettes.
I walked along the right side, what I assumed was the easterly side, judging by the position of the sun, close to the ocean. I was more elevated in the forest than I thought, and the drop off at the side seemed most treacherous. The ambience was gone – I walked in silence, occasionally stopping and listening for Josephine’s footsteps across the grove, but I could never hear them.
However, we both emerged from the grove at the same time, stepping out into the sunlight. She was a red dot in the distance that grew larger as I approached.
“Any luck?”
“No. I told you I wasn’t going to find anything,” she said, smiling and brushing the hair out of her face.
“Maybe Wesley is still here,” I turned towards the south side of the Island and began a small jog. Josephine managed to keep up, and when we reached the beach, started laughing. The beach, of course, was empty.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Tim, this seems like it sucks.”
“No kidding. Could I get a ride back with you?”
“Sure. If you’re keen on staying here a few more days.”
“What?”
“I am sentimental. I hold a vigil, and then I scour the Island looking for anything I might have missed in the years since the ‘suicide’ occurred. And then I’m picked up on Tuesday.”
“That’s strange.”
“Compared to everyone else,” she gestured off the shore, in the direction of mainland, which was visible in the distance, “Sure. But to me, I’m just sentimental.”
Westing looked so different from the shore of Banana Island. The buildings looked regal in the distance, and despite knowing the state of affairs on the shore, I couldn’t help but feel some kind of swelling pride in the city. The buildings were tall, uniform, exact – they were like some work of forgotten art. Even as the city tapered off to each side, it did so in a uniform fashion, like a graph that has a slight gradient.
“That place,” Josephine said, touching my shoulder, “That place is nothing but greed.”
“Westing?”
“Yes. Nothing good ever came from that place, and any good that was brought was only met with hardship. The Rebirth led to the Riots, the Riots led to the downfall of the children’s education, which gave rise to faux-political agendas and lobbyists, which leads to decrepit buildings. Nothing good ever came from Westing and if you try to bring any good to it, you’ll be met with nothing but adversity.”
“That’s a cynical view of it.”
“That’s how it is. Westing isn’t a city. Westing isn’t a college. Westing is greed personified. Why do you think they don’t have any more teachers at The Kinder? The pay would be all right. But everyone that has a chance gets out of there when they can.”
“And the one teacher that stays behind?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“I don’t want to ask her. Why do you think she stays behind?”
“For the money. For the fame. The sole teacher in an entire city, charged with educating the undeserving mass of children that the spawn of that place put forth… That’s some good publicity right there.”
“That’s a very cynical view of it.”
“Okay, Tim, then I want you to prove me wrong.”
“Come again?”
She turned and looked at the city. “If it’s not a bad place, if good can come from it, if it’s not just a breeding ground for insecurity, violence, and hate, prove it to me.”
“What? How will I know where to find you, once I have evidence?”
“Simple. I’ll be here, on the Island. Maybe at the light house, maybe in the forest – not so scary during the day, is it – or maybe on the beach waiting for you. I’ll be here all week, but after that you’ll have to track me down.”
“I’ll try my best,” I said, offering a half smile. I wasn’t pleased with having a mission of any kind, much less one given by an acquaintance of under two hours.
I sighed and sat down the beach, looking out over the waves. From this distance, it didn’t look like too bad of a swim. The cold water would be good for my muscles, too, which were still in agony after the row out. It couldn’t be more than two miles to get back to shore. My alternative was waiting for Dylan to show up again – and my other alternative was waiting for Josephine’s boat next week.
“I wouldn’t think about swimming if I were you,” she said, looking down at me.
“Why not?”
“The ocean is a deadly place, mon frere. It takes lives indiscriminately, whether they’re obstinately good or bad, all it takes is one miss-stroke and you’re gone. And then how will you prove to me that Westing isn’t a cess?”
I sighed. “Well how am I going to get back at all, much less to prove something to you?”
“That’s for you to figure out, dear,” she said, extending her arm and helping me to my feet. In the sun, her eyes shone like pieces of Sol itself stolen from the sky. She leaned forward very slowly and kissed me on the cheek before turning.
“I have to get back to the light house, but you’ll come back and see me, won’t you?”
“Of course,” I said, thinking to myself, ‘I won’t have much of a choice, given my circumstances. I might have to live with you.’
I pulled off my over-shirt and tossed it on the sand, turning back to the ocean. I tested the water with my hand – it was cold, but not as cold as it had been the night before. But how quickly things can change once a body is submerged. I got less than fifty feet out before my blue lips chattering together told me it was time to turn around.
The wind picking up did little to help my situation as I sat on the beach, trying to dry. Desperate for a place to dry without wind interference, I headed back towards the northern tip of the Island.
Before I could reach the grove, the shadow moved out from between the trees. The darkness around the figure dissolved as soon as it stepped into the sun, and I realized that it was not a shadow in and of itself, but a man so inclined to stand in the shadows, that standing in the sun looked uncomfortable. He had a brown coat of the trench variety wrapped around his body, pulled up to his face, but I could see his eyes. He was staring at me, and I could do nothing but shiver.
The man approached me and continued to stare in my eyes, still covering his face. After a few seconds, he let out a satisfied grunt and moved away.
“Wait! Who are you?”
He turned back around. “Go away, kid.”
“Go where? Do I look like I have a boat?”
The man sighed, his coat heaving. “No.”
“Do you have a boat?”
He sighed again. “Yes.”
“Then can I come with you?”
“And just where do you think it is I’m going?”
“Sir, I have no idea. I have no idea what-so-ever, but wherever it is, it has to be better than this Island right now.”
“And what if I told you,” he turned, lowering the coat from his face. He couldn’t have been more than five years older than me, but his voice had the sound of age. “That I was going to Hell. What then, would you come with me then, into the gates of Hell?”
“Only if it was warmer than this Island, sir.”
He cracked a smile. “I’m going to Westing. Stop calling me Sir. My name’s Ollie Haines.”
I couldn’t help but smile at his name. It was as if everyone in or around Westing was required to have an odd first name, or an odd last name. Feldspar, Ohm, Haines, Robert. It was a breeding ground for oddity.
“Thank you, Sir. Thank you very much.”
-
His boat had been tethered to the side of the Island that Josephine had searched, obscured in a cove. I asked him if he had been to the Island the night before, and he laughed, before confirming that he had.
“Coming here to vigil for Marlene,” I asked.
“No. I don’t do vigils for dead hookers.”
“Then why were you there?”
“Official police business,” he said smiling and pulling the rip-cord from the motor on the boat.
“Police?”
He nodded.
“What kind of police business do you have on a dead island like that?”
“That, son, is for me to know. Besides, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“Really?”
“No,” he burst out laughing. His laugh was louder than the motor backfiring and the sound of a wrench hitting the on-board. His laugh was louder than the sound of the motor starting, and louder than the sound of the boat breaking the waves as we headed back to the shores of Westing.
We stepped inside and I watched her slight frame disappear into the central chamber. I quickly followed, but by the time I was off the ladder, she was already at the bottom.
“Wait, did you write the article about Marlene? I read one in the archives.”
She nodded. “It’s always been a pet case of mine. Even if I can’t find anything new about it, I come out here at least once a year, around the time she died, to commemorate the loss of a great life – and the birth of a wonderful mystery.”
“Gosh, and I was starting to think you were sentimental,” I said, making my way down the stairs. “Here, you want to meet my – my acquaintance, Dylan?”
“He’s here?”
I nodded. “Yeah. He decided to sleep on the mattress downstairs.”
“That’s odd,” she muttered under her breath. “Are you sure he’s still here?”
“Well,” I started down the stairs to the cabin, “Pretty sure. I don’t think he’d –“ I was going to say ‘ditch me,’ but when I looked in the cabin and found the bed empty, I choked on my words. “He was down here last night.”
“Is he not there now?”
“No.”
“Maybe the Black Ghost got him,” Josephine said from behind me, brushing my neck. Chill bumps rose on my arm and I turned, smiling, despite the situation.
“Oh, shut up. He’s got to be around here somewhere.” The stair well was narrow and I barely had enough room to squeeze by Josephine, but somehow we made full contact. It was pleasantly awkward, and she followed me up the stairs.
“So, where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he went back to the grove, or went to go tell Wesley something. I don’t know.”
“Maybe he left you here,” she chided playfully behind me as I stepped out the front door, down the rock steps, draping my shirt over my head.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I sighed.
As we walked through the field, I noticed that most of the flowers that had been in full bloom the night before had since died off, leaving nothing but frail stems and dried out petals on the ground. They crunched like dead leaves under our feet as we made our way to the grove, which I could see clean through in the sunlight. It had seemed so all encompassing the night before, and now it looked like it took up less space than half of a football field.
“Here, let’s split up. You check the left side of the woods, I’ll check the right,” I offered.
“Okay,” Josephine said. “But I don’t think we’ll find anything.”
“You sound confident.”
“Women’s intuition,” she said, breaking to the left.
As with the flowers, the mushrooms that had been puffing out the white fog were now dead, although not quite in the same state. They seemed to have hardened almost to the point of petrifaction in the time between then and now. I kicked one and it barely broke at the base, but still managed to hurt my foot, before it toppled over. It looked more like stone than a mushroom, like the same artist that had smattered the trees over the landscape had taken all the mushrooms and replaced them with small statuettes.
I walked along the right side, what I assumed was the easterly side, judging by the position of the sun, close to the ocean. I was more elevated in the forest than I thought, and the drop off at the side seemed most treacherous. The ambience was gone – I walked in silence, occasionally stopping and listening for Josephine’s footsteps across the grove, but I could never hear them.
However, we both emerged from the grove at the same time, stepping out into the sunlight. She was a red dot in the distance that grew larger as I approached.
“Any luck?”
“No. I told you I wasn’t going to find anything,” she said, smiling and brushing the hair out of her face.
“Maybe Wesley is still here,” I turned towards the south side of the Island and began a small jog. Josephine managed to keep up, and when we reached the beach, started laughing. The beach, of course, was empty.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Tim, this seems like it sucks.”
“No kidding. Could I get a ride back with you?”
“Sure. If you’re keen on staying here a few more days.”
“What?”
“I am sentimental. I hold a vigil, and then I scour the Island looking for anything I might have missed in the years since the ‘suicide’ occurred. And then I’m picked up on Tuesday.”
“That’s strange.”
“Compared to everyone else,” she gestured off the shore, in the direction of mainland, which was visible in the distance, “Sure. But to me, I’m just sentimental.”
Westing looked so different from the shore of Banana Island. The buildings looked regal in the distance, and despite knowing the state of affairs on the shore, I couldn’t help but feel some kind of swelling pride in the city. The buildings were tall, uniform, exact – they were like some work of forgotten art. Even as the city tapered off to each side, it did so in a uniform fashion, like a graph that has a slight gradient.
“That place,” Josephine said, touching my shoulder, “That place is nothing but greed.”
“Westing?”
“Yes. Nothing good ever came from that place, and any good that was brought was only met with hardship. The Rebirth led to the Riots, the Riots led to the downfall of the children’s education, which gave rise to faux-political agendas and lobbyists, which leads to decrepit buildings. Nothing good ever came from Westing and if you try to bring any good to it, you’ll be met with nothing but adversity.”
“That’s a cynical view of it.”
“That’s how it is. Westing isn’t a city. Westing isn’t a college. Westing is greed personified. Why do you think they don’t have any more teachers at The Kinder? The pay would be all right. But everyone that has a chance gets out of there when they can.”
“And the one teacher that stays behind?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“I don’t want to ask her. Why do you think she stays behind?”
“For the money. For the fame. The sole teacher in an entire city, charged with educating the undeserving mass of children that the spawn of that place put forth… That’s some good publicity right there.”
“That’s a very cynical view of it.”
“Okay, Tim, then I want you to prove me wrong.”
“Come again?”
She turned and looked at the city. “If it’s not a bad place, if good can come from it, if it’s not just a breeding ground for insecurity, violence, and hate, prove it to me.”
“What? How will I know where to find you, once I have evidence?”
“Simple. I’ll be here, on the Island. Maybe at the light house, maybe in the forest – not so scary during the day, is it – or maybe on the beach waiting for you. I’ll be here all week, but after that you’ll have to track me down.”
“I’ll try my best,” I said, offering a half smile. I wasn’t pleased with having a mission of any kind, much less one given by an acquaintance of under two hours.
I sighed and sat down the beach, looking out over the waves. From this distance, it didn’t look like too bad of a swim. The cold water would be good for my muscles, too, which were still in agony after the row out. It couldn’t be more than two miles to get back to shore. My alternative was waiting for Dylan to show up again – and my other alternative was waiting for Josephine’s boat next week.
“I wouldn’t think about swimming if I were you,” she said, looking down at me.
“Why not?”
“The ocean is a deadly place, mon frere. It takes lives indiscriminately, whether they’re obstinately good or bad, all it takes is one miss-stroke and you’re gone. And then how will you prove to me that Westing isn’t a cess?”
I sighed. “Well how am I going to get back at all, much less to prove something to you?”
“That’s for you to figure out, dear,” she said, extending her arm and helping me to my feet. In the sun, her eyes shone like pieces of Sol itself stolen from the sky. She leaned forward very slowly and kissed me on the cheek before turning.
“I have to get back to the light house, but you’ll come back and see me, won’t you?”
“Of course,” I said, thinking to myself, ‘I won’t have much of a choice, given my circumstances. I might have to live with you.’
I pulled off my over-shirt and tossed it on the sand, turning back to the ocean. I tested the water with my hand – it was cold, but not as cold as it had been the night before. But how quickly things can change once a body is submerged. I got less than fifty feet out before my blue lips chattering together told me it was time to turn around.
The wind picking up did little to help my situation as I sat on the beach, trying to dry. Desperate for a place to dry without wind interference, I headed back towards the northern tip of the Island.
Before I could reach the grove, the shadow moved out from between the trees. The darkness around the figure dissolved as soon as it stepped into the sun, and I realized that it was not a shadow in and of itself, but a man so inclined to stand in the shadows, that standing in the sun looked uncomfortable. He had a brown coat of the trench variety wrapped around his body, pulled up to his face, but I could see his eyes. He was staring at me, and I could do nothing but shiver.
The man approached me and continued to stare in my eyes, still covering his face. After a few seconds, he let out a satisfied grunt and moved away.
“Wait! Who are you?”
He turned back around. “Go away, kid.”
“Go where? Do I look like I have a boat?”
The man sighed, his coat heaving. “No.”
“Do you have a boat?”
He sighed again. “Yes.”
“Then can I come with you?”
“And just where do you think it is I’m going?”
“Sir, I have no idea. I have no idea what-so-ever, but wherever it is, it has to be better than this Island right now.”
“And what if I told you,” he turned, lowering the coat from his face. He couldn’t have been more than five years older than me, but his voice had the sound of age. “That I was going to Hell. What then, would you come with me then, into the gates of Hell?”
“Only if it was warmer than this Island, sir.”
He cracked a smile. “I’m going to Westing. Stop calling me Sir. My name’s Ollie Haines.”
I couldn’t help but smile at his name. It was as if everyone in or around Westing was required to have an odd first name, or an odd last name. Feldspar, Ohm, Haines, Robert. It was a breeding ground for oddity.
“Thank you, Sir. Thank you very much.”
-
His boat had been tethered to the side of the Island that Josephine had searched, obscured in a cove. I asked him if he had been to the Island the night before, and he laughed, before confirming that he had.
“Coming here to vigil for Marlene,” I asked.
“No. I don’t do vigils for dead hookers.”
“Then why were you there?”
“Official police business,” he said smiling and pulling the rip-cord from the motor on the boat.
“Police?”
He nodded.
“What kind of police business do you have on a dead island like that?”
“That, son, is for me to know. Besides, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“Really?”
“No,” he burst out laughing. His laugh was louder than the motor backfiring and the sound of a wrench hitting the on-board. His laugh was louder than the sound of the motor starting, and louder than the sound of the boat breaking the waves as we headed back to the shores of Westing.
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