#ub | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

onggi · 9 months

Text

Rattle Me Good

Sandy’s a real fighter sometimes, got the fire in his eyes that don’t go out ‘til he’s filled you with holes where all your organs used to be. He’s silent but quick to anger and you never know what exactly set him off because sometimes he’ll go off for no reason at all. Like a gun without the safety on. Loose screws.

I like to play the banjo a little. Wouldn’t say I’m much good at it — wouldn’t say I’m much good at anything — but I know enough that Sandy don’t blow a hole right through me when I pick it up and get to strumming. Sometimes I take requests, sometimes I don’t, and I never, ever sing. Not after that one time when Sandy was shaking like a goddamn leaf under the midnight sky and I said, “want a lullaby?”, only I weren’t really joking, and he slugged me in the jaw and went real still like, black eyes burning like coals.

He didn’t say nothing, but I knew what that stare meant. That’s your warning shot, Dusty. Next one’s gonna be a killer. I knew that stare because I’d been on the other end of it a thousand times, usually accompanied by a puff of cigar smoke and the click of a buckle.

That’s why I’m kinda hesitant like, watching his eyes flicker back and forth like he’s a horse about to spook in the middle of the saloon. Usually he’s mighty calm in one of these here establishments, soothing whatever’s kicking in his head with the taste of the finest booze a traveller’s stingy budget can afford you. Not today.

Sandy don’t talk much. And even when he does, he don’t say much, like everything’s hidden beneath five hundred layers of shit you gotta dig through to get to the root of the thing. I’ll be the first to say I ain’t the smartest, so most of it goes over my head, only sometimes I don’t think he really wants to be understood so much as just wanting to talk to someone. He’d prob’ly slug me again if I said that out loud, though.

I oughta ask if he’s alright. Something’s clearly setting him off, even if I don’t know what, and it might be better for us to leave anyhow since I’m almost done with my scotch and he’s not touching his. I’m stupid enough to open my mouth, the words not even formed in my head yet, but God himself intervenes in the form of a toothy bastard slapping Sandy on the back.

“Carlyle,” he croons with a smirk, and by God is that one helluva smirk. The kinda smirk that you only really see a handful of times, and you remember it each and every time, because the angle is always slightly different.

Toothy’s dark and muscular, wiry and strong like a bull. His eyes glint with trouble and his ears stick out like sails catching the wind. His nose, broad and flat, is perfectly straight. I rub at my own nose self consciously — broke it a few too many times as a kid, I’d like to say, but the reality is I never stopped breaking it and it never healed right anyhow.

“Jim.” Sandy’s voice is all gritty like, harsh and coarse like his name.

They’re on first name basis and I can’t figure out whether that’s closer or not-closer than nickname basis.

Jim seems to take that as an invitation to sit down at the bar, pushing his shoulder right up against Sandy’s like he’s got no fear in his goddamn life. They make a real picture, the two of them, thick and strong and big, bigger than me. Sandy’s still not touching his scotch, but his fingers are clenched around the glass tight enough to shatter it.

I’m praying it don’t shatter.

Jim reaches for Sandy’s scotch and their fingers are on top of each other, interlocking for a moment, before Sandy lets go and the glass is conceded. That smirk is still there, half a mile wide.

“Haven’t seen you ‘round these parts in years.” Jim takes a sip of the scotch. I feel something stir within my gut, like I oughta be defending Sandy’s territory or something, only it’s just a glass and Sandy let him have it anyhow.

Sandy just grunts in response, jaw clenched.

“This your new boy?” Jim tilts the glass in my direction and I sure ain’t making up the way his eyes kinda laugh at me. I know I’m smaller, a little rounder, but it ain’t fucking fair to come in here and take a shot at me while acting like he owns Sandy. He don’t own Sandy.

No one owns Sandy.

I don’t wanna speak for him, but he’s not saying jack shit, so I gotta speak for myself.

“Yeah, I’m his boy.” Louder than intended. “We’re partners.”

Jim looks like he’s aching to laugh at me.

“We’re partners and I don’t know who in the goddamned hell you are, so maybe you should.” Scram. “Introduce yourself.”

Fucking shit, Dusty, every single time. Not an assertive bone in your body.

But maybe it was the right thing to say, on account of how Jim draws himself up like he’s taking a deep, deep breath and he switches over to swilling the drink in its glass, chewing on the inside of his cheek a little. He’s big and shiny and all the things a cowboy oughta be, all the things Sandy is, and Sandy’s an asshole but he’s not this asshole. I wanna make Jim sweat a little.

“I’m Sandy’s old partner,” he says, and it’s not kind like, not at all. “You better leave him before he sells you out. He always does.”

And, what? I’m thinking, I’m really trying, but the Sandy I know don’t sell out nobody, not for anything. The Sandy I know don’t even talk to nobody, let alone turn on ‘em like a rattlesnake in the grass, dangerous and ready to strike where it’ll kill you.

I talk before my brain tells me how stupid I’m being.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, but it’s not my Sandy.”

Everything happens very quickly. Sandy slams his hands on the bar and stands up, tense as anything, and his eyes are murder. The other patrons mind their own business until there’s a scene, but Jim don’t appear to have any friends with him — or at least not any that’ll throw a punch for him — so they mostly just watch. And Jim himself, splayed out on the barstool with his legs spread wide, smiling like this is what he wanted all along. I just played into it somehow.

I’m expecting Sandy to go crazy on Jim, slug him in the cheek or maybe the jaw. Break his nose. Do something. Because he called Sandy a turncoat, and Sandy ain’t no turncoat. He ain’t no traitor. And cowboy’s honour is big between men, even if it only goes so far.

Instead, Sandy pins me beneath his scary murder eyes and says, “Enough.”

The bang of the warning shot glaring past my ears. I feel ‘em ringing.

“Alright, Sandy.” I know my smile’s prob’ly shaky, on account of my shitty feelings getting in the way, but I know how to placate someone, at least a little. Maybe it makes me less of a man to bow instead of standing ‘til I break, but I don’t care. “Alright, we oughta call it a night, huh?”

I turn to Jim. He’s not smiling anymore, his gaze stormed over like the dust that swirls up in the desert.

“Was nice meeting you, Jim.” Placid. He don’t respond to me, only stare at Sandy like he can’t figure him out no more.

When we’re outta there, Sandy’s half a step ahead of me, always slightly out of reach. I almost wanna reach out and grab him by the arm, but that warning shot’s still ringing ringing ringing like a bell that won’t quit. Sandy stops in the dark place between two houses and then he’s facing me, coals burning in his eyes.

“Why’d you say that.” Not really a question, even though it’s phrased like one.

“I don’t know, why’d you let him say all those things in the first place?” I lick my teeth. “Calling you a traitor and all when you’re not.”

Sandy’s got me by the collar then, nose inches from my face. “You don’t know what I am.”

He’s taller than me. My collar’s gonna rip if he pulls on it much harder, steaming and huffing like a stallion about to buck his horseman right off. I’m so close to his face but I can’t meet his eyes, not when they’re gonna burn right through me and only leave ash behind. So, I look at his dark eyebrow, pinched inwards. I look at his cheekbone, sharp and cutting. I look at the meat of his cheek, barely scarred with acne if you look real, real close, and then I trace my way down his pointy nose. He’s like a bird with that nose, a real fucking beak of a thing. Right now, it feels more like a blade.

Abruptly, he lets me go, and I watch all the fight bleed out of him.

“Oughta call it a night,” he grunts, and everything’s clicking back into place. What just happened ain’t gonna happen again.

On the quiet walk back to our room, I think a little. Jim, with his glowing dark skin and smiling eyes. Sandy, gruff and red and angry as the devil. I can imagine them together, cutting a real smart figure against the landscape of the west, enough to be in a painting. But that’s not the Sandy I know. The Sandy I know, the one right in front of me, I know exactly what he is.

He’s just a man. Fallible, as weak as any other.

He’s no hero, no gunslinging maiden saver. He’s no actor. He’s no knight in shining armour — don’t even shine his boots most times.

And he’s certainly not Carlyle.

That night, I put myself to bed and I dream of things that I forget about in the morning, save for the feelings that linger. Warmth, contentment, safety.

Then it’s back to work.

#oc #writing #thomas “dusty” mactavish #carlyle “sandy” sanderson #gunsmokers #yeehawgust #yeehawgust 2023 #cowboy #western #ub #txt

28 notes · View notes