Chapter 15 Are You My Friend.
The door to the sheriff’s office didn’t just open; it banged against the wall so hard the glass rattled.
Young Bobby Timber stood in the doorway, chest heaving like a bellows, his face red and slick with sweat. He clutched his side, gasping for air, pointing a trembling finger back toward the trail leading up to the Northern Gold Mine.
“Sheriff!” Bobby wheezed, stumbling inside. “Sheriff Dockery, you gotta come quick! It’s Otis Miller!”
Chance Dockery didn’t look up from his desk immediately, but his hand moved instinctively toward his gun belt. “Slow down, son. Take a breath.”
“No time!” Bobby panted, swallowing hard. “He’s up at the Northern Mines! Well, it ain’t his no more, it’s Sir Bartholomew’s now, on account of them awful loans. But Otis, he hit the bottom, Sheriff! He hit the bottle real hard, and then he nearly hit his wife! So she went and packed up the kids and took off for her family’s place up in Tennessee—Cherokee County, she said!”
Bobby took a massive gulp of air, the words tumbling out of him in a desperate, tangled rush.
“And then he went wild! He went up to the mines cussing and shooting his gun off at the sky! But then he stopped shooting, Sheriff! He stopped because he said he didn’t want to waste the lead! He said he’d rather save them bullets to kill Sir Bartholomew Thorne! He wants to shoot him dead! He did say it, Sheriff, I heard him!”
Chance stood up, his jaw tight. “Where is he right now?”
“He’s still up there!” Bobby cried, wiping his brow. “My pa, Clarence, he sent me running to find you! He did hide Otis’s mule in the brush so Otis couldn’t ride down into town after the Englishman! But Otis is furious, and he wants to find Sir Bartholomew right now, and he said nobody’s gonna stop him!”
Chance stood up, his hand automatically checking his gun belt to make sure his revolver was secure.
Right on his heels, Joseph stood up too, ready to move.
Chance turned to him, shaking his head. “You need to stay in town, Joseph. I can handle one miner. Especially one I’ve known for years.” Chance glanced over at Bobby, then back to Joseph. “Do me a favor and see that Bobby gets something to eat. Make sure he stays at Big Mama’s place tonight, even if it’s just a couch. I’ll explain things to the boy’s pa and send him back home when the sun’s up.”
With his orders given, Chance walked out to his horse and mounted up. He rode toward the Northern Gold Mine, sticking strictly to the main trail where he knew his horse’s footing was safe. He kept the animal at a steady, sensible pace. There was no point in risking his own neck over a situation that sounded like it was already under control. Those miners were a tight-knit bunch; they knew how to take care of each other, and themselves.
When Chance finally arrived at the mine site, the fiery threat of violence had mostly burned out. Otis wasn’t shooting anymore; he was more pukey than mad, leaning heavily against a wooden crate and cussing a blue streak about his missing ride.
Clarence Timber stepped forward as the sheriff dismounted.
“Your son Bobby is down with Big Mama at her boarding house for the night,” Chance told him, loosening his reins. “I’ll see him sent back to you in the morning.”
Clarence nodded, tipping his hat. “Don’t you worry none over the boy, Sheriff. I’ll go get him myself.”
Right on cue, Otis let out a pathetic, ragged shout, shaking his fist at the trees. “Where is my mule?! Someone stole my damn mule!”
Chance walked over, grabbing Otis gently but firmly by the arm. “Come on, Otis. I’ll give you a ride toward town and help you find him.”
Otis stumbled along, too drunk to realize that Chance was actually walking him straight to the town lock-up. It looked like the brand-new jailhouse was finally going to get its very first customer, even if the cell didn’t have its first proper bunk yet.
Back in town, the heavy wooden door of the jail creaked open. Big Mama came walking across the square, carrying a thick bundle of blankets and a couple of fluffy pillows. Knowing what Clarence had planned with the mule, she had figured there’d be a desperate need for bedding before the night was through.
Joseph was sitting on the jailhouse porch, enjoying the cool night air. He stood up and took the heavy bundle from her arms. “Thank you, Big Mama.” He looked down at the pile, eyebrow raised. “Two pillows?”
“He’s locked up,” Big Mama said simply, crossing her arms. “Someone’s gotta watch him.”
Joseph cracked a dry smile, looking back through the window at the snoring, miserable miner. “You don’t have to be awake to watch a passed out man.”
“I’ve spent many a night watching a passed out man,” Big Mama said, adjusting her apron. “I can tell you, it takes very little talent.”
She paused, stopping dead in her tracks to look sideways at Joseph’s chest. “When’d ye put a star on?”
“It happened right after I washed the goats,” Joseph said with a straight face.
Big Mama looked thoroughly confused. Joseph just brushed a hand through his hair and offered a small grin. “It’ll make sense Saturday.”
She gave him a slow nod, just as Sam walked up the wooden stairs to where Joseph was standing on the porch.
“Good evening, Big Mama,” Sam said, her voice smooth.
“Good evening to you too, Miss Sam,” Big Mama replied. She looked Sam up and down. “We ever going to see you in the quilting circle?”
Joseph let out a quick laugh before Sam could even open her mouth. Sam shot Joseph a sharp glare, then stopped to think about it for a second. She shrugged. “Fair enough, go ahead and laugh. I don’t think so, Big Mama. But you keep inviting. A body never knows about a change of mind.”
“I’ll do that, Miss Sam,” Big Mama said, turning to leave. “You both take care.”
That was just how Big Mama was. She didn’t ask what a woman like Sam was doing at the sheriff’s office after dark. She didn’t comment on whether or not it was proper. She just kept her mind to her own business, and thanked other people to do the same where she was concerned.
As Big Mama’s heavy footsteps faded down the road, Sam stepped deeper into the shadow of the porch, turning to Joseph.
“Joseph, I need the money,” she said quietly. “Give me the two dollars you earn for staying tonight, and I’ll take your place.”
Joseph scoffed gently. “I think you have to be deputized for that, Sam.”
Without a word, Sam reached into her pocket and pulled out a tin star, letting the moonlight catch the metal.
Joseph stared at it. He wondered briefly when in the world Chance had done that, but he saw no real harm in it. If Chance trusted her enough to hand her a piece of tin, that was good enough for him. He didn’t know that Chance had actually thrown a spare star at him earlier in the week when he needed him on early duty, and that this was that very same second star. Chance would never put a star on a woman, but Sam didn’t have the patience for proper channels tonight. She had something Otis needed to hear.
“I need you back right before daylight,” Sam said, stepping off the porch. “Can you do that?”
“I’ll be here,” Joseph promised.
Once Joseph was gone, Sam let herself into the quiet, cool air of the new jailhouse. The cell door was secure, and inside, Otis Miller was a pathetic sight. He was slumped on the floor against the wall, smelling heavily of sour mash, his face stained with dirt and tears. He was still muttering curses under his breath, his hands shaking.
Sam dragged a wooden chair over, sitting down right outside the iron bars. She didn’t look at him with pity, nor did she look at him with anger. There was just a deep, heavy understanding in her eyes.
“You’re making a lot of noise for a man who almost destroyed everything he loves, Otis,” Sam said softly, her voice cutting through the dark room.
Otis blinked his bleary eyes, trying to focus on her. “He took my mine, Sam… Sir Bartholomew… he took my whole life. I’ll kill ‘im. I swear to God I’ll use every bullet I got left to rip his heart out.”
“Revenge killing,” Sam said, leaning forward, her voice dropping to a dangerous, icy whisper that made the hairs on the back of Otis’s neck stand up. “It’s a heavy thing, Otis. You think it empties the rage out of you? It doesn’t. It just burns out everything else until you’re nothing but a hollow shell of ash. It eats your spirit alive. I know the kind of fire burning in your belly right now. I know it better than you think.”
Otis quieted down, the raw intensity in her voice knocking some of the drunkenness right out of him.
“But there are times you have to put the rage down,” Sam continued, her eyes holding his in the shadows. “You have to choose to stop. Just like you did tonight. Before you actually laid a hand on your wife. You wanted to, the devil in the bottle told you to, but you loved her enough to stop. Hold onto that, Otis. Because if you cross that line and take a life for revenge… the dark place it takes you? You don’t ever get to come back from it.”
“I ain’t got nothing to live for,” Otis muttered, his voice cracking as a fresh wave of alcohol-soaked misery washed over him. “Nothin’.”
“Well, you won’t find the something you want in a bottle,” Sam replied smoothly. “Drink’s never been my problem, but I’ve seen what it does. It’s like this, Otis… look at me.”
She stood up from the wooden chair, turning her back to the iron bars. Slowly, she lifted the back of her shirt. In the dim light of the jailhouse, the thick, twisted ridges of healed burn scars mapped across her skin.
She let the shirt fall back down and turned to face him again. “I’m not tellin’ you ever’thin’ I done to the lowlife that did that to me, but I can tell you I did everything I had in my mind to do.”
That was when Otis finally looked up and met her gaze. The sheer, icy stillness in her eyes knocked the drunkenness right out of him. He sobered instantly, the phantom cold of the room pressing in on them.
“Sam,” Otis whispered, his voice trembling. “He deserved it.”
Sam gave him a slow, heavy nod. She stepped closer, sliding her hands through the iron bars as a quiet offering of friendship. Otis reached out, his rough, dirty hands grasping hers, trying to share the deep, wordless pain he saw in her eyes.
“Thank you for saying that,” Sam said softly. “But it didn’t make no difference. He won’t ever hurt no one else, but I can’t get back the part of my spirit I handed him when I got revenge. Old Ben used to say that every time you hit a man, you leave him with a piece of your soul. I didn’t understand what he meant until that night.”
She squeezed his hands firmly. “It’ll take a whole lot to get me to cross that line again. I can’t pretend that I know better than you, Otis. But I can say, you have your life. Find a way out of the bottle, and you are starting from zero again. Some people don’t even get that chance.”
Otis listened, the rage in his chest turning into a quiet, heavy sorrow.
“If you build yourself back, your wife and kids might come back,” Sam continued, her voice steady but kind. “Maybe not. Maybe ten or twenty years from now, your kids show up to see their pa is someone they’d like to get to know. But, you go off killin’ Sir Bartholomew… and it’s your kids and your wife that will carry that badge.”
“I’m going across the room now and sleeping ’til sun up,” Sam said, her voice returning to its usual calm, even tone. “Do you think you can remember what we talked about tomorrow?”
Otis swallowed hard, looking at the stone floor. “With you sitting in here, I’ll remember.”
“I’m not going to be here when you wake up,” Sam countered gently. “But, I tell you what. Here.”
She unpinned the tin star from her shirt and handed it through the iron bars.
“You keep that in your hand until morning,” she instructed. “When you go to wondering why you’re holding it, you’ll remember what I shared.”
Otis stared at the metal gleaming in his palm. “You gonna be needing this.”
“No, not really,” Sam said with a faint trace of a smile. “It never was mine. Will you give it to Joseph or Chance for me?”
Otis gave her a very tired, heavy nod. “Yeah. I can do that.”
“Thanks,” Sam murmured. She paused, looking deep into his eyes one last time. “I can’t tell a man what to think or say, but I’d appreciate you not telling anyone what I said or showed you.”
“I won’t,” Otis promised, his voice a whisper. “Swear it.”
Sam reached down and gathered up one of the thick blankets and a pillow Big Mama had brought, sliding them smoothly through the cell bars. Otis took them gratefully, pulling the blanket around his shivering shoulders.
As Sam turned to walk across the room toward the bench by the front wall, Otis called out to her, his voice small and vulnerable in the dark.
“Sam? Are you my friend?”
Sam stopped. She didn’t look back, but her shoulders softened just a bit.
“Friends?” she repeated softly. “I’d say more like we share the same spirit. Goodnight, Otis.”
She walked to the far side of the room, lay down, and closed her eyes. In the cell, Otis curled up on the hard floor, his fingers gripped tightly around the cold tin star, letting the quiet of the jailhouse finally bring him peace.
Chapter 16 I’ve Got Your Back Brother