Losing What's Already Lost by Suzy

JD's point of view

Chris promised me after he left Four Corners that he’d keep in touch wherever his travels took him. If that meant he went across seas to different countries, explored the wild African jungles, or got lost in the midst of the desert heat, he’d still keep in touch. He made a promise.

And just before he left he made me promise him to keep a watchful eye on the town in his absence. That I’d take his place in keeping Four Corners under control, free from bandits, thieves, murders, cut-throats. He made me promise to keep being the fastest gunslinger and never let up an eye when it came down to one on one. It was a promise I willed to keep to him.

And he called me kid, like he always had, and grunted for his horse to get the move on and I watched him as he rode out of town alone.

Now I stand where I stood five years ago where Chris made me make him these promises that he counted on me to keep them and hold them, and I did just that as I watched and waited for him to come back to us. Back to the friends who missed him terribly, to the woman who’d always ask me if I received a letter from him yet, from a young boy who aged older than his years begging me to take him fishing and he never let a day pass without questions if I heard from Chris.

Then those long five years turned into ten long years with only a letter here and there from the fastest gunslinger I knew. The toughest man I came across after he turned me down when I pleaded to help him all those years ago. How I didn’t know he was really protecting me quietly rather than speaking what he really meant. How stubborn and big-headed I was to not listen to him. To understand that killing was something to be taken serious, nothing I’d ever read from books said Buck.

Another ten years passed that evolved into twenty years since I’d seen Chris Larabee. I’ve received a total of ten letters from him within those years. Feels like a letter for every two years. He must be on a running rampage away from whatever he was running from.

After Chris revenged his family’s death by taking Ella Gaines’s life by his own hands, that was the trigger in his mind to start anew with his life now. Since the deaths were resolved and all was right with the world in his broke hearted mind, Chris wanted to leave for a while, but he never gave me, or Buck, or Vin any indication for how long.

Casey tells me I should stop worrying over this man, but she didn’t understand that this man, this gunslinger, saved my life time after time, that he was my mentor. My father figure. But she knows how much I’ve missed him for all these years and counting. How I can’t stop thinking what he’s doing every time I pull out my pistol to put someone to their grave. Chris taught me how to be fast. How to be accurate and straight…along with Buck’s help too.

Now I’ve grown older, a father of two daughters of my own, I finally realize how horribly it would if something were to happen to them. How Chris lost his family, his wife, his son so quickly without as much as a goodbye.

How hard he controlled his anger, his tears, and his outrageous feelings for all those years. I didn’t know how he did it.

Twenty-five years had come and went and still nothing from Chris. I have these bad thoughts that maybe he’s not going to ever write back after my last letter a year and half ago. Maybe the usual two year mark when I’d usually get a letter from him will hurry and come and I’d know everything was right with him.

I remain to stand in my spot where Chris last said see ya, kid to me. I wait and I watch and I wonder. When will he ever come back? Am I lost in my thoughts to see the truth behind all this waiting? When will he come back?

And does Chris know the truth about Vin Tanner and Ezra Standish? Had he got word somewhere that Vin was no longer with us, or Ezra? Did he know about the saloon shoot-out eight years ago that took the lives of our friends? Ezra, older but not much wiser in the gambling business, took another chance at the tables but after someone younger, smarter…someone a lot like Ezra himself when he was the young fancy talking gambler…accused him of cheating and pulled out a gun, Ezra lost his ability to strike out his still quick-smart pistol hidden in the sleeve of his jacket, but the kid shot off his gun right into Ezra’s open chest and just as I was running through the saloon doors, I caught glimpse of the gambler falling out of his chair to the floor. And when the ex-bounty hunter came to the scene, he poked his gun into the young man’s back, another gambler at the poker table didn’t take a chance to shoot off his gun and kill Vin right then.

He didn’t even see it coming. Nothing had sparked him that all the men around the table were murders, rapists, thieves had just escaped from jail to have a good time. Had they known…they’d still be alive today.

Our gang was down to five now.

After the loss of two greats, Nathan Jackson continued his practice, but when he was offered a job up in Kansas City to be an assistant to a real life medical doctor, he didn’t take a chance to pass the opportunity up. Four Corners had been well off from any cut-throats since Vin and Ezra’s deaths and there was no reason for him to stay. The town was booming for more than Mary Travis’s liking and he didn’t need to be there anymore. He said he’d been there long enough and he needed to move on. Not much work for him here, he said.

But six years ago before Judge Travis’s death, with the town progressing as it may be, and so few gunslingers left to protect anymore, the Judge gave me the official duty to be head sheriff in Four Corners and that I could hire on any deputy that I saw fit.

A couple of more years would pass and still nothing from Chris. He said he’d come back and see us and stay for good, retire if you will say, but that’s what he said. And then soon I wouldn’t have anyone come up to me and ask if I heard anything yet. I didn’t have Billy Travis tugging on my coat sleeve asking, or Mary Travis gracing me with her presence when she walked by to ask. I didn’t have any of them anymore because they were gone just as quick as Vin and Ezra were.

If I could remember really, Mary had been prompted to work in Dallas, Texas to be their newspaper’s senior editor and I do remember she turned the offer down because she didn’t want to move from the territory. Billy had grown to be a man now, going off to college and after Gerard from the Wagon Train came back to Four Corners to visit Mary, she left with him and moved out of the town but kept her work still in Four Corners.

And that’s what I’m looking at now. The Clarion’s News Building where I had once helped young Mary Travis with her newspaper. All those thirty years ago. It was almost like yesterday when she asked for my help and Casey, now my wife, waited to see what I’d say just so I wouldn’t leave the town. Had we been so childish then? So full of love and spunk and I-gotta-do-what-I-gotta-do?

Josiah stopped asking me about Chris too. After he finished his church, he passed on and traveled up to visit Nathan in Kansas City until fate caught up with him and he died of old age in the care of his good friend. That’s when Nathan came back to Four Corners one last time for the ex-preacher’s funeral. He wanted to make sure we buried him next to his sister, Hannah, who rested under a large oak tree just a couple miles out of town.

We were now down to three, but two because Nathan only visited for a couple of days before going back home. And in that same week we buried Josiah was the last time I saw Maude Standish. With my hat in my hands, I saw her bending over Ezra’s nine-year old grave with a bouquet of brown roses that looked as if they were once white. I watched her bend down and kiss her son’s white cross before standing back and looking right over at me with tears in her eyes, her face aging thirty years and after she looked at me for a good ten seconds, she turned away and walked off into the rainy darkness on that day.

And I hadn’t seen her since and it wasn’t until just a few weeks ago I read about her death in the Carson City newspaper that she was found in her hotel room. Apparently, as I read, she died in her sleep. Always the most peaceful way to go, I think. She lived a full life, going through the death of her son before her own. But she was at peace now.

I lean against the jailhouse building with my aging thumbs hooked in my gun belt as I think all this through. About my life as it passed me by without asking and how quickly all my friends I’d known for years were gone. Including Buck…

I stand here at the jailhouse, my place of business, where the fearless Chris Larabee and the lady’s man Buck Wilmington had some of their most confidential talks. I stand here and wonder if maybe I can still hear their voices as they whisper to each other. The soft voices of their box humming through their lips as they try and keep their private friendship of twelve years before I knew them under wraps. How Vin Tanner didn’t even know some of the stuff Chris and Buck talked about. And Vin was Chris’s right hand man for as long as I could remember.

Buck left me too. Some fifteen years ago. He wrote me everyday just about, telling me how he tries everyday to find some money lying around to send each of his letters. The last letter I received by him was exactly fifteen years ago tomorrow, and I remember clearly I was so excited to get his letter I literally ran to the post-office and grabbed the letter from the postman. And when I expected to find his nice, yet sloppy handwriting that changed over the years with age, the letter wasn’t from him, not in his own writing, but from his wife, Louise. In her clear, elegant handwriting, she wrote to me that Buck had been killed by an accident…and I shook with uncontrollable tears and shock…

She went onto explain he took his horse for a nice, long ride to get some fresh air and free from the smell of beer and cigars. When he didn’t show up for hours later, and then turning into days, a search party came together and went in search for him and when they discovered him a week later, he had fallen off his horse and hit his head on a boulder. And his horse was still missing.

How could a boulder take Buck’s life? After the sudden loss of my dear friend Buck Wilmington, I didn’t know how to take it. It was hard to move on from his passing, knowing he died alone and his horse abandoned him. It was hard to bear it, knowing I wasn’t there for him. How I couldn’t give him my last goodbye or he couldn’t tell me one last thing he thought he needed to pour into my life about how to do something or think before I speak. My guidance was gone…forever.

And that was fifteen years ago, and I stand here still, barely breathing, and more hoping and wishing Chris would ride around that corner and grace me with his presence. Just to show me something old I use to remember and love being. To show me someone of my past with this group of men I looked up to and honored and will forever honor till the day it is my turn to take my last breath.

How I keep waiting…

“Papa?”

I snapped out of my thoughts quickly and turned my head to the voice behind me. “Yes, Adrienne?”

My fifteen year old daughter looked up at me with eyes so blue. “What are you standin’ here for, papa?”

“Oh, nothin’. Just waiting is all.”

“For what?”

“The postman. He’s suppose to be getting’ here real soon.”

“You expectin’ a letter? From who?”

“Chris Larabee.” I was proud to say that name aloud when it hadn’t been spoken for years.

“Mr. Larabee?” Adrienne frowned and looked up at me again with concern. “Papa, that ain’t possible.”

This time I look at her with a glare, “Why not?”

“You above all people should know that ain’t possible.” Adrienne touched my shoulder. “You’re denyin’ it again, Papa.”

“Denyin’ what?”

I watched my daughter shake her head. “Mama told me you always forget. That you won’t allow yourself to believe it’s true. After everything that’d happen.” Adrienne looked at me again then swallowed before speaking again. “Chris Larabee is dead. He died twenty years ago. Don’t you remember?”

Chris Larabee was dead? He died twenty years ago? Why don’t I remember? Had I made myself not remember?

Adrienne turned on her heel and walked down the town lot towards home for the day and I turned my head to the setting sun.

Chris was the first to die out of all seven of us, and I am the only one left living in Four Corners. It makes sense now. Knowing I must have blocked out his death with certainty and pain because the knowing he was dead…I just couldn’t bare it. And the way he died…that was harder than most to understand why he’d done it. About why he killed himself the way he did. I remembered now that he took the unforgettable leap to his death after he revenged his family’s death. That after he took the life of Ella Gaines he had nothing left to give but take his own life in return. That was his way out, and after his death everything fell apart. That’s when all the new offers came to town for Nathan and Mary. That’s when they both left, and then everyone’s death seemed to come quickly and in short times after. And why I blocked out that twenty years ago was the last letter I ever received from Chris.

Chris was dead. The town was alive. I was the sheriff, and I was losing my mind, my memories, and my friends. That Chris was dead all along and I would never get another letter from him again. I was barely breathing…

See ya, kid.