Soul on a Wanted Poster

Sheriff Hollister pushed the door open with a tired creak and entered the post office.

It was quiet and hot. He could hear the buzzing of flies bouncing off windows as bright sunshine filtered in and highlighted the dust motes drifting lazily in the air.

There was no one else here except the clerk, who had his head down, writing in a ledger. His head lifted as the Sheriff thudded across the floorboard, dust puffing with each step.

“Sheriff,” the clerk greeted. “What can I do for you?”

Sheriff Hollister removed his hat and scratched at his sweaty hair. The clerk’s voice faded out and the post office was once again silent.

He replaced his hat, dislodging a bead of sweat. It trickled down his forehead, ran a trail through the dusty grime on his face, and hung off his stubbly chin. 

The clerk, Jonathan was his name, shuffled uncomfortably but waited. The Sheriff seemed to be deciding something, and it wasn’t Jonathan’s nature to push a man when he didn’t need pushing. He went back to his writing, and Sheriff Hollister continued contemplating whatever it was he contemplated.

Outside, horses knickered and conversations murmured as people walked by, thudding along the boardwalk. Hollister heard a carriage rattling past at a leisurely pace and the driver calling ‘yah’.

He still stood before the counter, wondering.

Wondering whether he should send it.

Wondering whether he could send it.

He flexed his fingers, the motion familiar for other, job-related reasons. They were stiff, old, and hurt like hell in the winters. They brushed the pocket of his trousers and paused there. 

The letter was in there. 

The one he’d agonised over writing. Unsure what to say. Or how to say it. He wasn’t good with words. Or his letters. He didn’t even know if it made sense.

Or if they’d understand.

And after he wrote it, he almost ripped it up. Almost scrunched it up and tossed it in the fire. 

But it survived, and he wondered if that was a sign. If the enduring existence of the letter, of his words, meant he should send it.

But what would they say? They left because of him.

He fingered the .45 on his belt.

They left because of the job.

He looked up at Jonathan, who was scribbling in the ledger in his fancy script Hollister couldn’t read.

“Jonathan,” he said. His voice matched his appearance. Rough, whiskered, grimy and, most of all, tired.

The clerk looked up.

Hollister gently pulled the letter from his pocket and placed it on the counter with a delicacy, like he was handling a newborn babe. It rested as lightly as a feather and, while it looked like the slightest breeze could blow it away, not even a hurricane could move the heaviness of the words it contained.

“Sheriff?”

“When does the mail go out?”

“Where to?”

“Prairieville.”

Jonathan pulled a pocket watch from his vest and popped it open. “The train is due any time now.” He looked at the folder piece of paper that sat between them like he was ready to reach for it, and Hollister tensed. His shoulders tightened, his fingers moved slightly, like they were waving in a soft breeze, and a familiar sense of dread smothered him.

Time stood still and Hollister was ready to move when Jonathan spoke.

“If not today, then the next train heading east is next week,” he said, like he could sense his indecision.

Next week. Could he wait that long? 

Hollister licked his lips. They were salty with sweat. He had no more time to wait. There was no more time. It was now or never and he was here, in the post office, right now. He came here to send it.

To let his wife and child know.

“Can I get an envelope for that?” he croaked, looking down at the plain, folded paper, almost willing it to be blown through an open window. To be trodden by passing horses and feet, buried deep in the hard, dusty ground.

Why was it so hard to let go?

“Sure, Sheriff.”

Jonathan ducked, disappearing beneath the counter, and returned a moment later with an envelope and handed it to Hollister.

He nodded his thanks and picked up his letter with trembling hands.

Closing his eyes, he mentally told himself to stop. That it was just a damn letter, but that only made it worse. 

Jonathan eyed him, the unspoken question on his lips that Hollister can predict exactly how it would play out.

Are you okay, Sheriff? Jonathan would ask.

And he would tell him he’s fine.

Then the clerk would ask if he needed help.

Hollister would snort, swear and not even dignify it with an answer despite being incapable of doing a task as simple as putting a letter in a damn envelope.

Jonathan would remain silent, but his eyes would convey the concern he had about Hollister and his capabilities to be the sheriff. He’d look at the visible scars on his body. The ones on his knuckles from fighting or accidentally knocking them against a desk or cell bars. The knick on his left cheek from a knife attack. He didn’t know about the others. He couldn’t see the twisted scar on his right shoulder where he’d been shot by James Horton. Or the jagged one on his right leg, just below the hip, where he’d been stabbed by ‘Wild’ William Wallace.

Then he’d look at his haggard and drawn face and wonder why he’d never noticed how old the Sheriff looked. And Jonathan would wonder if he could still do the job. Fulfil the needs required of his duty.

Well, only Sheriff Hollister knew the answer to that.

Subconsciously, he fingered his gold star. Faded and worn, yet still serving a purpose. 

Just like he was.

“Something the matter, Sheriff?” Jonathan asked, looking pointedly at the letter and envelope he was wrestling with.

He shook his head. “No. No. Just thinking.”

Jonathan took that with placid indifference, and Hollister steeled his nerves to get the letter into the envelope. He could shove it in, but something this important couldn’t be delivered with his usual roughhousery.

No, it needed the delicate touch he’d never had in his life.

But he had to try. Because if he couldn’t do a simple task like putting a letter in an envelope, then the letter was pointless.

The flies buzzed and the sounds outside continued about their day while he slowly enticed the letter into the envelope.

It took a while, but it got done. He placed it carefully on the counter and looked up at Jonathan with all the confidence of a man who’d made a decision.

Because that letter was his decision.

“Make sure this gets on the train to Prairieville,” he said to Jonathan. “It’s important.”

The clerk nodded. “To whom shall I address it to?”

“Mary and Carl Hollister,” he said.

Jonathan raised his eyebrows but remained respectfully quiet. He’d heard the rumours about the Sheriff and his estranged wife. Instead of asking questions, he grabbed the fountain pen and wrote the names on the envelope. Once he finished, he said, “I’ll be right back.”

Hollister nodded and watched the clerk disappear through a door behind him. Then he looked down at the letter, fingering the star on his chest.

“This is the right decision,” he croaked and pulled the star off his chest.

He was just about to drop it on the letter when two things happened at almost the same time.

The first was a rumble that vibrated the floorboards and a piercing whistle announced the imminent arrival of a steam train.

The second was the door to the post office opened.

“Sheriff Hollister,” said a voice. It was loud over the continued rumble and whistle of the slowly approaching train.

Hollister closed his eyes and leaned on the counter on his knuckles. He waited until the train pulled to a stop and the post office fell quiet again. He hoped that he’d just misheard. Maybe the train engine sounded like someone calling his name.

He knew it wasn’t. But he had to hope. This was going to be it. He was going to end it all and make amends.

“Sheriff Hollister,” the voice came again, and it was louder this time. More commanding.

It was a voice he knew. A voice he’d heard many times over the years. He didn’t know this specific person. He didn’t know who the voice belonged to. But he knew the tone. He knew the meaning behind it.

Someone had taken issue. With him. With the job. 

Someone he arrested.

Someone he stopped.

Someone from jail.

The job meant he’d never run out of people taking issue with him.

And he had the scars to prove it.

In his clenched hand was the star. Hovering just above the counter. He was going to put it in with the letter. Prove for once that he meant what he said.

He could still do it. Hollister considered it. Simply put, the star in with the envelope, turn around and tell whoever had umbrage with him to take it up with the new, as yet unknown, sheriff.

Hollister shut his eyes. He squeezed the star in his palm until it hurt.

Just do it, he told himself. Do it and be done with it.

The dull points of the star pressed into his palm, creating painful pinpricks, and a tear trickled out of his clenched eyelids and down his cheek.

He opened his palm, and the pain relented. He slowly put the star back on his chest.

She was right. He couldn’t let go. 

Sighing, he turned. The door was open, and a man stood in the entrance, silhouetted by bright sunlight. Behind him, people took furtive looks as they walked past and Hollister noticed there was an extra gait in their step.

This man had a reputation.

The train had pulled into the station and a great sigh from the engine flowed into the post office.

“Yeah?” Hollister said in a slow, casual drawl, like he had little interest in talking to the man. “What’d you want?”

The newcomer stepped into the post office and the door closed behind him to reveal a tough-as-leather, bearded face. He was forty, maybe older. His hat was as dirty as his face, like he’d been riding hard to get here.

And maybe he had.

Maybe he knew this was going to be his last shot at the sheriff.

He wore dirt-stained trousers and a long coat, the hint of a Colt hidden beneath its folds.

“You know me, Sheriff?” the newcomer said.

“I don’t.”

“Wendell Rousey.”

“He’s dead.”

“I’m his brother.”

“My condolences for your loss.”

“You shot him.”

“He gave me no choice,” Hollister said as a matter of fact and not an excuse. “That’s what happens when you rob a bank.”

“He didn’t deserve it,” Rousey’s brother said, jabbing his finger at the sheriff like he was trying to shoot his finger. “He needed that money for his family. His wife was dead. His kids starving! What did you expect him to do!”

Hollister paused. At the time he didn’t know the reasons behind Wendell Rousey. He’d arrested or shot dozens of bank robbers over his time. He assumed he was just another opportunist.

But he remembered Wendell Rousey. It happened a few years back. The drought had taken hold, and the heat was oppressive. The wells were running dry and water was scarce. Animals had to be slaughtered early and prices were as high as they’d ever been. He’d caught Wendell Rousey in the act with a sack of money. Until now, he didn’t realise how pathetic that sack looked. Hanging limp in his fist, swollen at the bottom like it was filled with coins, not notes.

How much had he taken? Was it enough to feed his kids? 

Hollister caught up to Rousey at his horse. He tried to stop him. Commanded him to surrender. 

“Sheriff…you have to understand–” he started.

Hollister thought the defeated look on the man’s face was because he got caught. But maybe it was… He thought about his own wife and child. What he would do for them. What he was doing for them.

Wendell looked at his horse. At the bag. And then he turned and pulled, but Hollister was quicker and the first bullet tore into his left shoulder, the second in his sternum and the third through the heart.

Wendell Rousey was dead before he landed in a bloody heap on the dusty road leading out of Prairieville, and that was the end of it.

Another outlaw thinking he could get away with something that wasn’t his.

Soon after, Mary had taken their son and left. He was too angry. He saw things in black and white. She claimed he was too involved in his job. That he played judge, jury and executioner.

The job. It cost him his wife and his child.

“He had no right to that money,” Hollister said to Wendell Rousey’s brother. 

The last thing Mary told him before she left was that the job put his soul on a wanted poster and one day someone would come to collect.

Maybe she was right.

But no one would collect. Not the job. Not Wendell Rousey’s brother. No one. Not now.

“He was starving! You deny a man food for his kids?”

“I didn’t see any food in that bag.”

She was right. He saw things in black and white. Right or wrong. Good or bad. Legal or illegal.

Hollister saw the man’s shoulders stiffen, the slight bow in his right arm because he wanted to draw with getting snagged on his coat. His feet were set.

Wendell Rousey’s brother was going to draw on him.

“Look,” Sheriff Hollister said, steeling himself. Setting his own feet. “I suggest you turn around and go on home before you do something you’ll regret.”

“His boys died,” Wendell Rousey’s brother said. “They died homeless, fatherless, and with no food. No water. I found them, you know. They were just sitting there, backs against the house. Like they was waiting for their dad to come home. For someone to feed ‘em. But when I found ‘em, crows had gotten their eyes. Scavengers chewed on them, trying to get at what little meat they had. Their bodies so thin, their skin so drawn, the bones were sticking through ‘em. You tell me, sheriff, did they deserve that?

“Did they deserve to die like that? Waiting, hoping for their dad to come home while sitting on the scorched ground? Did they deserve it? Tell me!”

Sheriff Hollister didn’t have time to think of an answer.

Wendell Rousey’s brother pulled and Hollister did as well.

Two gunshots rang out in the post office.

Wendell Rousey’s brothers stood, Colt pointed at him, his arm at a right angle. He looked at Sheriff Hollister with a curious look before the gun fell from limp fingers and thudded to the floorboards.

He collapsed a second later.

Sheriff Hollister’s .45 still smoked, and he relaxed his body. He held the .45 on the body, but the man didn’t move.

He was dead.

Sheriff Hollister never lost a duel.

Many had tried. But none had succeeded.

His wife’s words came unbidden into his mind: ‘...your soul is on a wanted poster and one day someone will come to collect’.

Not today they wouldn’t. He holstered the Colt and pulled the star off his chest.

This was the last time. He was done.

Star in hand, he turned and stumbled.

Pain burned, and he clutched at his side. The white hot fire intensified until it sucked all his breath away. 

He crashed against the counter, gripping it so he didn’t fall, and noticed his hands were bloody.

“Sheriff!”

Jonathan came out from the back where he’d been hiding, but it was too late.

Sheriff Hollister’s vision blurred, and he fell to one knee. He reached out with trembling, bloody fingers to the pristine envelope that lay undisturbed on the counter.

With a hard swallow and a rasping breath, he tried to grab at it, like it was the elixir of life. 

His bloody fingers slipped over the envelope.

“Make…sure…train” he choked out and then his vision failed and he slumped to the floor, his hand falling away, leaving the faded, bloodied star on top of the envelope.