His Name Didn't Matter

The earth had shriveled up under the scorching reach of the sun. Loose dirt rose in clouds with every gust of dry wind, unrestrained by the absence of the roots which once held it in place. Dirt was the only sign of nature here, if it can even be classified as such. The dirt had taken it upon itself to remind any soul brave enough to cross its barren face, of their place in its kingdom. By the way it filled boots as though it had been hand poured, seeping through even the toughest wool socks. It always found its way into eyes, blurring vision and crusting along eyelashes. A bandana was a weak defense against the way it was sucked up with every inhale, coating nostrils and lungs. It was designed to fit into every pore and wrinkle of the face. Every turn of the tongue, it would grit against the teeth. Its existence was a constant threat. Valley Jones figured that there would be no better place for revenge. 

This town, which the unimportant name of had already slipped Val’s mind, had been built at the edge of a river, which had long since gone dry. Even the water had died, moved on to better things like the rest of the life here.

The crunch of her boots were silent under the cover of the blowing wind. Even her footprints were washed away as quickly as they’d been placed, making it seem to the rest of the world that she had never even been there. 

Everything is always eager to cling to other signs of life, a reminder that each soul doesn’t exist on its own. Everything except the town saloon, that is. And the few dirt-encrusted regulars who took up little space in the practically abandoned building. 

Like a ghost, the saloon suddenly appeared from behind the haze of dust. It was about as exciting as the rest of the place. Decrepit, and fallen victim to the force of the outside world. She pushed open the heavy door to reveal a room even darker than the hazy sky. It was practically a cave, inhabited by a few shriveled bats drinking their whiskey in the far corners. Every window had been boarded shut and covered, the only illumination coming from a few weak candles. 

Val slowly walked up to the bar, pulling off her gloves and bandana, the ominous click of her boots was dulled by the layer of dirt on the hardwood floor. For what she was about to do, she should be nervous. Even more so, she should feel guilty. But, a conscience was something that had been robbed from her as a child and she felt no desire to retrieve it. She had done this three other times and would do it three times after this, slithering around the country like the grim reaper. 

The man behind the bar was half consumed in shadows, looking at Val through tired, sunken eyes that resembled those of a corpse. He didn’t greet her, nor offer his assistance. Merely looked right through her with his zombie-like gaze. In other words, he was a creature after Val’s heart. His thick, unruly mustache twitched once. 

“Some expensive whiskey ya’ll sell here,” Val commented, reading the menu. It wasn’t quite a menu, just sloppy words scribbled onto a weathered piece of paper. The man exhaled once, still not uttering a word. He stood as stiff as a board, his only sign of life being the way his glassy, yellowed eyes followed Val’s every movement. 

“Whiskey,” Val grumbled, dropping a few coins onto the table. The man was quick to grab her change, as if it would seep into the counter before he could reach it, like water drying into the barren earth. 

Val turned and surveyed the rest of the room. There were only four men hiding within the shadows of the saloon. Two of them were hunched over a table, playing a painfully slow game of poker. Each card seemed to hover for minutes before hitting the table, their hands moving in slow motion. The other two were tucked away into their own tables, their lifeless eyes drifting across the room as they drank. Val didn’t have to see his face to know who he was. She could feel him sitting there, his presence radiating. He was a magnet, pulling her towards him with an undeniable force. She had hunted him all over the country. Him and all the others. And like the predator she was, she could feel when her prey was in the vicinity, from the goosebumps on her flesh and the way her hair stood on end. But most importantly, Val’s instincts had never proved her wrong. 

She heard the whiskey bottle hit the counter. She turned and nodded to the bartender, dropping a few more coins on the counter, signaling for another whiskey. He complied silently, scooping up the money. Val enjoyed the way that the interaction was devoid of any questions or conversations. He slid the other bottle into her hand before disappearing into the shadows. Val scooped them up and smoothly made her way over the table. She made sure to take her time, to be present in the moment, but not in the name of enjoyment. This was not a memory she would look back on. She would live this moment as presently as possible, then keep moving, leaving it behind her. After all, Val understood the gravity of hunting. She did not take thrill, nor pride, in the act. She killed, only for necessity, then exiled the event from her thoughts.

Val had met men who enjoyed the thrill of the hunt, and even more, the feeling of the kill. They glorified a simple pull of a trigger. She’d seen it in the men who killed her parents all those years ago. Looking down the short barrel of a revolver with a smirk, glassy eyes green with a sick sheen of delusional victory.

When those sorts of men killed, the rest of the world didn’t exist. They were wrapped in a bubble, entrapping only themselves, their gun, and a puddle of pooling blood encircling an innocent body.

Pulling a trigger was easy. This was something that Val had learned from the ripe age of seven, when a gun was first put between her fingers. Living, however, was much harder. 

She set the bottles on the table. He did not look up, even at the clink of the glass against the wood. He had his revolver sitting on the table, it was the first thing Val had noticed. His hollowed eyes were fixated somewhere far ahead of him, at something that was not physically present, but something that Val had been acquainted with before. It was a look that Val had become entirely all too familiar with.

She sat down across from him. His gaze did not change. Val wondered if he had some sort of inkling that death was near. After a lifetime of being close to it, Val had come to realize that after a while, one can feel Death’s presence. That it is possible to know when it's in the room. Death lurks like an indiscernible shadow in the corner of one’s peripheral vision, watching with an intimidating air of patience that only a being unaffected by time could possess. In a way, Death had become her old acquaintance. It had visited Val countless times, though they never spoke, and she always managed to avoid its grasp. 

As though he were an old skeleton come to life, he slowly lifted his own drink up to his lips, finishing off the last of it, and slowly turned his gaze to the whiskey in front of him. He made no effort to reach for the bottle, instead slowly turning to finally face Val with his gray, lifeless eyes that were half hidden under the brim of his hat and his excessively overgrown eyebrows. He sank back in his chair, practically tucking himself into his thick, burly beard. He barely resembled the man Val remembered from eleven years ago, the only verification of his identity was the thick scar running across the length of the right side of his face.

It was undoubtedly the same scar that had existed eleven years prior, on a face less wrinkled with age, glaring at a terrified child from behind a cloud of gray smoke, in a home that did not belong to him. At the time, Val had called him Scratchy in her head, named after his scar and the incessant tone of his raspy voice, as she would not come to know his name until eleven years later, only to find that it was as unimportant as it had always been.

It had been years since she sat across from him in such a way and she was reminded of her mission. She was not seeking revenge only for herself or in the name of her parents. Her parents were dead. They didn’t know about who was killed after them. If they did, they probably wouldn't care. Val did it for the little girl of seven years old, who still existed somewhere, who had to witness the killings of her only family, then reside with their murderers for a week, wondering whether or not she would live or die, enduring their abuse, and ignoring the stink of rotting bodies in the cellar. She was doing right by that little girl, protecting her. That part felt incredibly selfless. Heroic, even. But an even smaller reason was because Val had a reputation to uphold. A lesson must be taught to those who underestimated her. 

And she would wait until he spoke first. 

He finally spoke, “What do you want?” He pulled a cigarette out of his coat pocket and lit it between his lips, completing the picture from her memory. 

“I want a cigarette.” He flicked her one and she lit it with the small flame from the weak candle which was teetering on the edge of the table. “You're still a smoker, huh.” Val commented. His overgrown eyebrows twitched slightly. 

He merely grunted. His lifeless eyes blinked once, almost resembling a look of confusion. He didn’t recognise her. The two sat in silence for a few moments, puffing on cigarettes. 

“You after my bounty?” He asked gruffly. 

“Maybe,” Val muttered thoughtfully. His bounty wasn’t worth as much as some of the others had been, though turning him in was certainly an option. 

“Hell does that mean?” He blew out a gust of smoke. 

“Means I’ll turn you in if I decide I want the money. Right now, I don’t give a damn about that.” 

He scowled, his thick beard twitching. He was about to ask the question he had been avoiding, as if it could extend his life a few glorious minutes, “Who are you?” 

Val replied coolly, “We’ve met. You never knew my name and you never will.” He scoffed at Val’s short answer, puffing on his cigarette. 

“You ain’t come here for small talk.” 

“Sure I did. Why are you here?” Val asked. The man was surprised to hear the question, his thick eyebrows raised curiously. 

“For a drink.” 

“I assume you're a regular here. Why?” Val interrogated. 

“Hell would you wanna know for?” 

Val sighed and leaned forward, the cigarette dangling between her fingers. “I’m gonna be frank with you. You’re sittin’ in the bar you come to every day, in the middle of goddamn nowhere, boiling in a pot of nothin’ but sun and dust, absolutely, insufferably lonely.” Val paused, letting it sink in a little. He was pretending not to hang off of her every word, curious about what she had to say. She wasn’t one for speaking such lengthy sentences, but she never missed a chance to antagonize someone. “Would you say that the quality of your life has improved since killin’ my parents?” 

“You got the wrong man,” He grumbled without hesitation, averting his eyes. Val immediately recognised the stiffening of his shoulders, then the slight tension in his right arm, as though he were clenching his fist under the table. His body moved forwards just a centimeter, as though he were shifting his weight onto his toes, sitting at the edge of his seat. Suddenly, he made a move for his rifle. Val snatched it away before his hand could barely leave his lap. She clicked off the safety and silently nodded for him to put his hands on the table, the cigarette casually hanging off her lips. He complied, plopping his wrinkled hands where she could see them. She put the safety back on, initiating more conversation. 

“I don’t ever get the wrong man,” Val snapped. They both knew that his action only confirmed his guilt. 

“Look sir-”

“Ma’am.”

“I- what the hell?” His eyebrows furrowed. Val clicked the safety back off of the gun. He was quick to shut up in response, his eyes flickering from the gun back to her face. She watched the recognition finally wash over his aged features. He leaned back in his chair. He said softly, “Ain’t no way.” Val shrugged nonchalantly. His reaction didn’t provide her any sort of satisfaction. Justice gave her no thrill. 

“Did you ever regret it?” She asked frankly. He blinked furiously, still taking in the shock of the revelation, his mustache twitching. After a long, silent pause, he grabbed the whiskey and thrust it up to his dried lips, taking a deep swig. He sighed, setting the bottle down on the table and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. His eyes had clouded, gone somewhere distant as if he was watching a memory play out in his head. 

After a moment of silence, he cleared his throat gruffly. Then, he spoke, “There ain’t no point in lyin’ now, is there?” He quickly glanced at Val through his thick eyebrows. 

Val had asked this question to all of the other men. Not because their answer would save them, or to teach them any sort of lesson, but solely because she was curious. It was an unexplainable curiosity, one she couldn’t define for herself. Most of them tried to lie, curating whichever answer they hoped would allow them to walk away alive. But there was something different about this man, something honest in the way he composed himself. Maybe, if he hadn’t been shriveled up in a living hell already, aged and degenerating, he would’ve found it in himself to lie. But this was a man with nothing to live for. Aware of the fact that he would die either way. Whatever the reason, Val knew she wouldn’t hear a lie. 

“Maybe,” He started, his eyes shifting back to that distant place in his memories. “Maybe, I’d regret it, if I knew what regret was.” His eyes focused again, fixing Val with a direct, sincere stare. “I don’t believe a man like me is worthy of feelin’ guilt. Guilt is for those with a shot at redemption. My soul’s been damned from the day I picked up a gun.”

Val leaned back in her chair, trying to hide the intrigued look on her face. 

“What I did, didn’t haunt me. I wish I could tell ‘ya that it kept me up at night. Maybe that’d be the right thing to say.” He took another swig of whiskey. He nodded into his bottle, saying, “Hell, I know I used to want my enemies to stay up at night, painful over how they wronged me. But that just ain’t how it is.” He fixed Val with another serious stare. “I didn’t lose a wink of sleep over what I did. In my head, I know it wasn’t right. But not a bone in my body cares. Never did care.” He sighed, taking another long swig of whiskey, then turning his eyes back to the spot on the wall, unfocusing. 

Val was silent, chewing over his words thoughtfully. 

“We’re a lot alike, then,” She said finally, speaking more to herself than to him. He nodded slowly, his mustache twitching, his eyes still focused somewhere distant.

He looked like a man who knew he was about to die, but lacked everything primitive about the situation. He had made little effort to fight or flee, giving in much easier than any of the others. He truly was a man who no longer had room within his mind to care, a fact which was reflected in the deadened look in his eyes.

Val didn't understand fate. She didn't know if she believed in it. She didn't know if Fate took care of damned souls like his. If Fate got rid of them, gave them what they deserved. If that was the case, then maybe she was acting on Fate's behalf, but she wasn't that stupid.

To Val, it seemed more likely that souls were just souls. That Fate, if it was real, didn't care if they were damned. And that she wasn't acting in the name of Fate. She was simply just one terrible person, killing another terrible person.

Maybe not his fate, but there was something about the man that Val understood. As if she too, would one day be in a situation similar to his. 

She was courteous enough to take care of business outside of the saloon.

Like all the others, it was quick and brief. There was no climatic ending. It was efficient, only getting done what was necessary. Like the others, she didn't know his name, she didn't say a prayer, and she didn't worry for his family. But much unlike the others, for a reason she couldn’t quite define, the man was given a gift.

The stone was unmarked and the cross was quickly cut and crooked, but it was a still a gift. 

Perhaps, one day, someone would be kind enough to return the favor.