Outlaw

Three things happened the year Clarabelle Claridge turned 13.

In May, her monthlies began with a punch to her gut that left her hobbled.

In July, while bathing in the creek, she sensed Billy Dunker’s eyes burning into her naked rear. Knowing he was watching, hidden in the undergrowth, made her explode inside like a cannonball ripping through a bright night.

Finally, one thick August eve, she laid eyes on Virgil Boone for the first time.

She stood, immobile, at the intersection of Main Street and Pioneer Way, as Virgil and his Boys shanghaied the Gem Saloon.

The towns people scattered, screaming her name over their shoulders as they ran to safety.

But Clarabelle was frozen to the spot.

She followed every flex of his body. In the coming years, she would replayed these moments a million times.

Virgil, back-lit by the golden dusk, spun on his heels, blew away two lawmen, jumped astride his horse, and winked at her as they sped away in a cloud of dust & screams.

Pappi said her obsession would fade, instead it grew thick and full in her starved mind.

She collected every wanted poster, every Pinkerton flyer that bore his name. She cut clippings from newspapers across every state, creating scrapbooks dedicated to the Boone Boys.

For near-on a decade she cast aside every proposing of marriage, much to her Pappi’s rampancy.

In the year Pappi was blessedly taken by The Black Shits, word surged through the county of the Boone Boys return. She followed them in print as they made their way south, robbin’ trains and knifin’ whores.

Now, alone as she was in the world, nothing stood in her way but her own courage.

After days wandering the plains alone, she picked up the Boys’ trail near the Abnaki Ravine.

She made camp three clicks up-wind, & watched them revel in their hoard around a roaring camp fire.

Before dawn broke, she crept silent as a ghost towards a nest of glowing embers. Circled by somnambulant bodies, scattered bottles, coins and silken hankies.

Virgil lay passed out cold, taken by copious amounts of whiskey & peyote. His beautiful war-torn face shone with salt & pepper whiskers, sparkling like fireflies in the moonlight.

She had no time to dwell.

He barely moved a muscle as she dragged him atop his blanket to the back of her horse where she trust up an improvised sled with canvas & rope.

She rode with the utmost care over the soft prairie grass towards an abandoned buffalo hide.

The cabin was rough, even by outlaw standards, but it provided everything she required for the first few days.

His heart would be softer with a little laudanum, so she kept him dosed up to sooth the savage beast that sprang from him each time he regained consciousness.

Daily she bathed his wrists and ankles where belts held him to swing bolts set into the thick wooden floors. Her tender ministration would show him the depth of her dedication & desire.

But all was not as she had planned.

On the 5th day, when his rage subsided and the laudanum wore thin, Virgil’s outlaw allure began to fade as he grew less furious and more afraid.

His terror fell about his shoulders in raged sobs. He whined like a newborn goat, bereft of its mother.

She had spent years dreaming of conversations filled with quips and innuendo, that parlayed into fierce and passionate love making.

But she realized with striking horror, that Virgil was a dumb as a split brick & half as charming. His magnetic confidence, which drew her to him across a shit-covered marketplace, was as empty as a babe’s doll.

His bluster and bravado subsided into nothing more engaging than a cracked piss pot.

The raging fire in her loins cooled to a damp splutter.

The, the final straw came, not with a bang but with a whimper.

She untied his bindings and he looked up at her with empty bloodshot doe eyes.

“You’re gonna shoot me in the back, arencha?”

She surveyed him, kneeling on rough, splintered boards in the lamp light, dressed in only his ragged long johns.

“You’re not worth it” she replied dryly.

“This whole thing has been a colossal disappointment”.