legatus
in the papal states’ california colonies, in the old wild west, roaming legati kept the peace. even the threat of sending a legatus a latere, literally “from (the pope’s) side,” could pacify a region—because it didn’t refer to the legate, but the gun.
the saloon doors swung open, and the three alligator boys rolled in like so many storm clouds, silent and heavy.
the man they sought was drinking at the bar. he wore dainty, wiry spectacles, an uncanny match for his spidery frame, under a hat so new, and so fine, it ought rightly be sheltered by his doomed head, and not the converse. he knew who’d entered and was not the least surprised.
the barkeep was an older gentleman. perfect strangers with the alligator boys, they met eyes, and all parties understood he was no oak barkeep they’d have to go around; he was a grass barkeep, and they’d be going over. the alligator boys relaxed immediately.
there were only two others in the bar. the first was a polished young man wearing a financier’s suit. since nobody in the papal colonies wore a financier’s suit past their first day and night, a financier’s suit was universally recognized as something like a maidenhead for marks. despite that, he was swiftly trying to exit. this kind of clairvoyant instinct, plainly bereft of any possible informing experience, could only mean the polished young man would soon be sprouting enough money to blush the devil.
the other patron was an unwashed drunk woman, crumpled at a table. the crumple revealed a woman consumed by compulsive drinking: it was one of those exquisite, double-jointed crumples, almost as if melted, usually prevented not so much by sobriety as by the structural integrity of a soul.
since the boss’s train wouldn’t be in until well past midnight, hours from now, the alligator boys left any hurry outside.
they pulled chairs up to dainty-spectacles, got him good and surrounded, and ordered something fancy from the grass barkeep.
in a baritone so low it should rightly have shook his own bones down to a pile, the dainty-spectacled man softly said, “simeon’s on the train for a few more hours, right? fine to wait here?”
“yup.”
“how about we kill some time and i tell you the tale of my sister. maybe it outlives me.”
the alligator boys were fine with that and cozied.
“my oldest sister, mary, was born in 1802. my other sister, ruth, was born six years later, 1808. i was born after another six, 1814. in 1816, mary and ruth got caught in a barn fire. mary died trying, and failing, to save ruth. ruth got saved by an unrelated and unlikely miracle.
“in 1822, coach robbers killed our parents. so i’m eight, and ruth’s fourteen. ruth takes me into the nearby town and sells basically everything that was left to us. now she’s got to find some way to keep a roof over our head and put food on our table. and ruth can’t find regular work. and she’s watching the money run out. and she’s seeing me get skinnier.
“now, ruth’s got no misapprehensions. she knows, of course, if she can’t feed me, protect me, i’m done for. but she’s been twice taught a lesson that she only needed teaching the once. ruth knows, she deep down in her bones and marrow knows, that if she croaks, i croak too. there’s no fallback plan, no room for glory. any risk, at all, is gambling both our lives. and every night, in our barely-a-room, ruth stares at the ceiling and feels slimy desperation crawl a little closer, close in tighter round her heart. and ruth starts doing the only kind of steady work towns out here always have, the work they can never get enough of.”
“she starts whoring?” asked an alligator boy.
dainty spectacles shut his eyes. “no,” dainty spectacles said. “not whoring. too risky. pox always looming around, but even besides getting weird fevers, knocked around. and how’s she gonna feed some john’s kid? just too risky. no.” dainty spectacles took a drink. “no, ruth starts hunting bounty.”
“a fourteen year old girl hunting bounty?” the alligator boys are amused.
“in those days, you could eke out a meager living watching the bars, waiting for some idiot worth a small payday to get drunk, put a shotgun in his back, and collect before he was sober. there was danger. but if you focused on solo guys, not boys in a gang like yourselves—”
the alligator boys here all gave each other complimentary looks, lauding their associates’ wisdom.
“—you could be smart, be willing to pull the trigger if you had to, and expect to survive at least a few years. which is all ruth needed.
“and ruth would’ve been the first to tell you she had no special knack for it. no style, no swagger, kept it donkey dumb. but that’s what she had to do, so she did it.
“and she practiced. she’d pay me a silver half-dollar if i got the drop on her, at least until it got too hard and the work weren’t worth the pay, and she had to offer a full silver dollar to keep me trying.”
“here, reminiscing in this bar, at the climax of your life,” an alligator boy said, “do you look back on those days fondly, or bitterly?”
dainty spectacles drank before answering, giving the question a think. “the bad memories stalk the good ones,” he said finally, “so if i relax and enjoy the good ones, the bad memories will get the drop on me. we missed our family something awful. we fought like dogs—like dogs. we knew a few streets in that town like our own hands—and couldn’t leave them, because beyond those streets, she didn’t have enough advantage, she couldn’t protect us.
“but she never resented me. and we knew each others’ thoughts without talking, just a glance. later on, i even helped her, and i’ll even say we had fun. i’ve got stories from then that make me piss my pants laughing.
“so both, i guess. maybe a hair more fondly. that quench your query?”
the alligator boy nodded once.
“when ruth was 17, she got work with the sheriff. stopped hunting bounty. things settled, got better. i got older. she made me go to school. by the time i was getting independent, she had steady work, was good at her job, was getting noticed. after a couple more years, two people came looking.
“one was protecting bankers. it paid so much money for so little work, she first thought the job was to rob them. the second was rome, looking for legati.”
the alligator boys didn’t hide that they were impressed. “your sister slung gold?”
“you’re getting ahead of me. but yes. ruth slung gold.”
“sounds like she should have gone with the bankers,” another said.
“i wish she had. and i told her so then. here was the most grounded, practical person i knew. preternaturally sensible. betrayed not a drop of sentimentality or romance. got dealt a shit hand, and played it perfectly—perfectly!—and now i was older, gone to school, safe. she’d done it. she could stop. she could make money; she could be relatively safe. she could try her damnedest to forget what day-old-piss smelled like.”
“that how she died?” an alligator boy asked. “slinging gold for rome?”
dainty spectacles waited a second—perhaps a hint of irritation. he took a drink, put down his glass. “no.”
“beg your pardon. keep telling.”
“ruth became a deputy legate. so she kept doing dangerous work. after a few years, she converted to catholicism—i never saw it coming. she got married. she had three kids. named her oldest mary. that’s my niece. and she made a name for herself among the legati. she never took a command, never left the street.“
“well, how’d she die?” an alligator boy asked, annoyed.
dainty spectacles looked over at the alligator boy. said, “she didn’t. ruth ain’t dead.”
two enormous golden pistols bumped into the temples of two alligator boys. the hammers cocked back and the cylinders turned. it sounded like bones snapping. the drunk woman—a deputy legate.
“i thought goldslingers can’t shepherd out of uniform,” one of the alligator boys said.
“we’re in my guns’ legatine,” ruth said. “i’ll dress as i please in my own home. besides, non ornas te ad stercus tergendum. now, since you’re three but i’ve only two guns, i’ll be a little twitchy until i’ve blown one of your heads off, and we’re back to even. in the storeroom, you’ll find rope. tie each other up.”
nobody moved.
ruth said, “or i can start reading you your rites now.”
an alligator boy looked at the bartender. the bartender looked back. rope in the storeroom meant preparation—meant he knew.
ruth laughed. “y’all cross with my husband? don’t be. i’ve been pointing guns at crooks in his bars for 35 years. he ain’t never had a say. now, get to.”
“you’ll need more deputies to bring in simeon,” said an alligator boy. “you can’t get him with just one.”
ruth said, “una lucta, unus legatus. move.”