Page 19 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)
Certain Affinities
L aurie didn’t visit.
Not the next morning, when news spread of tiny blood-sucking bugs infesting the rest of the cattle on their side of the river, or that night, when Safine concocted a viscous liquid for her hair and demanded Decker do the same.
He thought he looked a fool, but he didn’t wish to end up like some of the shaven others, so he grudgingly complied, closing the Loose Goose for the day with one last glance at the immovable doors of Laurie’s chapel.
Laurie didn’t visit the day after, when Willa returned dusty and bone-tired. She hardly had a chance to catch a drink and mutter that her lead on Dr. Whitton was a dead-end before Safine pulled her out of her coat to fuss over her.
Decker polished the glasses for the tenth time, waiting for Laurie to appear with his familiar pattering heartbeat.
The doors never opened.
On the third day he caught a glimpse of him as he leaned against the poles of the veranda.
Laurie was on the roof again .
High on the peak this time, rigging a pulley system fastened to the brass bell polished until it gleamed.
He knotted ropes around his waist, tethering himself to the steeple, before he hung his weight against the bell.
Clanging, it wobbled off the ground and rolled along the side of the clapboard, and he slowly winched it higher, shoulders taut and straining, and very, very bare.
Decker took a sip of his coffee, savoring the bitter, half-liquor brew. He could have helped. He had no intention of moving out of the shade, but he could have.
Except he enjoyed watching Laurie fight, slipping against the shingles until he braced himself, one leg on either side of the peak as he dragged it into position, chest heaving with a sheen of sweat despite the cool morning.
When he caught his breath, he glanced down at Decker.
Laurie dragged a dirty arm across his forehead and threw himself back into his work without a word.
On the fourth day, the Loose Goose hosted a single customer.
A vaquero, exhausted from keeping his herd isolated outside town while the outbreak was contained and finally declared clear by Safine.
The rest of his group left when their cattle were loaded on the train at Ridgewater, but he said he was heading to Silver Creek to surprise his sister at the church.
He swirled the glass of gin, called Decker amigo, and claimed he didn’t care about the rumors.
Decker had smiled faintly, eying the powder dissolving in his drink.
Flexing his hand at his side, he stretched out the aches setting in, his body breaking down from hunger.
No amount of liquor or coffee could stave it off.
He finally snatched the glass from the vaquero’s hand before it touched his lips, muttering about friends needing cold gin for the long ride.
Safine called him a fool for wasting a kill .
Decker thought he was a fool for thinking of Laurie when he lay in bed that night.
On the fifth day, Laurie tested out the new bell, wrenching on the rope until chimes pealed through Ender’s Ridge and rousted Decker from his hungry stupor in the upper rooms of the saloon.
He hammered another quilt to the wall between him and the chapel to muffle the noise. Safine ripped it down and flung it over his bed— dramatic , she laughed—when she returned from a stroll with Willa to Ridgewater.
She told him the stand at the depot was filled with fresh newspapers talking about the late autumn and beef sales and the new Silver Creek governor.
Nothing about missing people or their home. Perhaps fate swung in their direction.
Exhaustion and starvation rooted him in town, knowing damn well Nathan still plotted against them from wherever he hid. Decker didn’t have the energy to question how the defector breaking into the Star connected to the fade of Ender’s Blessing.
He didn’t question many things.
Decker thought he should start to question things when the flies hatched.
Late. It was too late and cold in the season for flies. He tended to memorize patterns when forever was his only option, and this was too damn late. Striped, fat, and with a bite stinging worse than a cactus spine, they came in droves borne on a harsh western wind, hanging in the air like snow.
Cricket galloped back into town the day they appeared. The banging of the back door instead of the barn door made Decker stop stirring a fresh batch of spiced apple cider, suspicion turning his tired eyes to the back room.
“Cricket?”
Hooves clopping on floorboards was his only answer.
Goddamn kid.
He joined him as Cricket heaved the foam-slicked saddle from Marshal’s back and slung it on the floor.
“He gotta be inside?” Decker cast baleful eyes at Marshal.
The horse stared back, one leg lazily cocked underneath him as he rested next to casks of liquor.
Cricket claimed he’d stolen the lawman’s gelding after breaking out of jail the third time he’d been set to hang.
Decker didn’t know how much truth there was to his claim, but Marshal certainly had better manners than his new owner.
Cricket tugged the bar rag from Decker’s belt and started rubbing away the sweat from Marshal’s roan hide, the flecks under white hair blending into a creamy sorrel.
“The dang flies are gettin’ to him. I got your own in the barn all tucked in, but Marshal don’t do well with biting things.”
“I don’t do well with horses next to my whiskey.” Cricket’s luck was on his side once again, and Decker was too tired to argue much.
Glancing back towards the single window in the storeroom, Decker caught a glimpse of the flies. They showed no signs of disappearing after a day.
One rattled against the pane of glass .
tap tap taptapta–
Snatching Cricket's hat off his head, Decker swatted it to the floor. The fat body twitched. Buzzed in a circle. Finally stopped.
“You owe me a hat.” Cricket inspected it for disembodied wings and then shoved it back on his head.
Decker swept the fly to the side. “Call it even for the room you’ve been staying in. You know where the hell they came from?”
“There was a rumor you keep dead bodies in your whiskey barrels to help with the flavor, maybe you forgot to change ‘em out.” Cricket smacked the side of one.
Decker stifled a sigh. “If Marshal shits in here, you clean it up.” He watched the boy’s weary, methodical movements as he worked down the withers and across his back, having done it a thousand times.
You’re too quiet, my friend.
“Where’d you go this time? Another stage robbery or you went for the big bank this time?”
“Nah.” Cricket paused to wipe the back of his arm across his nose. “Went home to see my momma.”
Decker witnessed it a hundred times. Cricket would pack his bags, trot out of town, hat cocked jauntily across his eyes and then return, tall tales forgotten and a curl to his shoulders he’d remedy with the bottle.
Each time Cricket went home to see his mother—he didn’t. He never said why he couldn’t go home, and Decker never asked. Some things were meant to stay unspoken between two men.
“When was the last time?” Decker asked quietly.
Cricket shrugged and worked the rag down over Marshal’s haunches.
“Few years I reckon. I send what I can every month to her and my sisters, but I…just can’t go back yet.
It’s my momma. She knows I’ll come home when I’m ready, and she’ll be waitin’.
” Cricket’s voice was tight, and he cleared his throat, slipping back into his easy, shit-stirring drawl. “And yours? You never talk about ‘em.”
Not to you, hardly to Safine, not to anyone.
“They’re back home. India,” he said. Kalikata wasn’t home anymore, not like Ender’s Ridge. Yet he ached for old familiarity, for a touch of the love they’d shown to him once. “I don’t think I’ll ever go back,” he said softly.
Decker’s thumb thoughtfully grazed along his scarred hands, recalling the absence of sunburn and faintly remembering how the strong sun used to warm his skin.
A hundred years later he could never forget the feeling of laying in a freshly plowed field in the sweltering sun before Amma called him in for supper, and they were human, and together, and happy.
It was a lifetime ago, and just as dead as he was.
“Sure she would like to see you back, Cricket,” he said. “You don’t have forever to run from them.”
But Decker did.
Decker couldn’t run from his past when he could barely stand, and so he left Safine and Willa in charge of the saloon as he yanked his hat over his eyes and covered his face with a bandana to brave the storm of flies to McKinney’s Mercantile.
Blood from dubious sources was never his first choice, but there were few other options since he’d sent the vaquero on his way days ago. Corpse blood often made him sick, and even if it didn’t, it only shaved the edge off his hunger .
McKinney stood on a stool as he polished the inside windows to a shine so passers-by could see shelves stacked with teetering piles of dry goods, bolts of fabric, tins of tobacco, and cases crammed with any weaponry a soul could want.
“Decker!” He tucked the rag into his apron, faded green eyes crinkling at the corners as he grinned. “We received some of the latest shoes from out East. Be sure to let Safine know before the ladies at the dance hall get wind of them.”
He managed a smile. “Of course.”
McKinney climbed down, his crown of mousey-red hair just reaching Decker’s belt as he craned his neck. His thick brogue took on a sympathetic tone. “I know you aren’t here about boots, lad. You look terrible.”
“Business has been slow,” he said quietly, stabilizing himself on the edge of a wooden shelf lined with jars of stale candy.