Halloween and Other Seasons

LIBERTY

By Al Sarrantonio

There’s a story they tell in Baker’s Flats that tells you everything you need to know about the town. It seems there was a Swede named Bergeson who moved in without permission from the town elders. He came from out East, and he was a little naïve because he assumed that since this was the United States, and that he was now a United States citizen, that he could go anywhere and do whatever he liked. Seems he believed all that business they fed him in Europe about this being the land of True Freedom and Golden Opportunity, and like any other poor fool who isn’t getting what he wants where he is, he packed up and got on a ship that sailed through the cold waters and came to America.

This was 1885, the year those Frenchmen were putting up that Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. I know because I was helping them do it, working for five cents a day and drinking four cents of it at McSorley’s. I like to think that this Swede, Bergeson, got a good look at it half finished, because that’s just about where Liberty stands in this country.

Anyway, to make a long story shorter, because I’ve got other things to tell, they found this Swede staked out on his land in the sun, naked, blue eyes wide with surprise more than fright, because he was a big man and wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. They found his legal deed to the land he owned stuffed in his mouth, and a circle of bullet holes outlining his chest where his heart had beat. There were seven holes, just as there are seven elders of the town of Baker’s Flats, and the story they tell is that these town elders went and killed the Swede Bergeson and made a solemn oath doing it, a pact if you will, that they would take it to their deaths and conspire against anyone who conspired against them.

That’s the story they tell, and I know the story because I came out West with the Swede, running from the law and the half-finished liberty that statue represented, looking for my own freedom, and eventually, unlike the poor Swede, finding it, which constitutes the rest of my story.

As I said, the Swede was a naïve man, but he was a good man at heart, and when he told me the story of the land he’d purchased out West, the farm waiting for him in a town called Baker’s Flats, a place so new and untamed that there wasn’t a sheriff; was, in fact, no real law for three hundred miles to any compass point, only seven town elders who constituted the law and meted out justice; well, when he told me these things in McSorley’s Bar, in New York, the night I met him, and I watched his blue eyes imagining the clear, hot plains, and the freedom they promised, we made a pact over the ale I bought him (because there is nothing in the world better than McSorley’s Ale for pact making) that I would go out West with him, and that we would fulfill our dreams together. He would have his farm, and his wide-open spaces, and his America, and I would have—well, a chance at real liberty.

We laid out by freight that very night. The Swede insisted on taking a coach train and showed me his money, which would pay for two passages, but I told him no, and told him as much as I could of my reason for it, and he was wise enough (though so naïve in other things) to see my point.

Our car was a cold one, but the Swede was used to the cold, even to the point of giving me his coat when he saw the distress I was in, his big, open face splitting into a smile as he said in his thick accent, “Take it. If two men can share a dream, they can also share a coat.”

The night passed slowly. We kept the car door slid open partway, because the Swede wanted to see the moon, which had risen white and stark over the east.

“The East,” he said, “is where stars rise, and the moon too.”

“But the West,” I answered, “is where we’re going, and where your face should be.” So I threw open the door on the other side of the car, and we looked out there together.

We talked about a lot of things that night, about our hopes and dreams for a better life, and he showed me the Colt and the Winchester he’d bought “for the Wild West,” as he called it, and somewhere, just as the sun was pushing the sky from purple to blue, he said the thing I had been hoping to hear, the thing that made me trust him as I’d hoped I could: “You don’t have to tell me what you’re running from. I don’t believe you did it.” And with that he lay down and turned his back on me and slept, and I sat looking out to the west, knowing my chance at liberty was safe.

We traveled a week by rails, till Reading, Pennsylvania, by boxcar, and then by first-class coach. The Swede insisted, showing me the roll of money he had saved and convincing me what I already knew: that the telegraphs weren’t likely to have my picture up on the wall out here yet, and so, this far from New York, I was no longer a wanted man. I balked a little at him spending his money on me, but only a little, because to tell the truth, I was getting sick of the bum’s life and craved a little cleanliness and a good cigar, and the Swede provided all this and good food to boot. And so on through St. Louis and then out to the territories, where the land got flatter but where, the Swede said, he could smell his new farm calling to him. I remember that day because it was the day he first showed me the picture he had of his wife and young daughter, and they were as blond as he was. The girl would be strong when she got older, and they would both join him when he was settled. I half wished, seeing the picture of that pretty blond girl, that she were here already.

It was another half week before we reached Baker’s Flats, by short railway and then by stage and flatbed wagon, and when we got in there and the Swede made claim to his land, it was not a week later that the trouble started and the Swede was dead.

~ * ~

The day after the funeral, being as there was no law for three hundred miles, I began to hunt the town elders of Baker’s Flats, one by one. It was not a quiet thing, and it got louder as it went along, and I have to say that in many ways I enjoyed it. I can tell you now I wasn’t a stranger to killing when it was necessary, and hadn’t been in New York. I kept the picture of the Swede in my mind as I went about it, and I kept the picture of his pretty daughter and wife in my pocket, and I thought about my own freedom, which made the killing easier.

The first was a man named Bradson, who owned the General Store. He had given the Swede and I a hard time right at our arrival in town and had made a remark that had told me all I needed to know about him. We’d walked into his store for some chewing tobacco, and maybe a cigar, since the Swede knew I liked them so much, and when the little bell over the door had tinkled, he looked our way, and a look filled his eyes when he saw us that I immediately didn’t like, and he turned the bald back of his head to us and muttered, not so low that I didn’t hear, “Foreigner,” and went into his back room.

We waited fifteen minutes for him, the Swede with patience and me with growing anger, but he didn’t come out. I had decided by that time that I wanted a cigar very badly, and was about to march into the back room after Bradson, but the Swede took my arm and quietly said, “Let’s be going.” I looked up into his broad face, and I knew at that moment that he had heard Bradson’s remark, too, but had chosen to ignore it. This told me that he was sharper than I’d thought, but I was still mad, and finally he took my arm and said again, gently, “Let’s go.”

I went then, but I came back after the Swede’s death, and I found Bradson where I’d hoped I would, in the back room of his store. It was after dark and the store was closed, but the lamp was lit on his little desk and he sat doing accounts. He didn’t hear me slip open the front door and come in, and he didn’t hear anything again after I cocked the butt of my Colt across the back of his ear and laid him out on the floor. I put a bullet in his heart, at the top, where the top of a circle might be, the start of a circle, just the way the Swede had been killed. There was a cigar humidor on a shelf behind the counter in the front of the store, and I filled my pocket with coronas before I left.

It was a dark night and stayed quiet after my shot into Bradson, and it stayed quiet after two more single shots, each continuing to advance a circle around two more hearts, rang out. There was the liveryman, Polk, who put up some fight and was strong but not strong enough, and the telegraph man, Cooper, who had a beard and was said to abuse his wife. He was in his office, too, with a bottle of whiskey instead of his wife for company, and I left him sprawled next to his telegraph, a bullet in the right of his heart, his spilled bottle inches from his cooling hand.

I hit the hills for a while after that, because I knew they’d be after me the next day. And I was right. I went high up, where it was cold and even colder at night, but I had the Swede’s coat to warm me. Just as it had that first night in the freight car, and I made camp where they couldn’t see a small fire and where I could hear the echo of their horse’s movements a mile off. I waited two days and gave them enough time to get close, and then I fell in behind them and waited for them to splinter off, as I knew they would when they found the false clues I’d left for them that told them I’d gone one of two ways.

They split off just as I’d wanted them to. The two toughest stayed together, and the two weakest, who I wanted to take together, rode off down what they thought to be the least likely trail, which was where I waited for them. I had the Swede’s rifle, and I waited in the V between two rocks, and I almost felt bad when I picked them off because they rode right into me and never looked up. I took them out with two quick shots because the other two were the dangerous ones, and they weren’t all that far away and were sure to hear the gunshots.

The two I took out were Maynard and Phillips, the bar owner and the fat banker, and I know I shot Maynard below the heart where I wanted, but I wasn’t so sure that my shot into Phillips continued the circle up toward the eight-o’clock position, because he didn’t go down right away and almost made me shoot again. But his horse was only carrying the dead body, and when momentum failed and Phillips fell, I took the time to check the body and found I had indeed hit him right on the eight.

I had a bit of a rough time of it for the next twelve hours. It turned out that Jeppson and Baker, the two remaining, were closer than I’d thought. Baker even got a shot off at me as I rode off, and he was a good shot and took part of my right earlobe off, which only added to my resolve.

They hunted me well, and for a while I thought they had me, but then they made a few blunders and I was able to play fox again. I left my trail in a stream, then falsified it on the other side, circling back to the water and running back past their position to fall in behind them. I was not stupid enough to try to pick them off then, but contented myself with letting them lose me, and I went back to the Swede’s farm.

His body was long gone, buried out behind the farmhouse in the beginnings of his tilled field, but there was a bed to sleep in and a stable to hide my horse and some food in the larder to drive the hunger for real food from my belly. I even smoked a cigar after my meal, remembering the Swede, and took out the picture of his wife and daughter and looked at it for a while before I went to sleep for a couple of hours.

I was up before sunrise. I had breakfast, and then I went out and fed the horse so he wouldn’t get hungry, and then I walked into town. It was Sunday. The moon was a thick crescent, waxing, much the same as it had been that night on the train when the Swede and I had looked to the west.

The cock was crowing when I reached Jeppson’s church. It was small and empty, and I let myself into the back room where Jeppson bunked and waited. He had a nice collection of guns, and a bowie knife, and I admired the couple of Comanche scalps he had hanging on hooks over his shaving mirror. Services started at eleven, so I expected him around ten. I was disturbed once, about eight o’clock, but it proved to be a dog scratching at the door. I found a scrap bone for him and he went away.

There was a Bible on the desk, which I began to read, and I was so absorbed in my reading that I didn’t hear the Reverend Jeppson enter his church a little while later and open the door to his office. He froze, and so did I, but he was more startled than I was, and that gave me enough time to get my gun up and drill him in the heart. His Colt was halfway out of his holster, and it fell to the floor as he dropped. He said, “Oh, God,” which I thought appropriate. I walked over to him and was pleased to see I had hit him just where I’d wanted, around the eleven-o’clock mark.

I figured that if Jeppson was home, then so was Baker. He had the biggest house in town, because he was the biggest man, and naturally leader of the town elders, and the best shot. I had my healing earlobe to attest to that.

I figured rightly. I found him at breakfast with his family, ranged round their big oak table as if nothing had happened. His wife, a pretty little thing with dark red hair, was dishing out potatoes and eggs to three boys and a little girl, and there was Baker at the head of the table, dressed in his churchgoing best. I saw all this through the picture window. I could have broken the window, but I thought it would be better to go in the front door and make sure of my shot.

Again he proved to be the sharpest of the seven. He must have seen me move away from the window, because he was waiting for me behind the stairway banister when I pushed the door open. He winged me in the left shoulder, but I did the same to him, and then he panicked and ran for the stairs. I heard his wife and children screaming in the dining room as I mounted the steps after him.

We went through the upstairs of the house, and I got him to empty his revolver. I found him cowering in the room of his little girl, squeezed down in the corner next to her crib. He had his six-shooter on his lap, with the empty chambers out so I could see it. A scatter of unloaded bullets spilled from his shaking hand. “Please, don’t do this to my family,” he begged, but I took careful aim at his flushed face and then lowered the gun to his chest and put the last bullet into his heart at the twelve-o’clock spot, completing the circle I’d started with Bradson.

~ * ~

I was tired then. I told Baker’s wife to leave with her children and get the rest of the town together for a meeting at three o’clock. Then I bolted the doors and slept in Baker’s big, comfortable bed. The Colt was loaded under my pillow, but I didn’t think I’d need it, and I was right.

At three o’clock I got up and shaved and took one of Baker’s fine cigars from his study and lit it and walked out into the street to have my say.

They were all waiting for me out there. I showed them the Swede’s Colt, and his Winchester, and I told them how I had killed the Swede and the seven town elders. I told them about the story they would tell in Baker’s Flats about how all this had happened, and I told them what would happen to any of them if they got it wrong. They were farmers and women and children, and they all knew what I meant. They knew there wasn’t any other law for three hundred miles.

Just to be sure they understood me I told them about the man I had murdered in New York, throwing him from the scaffolding of the Statue of Liberty when he laughed when I told him that no man can be free under the thumb of any other man or government, that a man can only achieve true liberty by controlling all other men around him.

I knew they understood me, because they went home when I told them to. I stood on the porch of my new house and watched them go, and then I took out the picture of the Swede’s beautiful wife and daughter and thought I’d write, in the Swede’s name, to tell them to hurry out here, that there was a fine life waiting for them.

For the first time in my life I felt true liberty.

In Baker’s Flats, they tell my story still.