This Must Be The Place and Other Stories

Taking Sides 🏆

Whose side are you on?

The night wind had died down, silencing the rattling of the loose lower pane in the front window. Jake's shadow hunched and fretted like something from a ghost story, blackening out the bookcase, the sideboard, Annie's sewing basket and the open doorway to the room beyond.

It's not that easy, Jake, he'd said.

The wood in the fire cracked and fell, sending up a squall of heat and embers. It would have to be raked up or it would go out before midnight, but he didn't dare move. Jake could take anything the wrong way in the twitchy state he was in. Even the innocent reaching for a damned fire poker.

The hell it ain't. I'm here, O'Connell's there, and you're standin' right between us. Soon you ain't gonna be able to stand still no more, Clyde. You're gonna have to take a step towards me, or a step away from me.

Jake ran a hand over his face, the scraping of his fingernails on several day's growth of beard like attempting to strike a match.

You ain't just gonna be able to stand there anymore, Clyde, that sheriff's star protectin' you. There's gonna come a time when that star ain't gonna be nothing more than a shiny piece of tin pinned to your shirt. The Lord is my witness, you gonna have to choose a side, and that right soon.

What are you talking about?

He'd chewed on his lip, scolding himself a fool for not having brought out his pistols when Jake had come banging on his front door so late.

Jake stopped pacing and stared. He looked like he'd been awake for too long and hadn't eaten well for longer. His bandana was discoloured, a button missing from his calico shirt.

I'm telling you what's comin'. A step towards me, or a step away...That's what it's gonna come down to. Just one step. And I'm telling you, it'd better be toward me. 'Cause if it's away. . .

He'd shaken his head. When they were boys, he had always taken Jake's side, no matter what he'd done. But Jake never could see beyond his own nose and the end of that afternoon. He'd never come to understand that situations were sometimes more complicated than a honest man could cope with. If only he--

"Sheriff? Think you might want to see this." Deputy McRay said as he stood in the doorway of Clyde's office, hat tipped back and brow furrowed. 

Clyde looked up. 

The memory of the night visit from his brother melted away, disappearing like spilt ink into the cracks between the floorboards. Clyde set the front legs of his chair down with a thump. Noontime sunshine painted squares of brightness and heat onto the dusty pattern of the frayed office rug. 

Blinking didn't make it any better.

He reached out to take a chug of coffee from the tin cup on his desk, but set it back down undrunk when he felt how cold it had gone. He got up, settled his hat on his head and followed McRay.

Outside, the packed-earth street with its elevated wooden sidewalks was bathed in sharp mountain light from a sky so blue there was no word for it. He'd never get used to that blue, as different as it was from the skies back East where they were from. Skies he hadn't seen in decades.

Clyde took in the wagons, the buildings with their high facades and the sharp dark crevices of alleys between them; the small line of people waiting to get into the bank; the passing of a horse fly by his knee; the echo of hammering that came from the new O'Connell hotel that wasn't quite finished yet. 

"There." McRay pointed left. "What do you reckon they want?"

He turned to see Jake and a handful of men making their way down the street towards them. The men were all armed, some even carrying rifles in addition to the full holsters buckled and sagging around their skinny hips.