Something Blue

Chapter 8

*** Well hey! Listen, I don't want to sound braggy, but I just want to point out that I have consistently updated this thing every week since I first posted it. Look at me! Doing the bare minimum!***

Gabe

Friends, Gabe had learned early in his life, were like a warm day in late fall. They were a welcome change and it felt nice to have them around, but they never lasted very long and they always gave way to misery. All the friends he'd made through his years had gone the way of the sun at dusk, driven into hiding by the stark darkness of Gabe's existence. It wasn't their fault, just like it wasn't the sun's fault it had to sink beneath the horizon. It was just the way of things that the lonely dark eclipsed the good.

Even Katherine had gone, and he had once thought her a sun that would never stop shining.

It was with grudging, reluctant gratitude that he had to admit Josh Tucker was a stubborn exception to the rule that had claimed every other man or woman he might have called a friend. In the beginning, as boys, they'd bonded over a shared disdain for God-- outward expression of a soul-deep self loathing that was born of the poison they'd been fed all their lives. They were bastards. Children of sin. Walking, breathing manifestations of the devil's earthly intent.

As they grew into men, they remained close. Their complaint was no longer with God, but with the humans who used that name to push them into roles they didn't want to fill and punish the people they loved. Gabe hated the preacher and the townspeople. He hated the men who used the girls and then spat at their feet in the cold light of the public street. He hated the married women who made eyes at him in the back of the corner store and then sicced their rabid husbands on him in the alley out back. He hated the Sunday night crowd, so full of poisonous invective and stifled lust. Josh, by contrast, didn't have so much hate in his heart. He wasn't a social pariah. The folks in town adored him. But where Gabe had a mother who sang her love and praise for him so relentlessly it bordered on annoying, Josh was an outcast in his home. What they truly shared was that bone-deep weariness that came from the constant fight, even if their only common enemy was the reverend.

When Josh's fortunes had changed, leaving him married to a woman he adored and owner of the most successful ranch in the territory, Gabe had waited stubbornly for his friend to disappear into the woodwork of polite society. Just as stubbornly, Josh had continued to show up at the saloon on quiet afternoons, often with his wife in tow. They had continued to drink whiskey together in sullen, companionable silence. Josh had continued to teach him, in bits and spurts, everything he knew about livestock. Gabe continued to soak up the man's every word, Katherine's long-ago indictment on a loop inside his head.

"What kind of future can you offer us? Will we raise a baby girl to be a prostitute? Bring up a little boy who beats people up for room and board?"

Not that Gabe would ever have the mind of a rancher or the skill of a wrangler, but it was something, and something was a damn sight better than nothing.

There were many people for whom Gabe would lay down whatever scraps remained of his misbegotten life, but there were very few for whom he would kill. Josh and Amelia Tucker counted among that number. They were good people. Kind, honorable people with a courageous and near saintly disregard for the hatred that cloaked the little town in which they were all but royalty.

If Gabe was honest, though, one of the real reasons he liked Josh Tucker was the simple fact that the man never seemed to anger. He was as cool and steady as a deep, winding river. What few outbursts Gabe had seen from him had been precisely calculated and intentional. He was not one to lash out. For Gabe, whose entire life revolved around passion in all its heated forms, Josh's level-headed grasp on his own emotions was a pleasant respite.