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Arthur never learned any constellations.
He just wasn’t one to see shapes and patterns in the mess of the night sky, despite Dutch and Hosea’s attempts to hammer them into his thick skull. When he was younger and couldn’t fall asleep without the fear of waking up on his own, Dutch would sit next to him in the dead of the night and point to his favorites: Aquila and Perseus, Hydra and Hercules. He’d whisper, so as to not to wake a snoring Hosea, about slayers of beasts and predators banished to the sky for eternity. Hosea too seemed full of the myths and legends and would spend hours attempting to impart them on Arthur.
Arthur relished those hushed moments, illuminated by the dim embers of a dying fire and the stars in the sky.
But if you asked him to pick one out by himself, he’d scoff.
He didn’t have Dutch’s imagination or Hosea’s education, and a dot in the sky stayed a dot in the sky, no matter how hard he looked.
Still, they were nice to look at. Especially on a night like that one. It was still warm out, what with the summer heat lingering long into the night, but a crisp breeze flowed through the camp, causing a chill to run down his spine every so often.
He was the only one awake, aside from Mac on guard duty. The rest of the camp was fast asleep, relishing in the last taste of gentle warmth before the bitter cold seeped in for a few months. Frankly, he should be asleep too. Exhaustion certainly weighed heavy on him, and he’d certainly tried to close his eyes and get some rest. He’d rolled around on his cot for what felt like hours, listening to the metal creak and the cacophony of the crickets singing until he ultimately admitted defeat.
There was a restless energy in his veins tonight. One that hummed under his skin and urged him to move. To do something other than laze about while their coffers ran so dry.
It felt like everywhere Arthur turned, there was something to worry about.
He tried not to dwell on it too much. Things weren't so bad, and Dutch would see them through the hardships like he always had. He tried not to dwell on the fact that the wild and untamed world seemed to be getting smaller, fat and successful jobs too few and far between, and Dutch too unconcerned with it all.
If only Dutch could lend him some of that never-ending confidence.
He shook his head. The fire in front of him was weak; it had roared earlier and dimmed to a smolder as the night went on and no one was left to tend to it properly.
It was quiet and calm, perfect time to write in his journal by the light of the lantern or fire. But it seemed that tonight he just didn’t have much to say. He’d even tried drawing – usually when the words wouldn’t come, letting his hand move across the page to scrawl out the images flashing in his mind helped. Before he’d learned to read and write, he’d filled 2 whole notebooks – bought for him by Hosea – with crude pictures of horses, the raggedy-little gang they once were, and the memories that plagued his dreams.
Tonight though, his notebook sat by his side, ready to be picked up and used if Arthur was so inclined, but otherwise still as the man himself. The little flames of the campfire flickered lazily, smoke and embers drifting up to the sky before disappearing in the light of the stars.
They sure were nice to look at, the stars. Something he’d never be able to recreate with his scribblings. Oh sure, he could draw a black curtain with little dots of white sprinkled over, like salt spilled on a dark tablecloth – though he’d never capture the depth of it. The sheer size that seemed to stretch on forever even as it kissed the horizon. He’d never capture how small it made you feel to look upon something so old. Something that had been there since before your grandparents were a thought and would be there long after you were gone.
Someone once told him that many stars lighting the night sky were long dead, the light it gave off still travelling even after its source was gone. The thought made Arthur dizzy with an emotion that he dared not analyze too much.
So no. The stars weren’t for men like him to try and bastardize on paper. And he wasn’t one to put all his efforts into things he would only fail at. The stars would have to stay in the sky. Something pretty for man to admire.
Maybe someone else, Arthur figured. Maybe a more accomplished artist; or maybe someone more like Dutch – someone who could see more than just spots of light. Someone who could take what he saw and make it all mean something.
Dutch wasn’t a draftsman as far as Arthur knew (not that he’d go as far as to call even himself that), but a man like him could maybe be capable of capturing that feeling.
He frowned.
Thoughts of Dutch and his vision tended to elicit that from him lately.
They’d been moving around a lot, more than usual. Farther and farther west, they’d been pushing. Farther west and closer to paradise, Dutch’d said.
Frankly, Arthur wasn’t even sure what Dutch’s paradise looked like.
The man would wax poetic – during speeches to the gang and quiet conversations over morning coffee – about the untarnished paradise that they would one day find. About an America free from the cold grip of the modern society that was filled with cities and people who turned their back on those in need. Who looked at the world and saw only what they could gorge themselves on.
Arthur didn’t disagree with any of it, per say. He hated cities just as much as Dutch, hated the wastefulness and the superiority complexes.
He loved and trusted Dutch more than his own opinions on the matter. He trusted that Dutch would lead them to what was right, as he always had.
And yet.
He’d never admit it aloud – could barely even admit it to himself.
Dutch preached constellations where Arthur could only see stars.
He trusted that the patterns were there, that the plans were sound. Dutch never steered them wrong before. Yet no matter how hard he tried to envision it, he never managed to connect the dots together. To see the paradise that Dutch wanted so badly for them.
If he was honest? For Arthur, paradise was right here. Seated on a hard log in the lukewarm night, listening to the sounds of the forest and Bill snoring. Paradise was riding hard on the winding paths, feeling the wind cut across his face, and hearing the pounding of his heart in his ears. Paradise was watching their ragtag team of misfits laugh and sing and drink themselves dizzy for no reason other than to celebrate being alive and free. Or watching them settle down in the early evening, peacefully cacophonous in their daily routines and chatter.
Sometimes, he wanted to shake Dutch and ask: ain’t this enough? Ain’t we enough?
But then he’d feel guilty. Dutch was under immense pressure, he knew. Leading a group as large as they were wasn’t an easy task. Arthur shouldn’t be looking to add to that or attack what he didn’t understand. Dutch was the one with the plan, the one who thought five steps ahead. Arthur was just the gun at his back.
“You doing alright, Arthur?”
Hosea’s voice startled him out of his thoughts. He took a long, slow pull from his nearly forgotten cigarette before flicking it into the ground. Hosea took the seat to his left; a small smile tugs at his lips, but there are bags under his bloodshot eyes and an unnatural pallor to his face.
“I’m just fine,” Arthur said, running his hand down his face. He offered a cigarette from his carton, but Hosea refused with a wave of his hand. “What’re you doin’ up so late?”
Hosea hummed. “Couldn’t sleep. Same as you, I suppose,” he said. He braced his hands on his knees, turning his face to the sky. “Beautiful night, isn’t it? Hopefully we can get a few more weeks of this before the weather takes a turn.”
Arthur hummed in agreement. It really was a beautiful night – clear without a cloud in sight. Just the slivered moon and her stars shining down.
He didn’t miss the look that Hosea gave him, scrutinizing and understanding all at once. Arthur was never sure what the old man saw when he made that face, but he seemed to be making it a lot in the last few months.
Thankfully though, Hosea said nothing. Didn’t press for the reason Arthur was out here in the dead of the night, alone.
Instead he said: “Been awhile since we’ve sat together like this – just the two of us. Seems like there’s always something or someone calling us to attention, isn’t there?”
And wasn’t that just the truth.
“You gettin’ sentimental on me, old man?” Arthur teased.
“Nostalgic, I think, is a better term.” He smiled. “We’ve come a long way, this gang. Can’t help but feel proud of what we’ve built here. But sometimes, I’m not sure.”
He paused for a long moment. “I can’t help but think about what it all used to be. A couple of hucksters, a feral, unwashed teenager, and the wide-open country before us.”
Arthur hummed. “And then Annabelle joined in, then Susan, John a few years later…”
“And growing just felt natural from there.”
Their little gang had come a long way in the past couple of decades. Growing into a full blown community, almost without notice. Their most recent additions – Micah Bell and Charles Smith – were brought back to camp like most everyone there. Found by Dutch and shepherded into the fold one random day. There was never any real discussions of expanding, just the whims and plans of Dutch’s never-ending enthusiasm.
“I just can’t help but wonder, sometimes, “ Hosea continues, “about when the growing stops.”
Arthur turned towards Hosea. “What do you mean?”
He was silent for a long moment, long enough that Arthur began to wonder if he was going to explain or just leave it there.
“You ever think about where this all ends, Arthur?” He said. “This gang, this life, I mean.”
“Not really,” Arthur lied.
“Maybe you should. Maybe we all should,” Hosea said with a sigh. “You’ve been alongside of me and Dutch for quite some time now.”
“Something like twenty years now.”
“And in all that time, of riding alongside us, putting up with our harebrained plans, fetching things for damn near everyone in this camp, you never just. Wanted something? For yourself?”
Arthur wanted plenty of things for himself, he didn’t say. He wanted so much sometimes that it hurt. He wanted, but that didn’t mean that a man like him deserved.
If there was one thing he knew, it was that wanting didn’t mean you’d get. And getting didn’t mean you’d get to keep.
So what point was there in sitting around talking about it?
“Don’t know what you want me to say,” Arthur said instead. He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with the conversation and the intensity with which Hosea was staring at him. “All I need is right here in this camp, no more and no less.”
“I don’t want you to say anything, I just-” Hosea cut himself off with a hard sigh. He closed his eyes for a brief moment. “I don’t want you to say anything, Arthur,” he said again, quieter. “I just wonder what goes on in that head of yours, sometimes. Wonder where you see yourself at the end of all this.”
“I see myself right here, beside all of you. You know that. I’ll ride with you and Dutch ‘til the end, wherever that may be. You know that.”
Hosea held up in hands. “I do. And I don’t doubt that. Never have, never will.”
He looked away from Arthur. “I don’t doubt that you’re content here, and I know that you will spend your last days taking care of this pack of fools,” he gestures to the camp with a small laugh and a wave of his hand. “I just hope that one day, you can be happy as well.”
Arthur wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.
“I don’t need things to make me happy, old man.”
“And I never said a word about things. A man can want for more than just things.”
Arthur said nothing, choosing to avoid Hosea’s piercing gaze – piercing even when the man wasn’t looking at him – by staring up at the stars.
Was it such a crime? To want what you had and not waste time thinking of more?
Some folks went their whole lives without a fraction of what Arthur had in this strange little community.
He couldn’t say that a part of him didn’t miss what they once were. The camaraderie and simplicity. It truly had been too long since the three of them – Dutch, Hosea, and Arthur – talked together about something that wasn’t gang business.
And he supposed that maybe, in the dark early hours of the night when he was alone in his tent, alone with the sounds of the forest around him, that he may have dreamt of something more. Something that was his alone, outside of the chaos and havoc of being an outlaw.
But.
He’d had before. And maybe dreams and wanting was better left to men like Hosea, men like Dutch. Men who wouldn’t fuck it all up the moment they tasted it.
“I have everything I need, everything I could want, here, Hosea.”
Hosea sighed but nodded, like he’d expected the answer. He kept his gaze up to the sky.
They sat in silence again for a few moments, neither doing anything but watching the time tick by and ignoring the tension created. Then Hosea pipped up: “Did Dutch or I ever tell you about the dog star?”
“Dog star? Can’t say that rings any bells, no,” Arthur said, choosing not to question and instead welcome the abrupt change of subject.
“Now surely I’ve mentioned it to you before – Sirius? Brightest star in the night sky. You can’t see it or the constellation it’s part of too well right now, you’ll have to wait for winter for that,” Hosea said. “The constellation – Canis Major – some myths say that it’s one of Orion’s hunting dogs. Good, loyal beasts who followed their master into the sky. But I remember another myth. Said that the Greek god of wine and debauchery, Dionysus, came down and taught a man to make wine. The man shared some of his wine with the local shepherds who, upon becoming drunk for the first time, thought the man poisoned them! In retaliation, they killed him. Sometime later, the man’s dog led his daughter to his body, and, they both took their own lives out of grief. Zeus placed their images – as Canis Major and Minor – in the sky as a reminder to the people responsible.”
Arthur huffed. “Never understood why anyone would just kill themselves,” he mused.
“Suppose it was grief. Grief and an unparalleled loyalty to their father and master,” Hosea said. “When it’s someone we care about, we can all do some damned foolish things. Perhaps they believed there was nothing left to do.”
The idea was foreign to him. Death has followed Arthur since he was a boy. First his momma, his pa, Annabelle, Bessie, lawmen and low lives alike, even some deaths that hit him like an oncoming track. Arthur knew death and he sure as Hell knew grief, but the idea of taking his own life after just…didn’t make sense.
His own pa was killed – albeit rightfully so. Maybe that was the difference.
He wondered how we would have handled the truly wrongful deaths he’s encountered in his life if Hosea and Dutch hadn’t been there to prop him up on his feet. To give him purpose, something to do, while the grief was so fresh.
He wondered, staring at Hosea’s profile in the star-lit night, what he would do if Hosea and Dutch were gone.
He still can’t imagine putting his gun against his temple, pulling the trigger. But.
The idea of Hosea or Dutch being killed twisted his stomach. The idea of picking up the pieces and watching the gang fall apart one by one – because he wasn’t Dutch and wouldn’t be able to keep a large group like this together, so they’d surely all go their separate ways – made heat prick underneath his skin, like he was going to break out in a sweat.
Hosea was facing the sky but staring at something too far away to reach. He seemed, in that moment, both so young and incredibly old. His face was pale and wrinkled like aged leather. Arthur could see the crows’ feet and deep-set laugh lines bordering his mouth. But his eyes shined with wistful, excited vigor that only the young seemed capable of.
If Dutch were to die, Arthur figured, he’d want me to stay with Hosea until the end. And if Hosea were to die, he will want me to watch over Dutch’s fool ass.
He didn’t bother wondering what anyone would do if he were to die instead.
“They didn’t even try to find out.”
“Hm?”
“They didn’t even try to find out,” Arthur said again. “If there was anything left to do that is. Just killed themselves, right then and there.”
“Well, that’s just how the story goes,” Hosea said. “I don’t know how soon or how long after the man’s death that they did it. Story that I read never said.”
“Still, just don’t seem right. Dying before they could take care of what needed to be done. Think they owed their daddy or master that much.”
“I suppose,” Hosea said, more to himself than anything, “that the question is what we owe to the dead?”
“To live,” Arthur said, without hesitation.
Hosea paused for a moment. He reached over to pat Arthur’s knee and grip it tight. The dull thud of his hand against fabric was loud in the still of the night. “For them? Or for ourselves?” he asked.
Arthur didn’t have an answer for that. Hosea continued, taking his silence in stride.
“Or a better question: they loved that man so much that they thought it was better to die with him than live without him.” He paused again. His eyes bored into Arthur, making him feel bare, exposed. Seen. “What, exactly, do you think they’d been willing to do for him when he was alive?”
It was phrased as a question but wasn’t expecting an answer. Not tonight.
Hosea pushed himself onto his feet with a groan and a stretch, not waiting for Arthur to break his silence.
“Well,” he said with a fond smile, cheerfully ignoring the tension that he had created. “I am going to go back to my tent and catch a few more hours of sleep before the madness starts up again.” He patted Arthur’s shoulder as he turned away.
“Try to get some more sleep, son,” Hosea said. “We all need you strong as usual.” Arthur nodded and grunted a quiet good night as he passed by.
Hosea had always been a strange man. Even if he’d never admit it, he was as prone to flights of fancy as Dutch – it was what made the two of them such a good team for so long. Two men, dreaming with wild imaginations and carrying whole conversations that meant two things at once.
Half the time, Arthur had no idea what Hosea was even trying to say.
This was not one of those times.
But Arthur, the loyal beast he was, knew that if he pushed the conversation far enough into his mind, behind the thick and brutish act that he played, he could pretend – even to himself – that it was.
The sky was still dark as Hosea wandered away. Their conversation had lasted mere minutes despite the lifetime that seemed to pass. The fire had died almost completely, barely more than a red and yellow glow flickering valiantly in the dark. Arthur looked back at Dutch’s tent and Hosea’s fading outline.
Lord, he was tired.
Arthur turned his eyes back to the sky one last time for the night.
He wondered if the stars were this bright in Dutch’s paradise.