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The blue jewel of the river winded on for miles, down the valley and dipping below the throng of trees over yonder, a shimmer illuminating the surface below the unveiled sun. There was only green as far as the eye could see, nature untouched by human hands and the rapidly oncoming industrial age.
It took many years of stealing, gunslinging, drunken bar fights and many more failed attempts to leave that life behind for John to realise this was all he needed. The man he was eight years prior would have looked at him now and scowled, proclaimed he had gone soft. Perhaps that was a good thing. It must have accounted for something; it must have meant he had changed even if only a little.
He kicked off his boots as he reclined on the river bank with his fishing rod in hand, though he was still yet to feel even a nibble at the lure.
“You having any more luck than me, Jack?” he said, his gaze flitting sideways to find the boy missing from where he had stood on the bank before. Looking over his shoulder, he found Jack had crept a fair distance away to seek shelter beneath the shade of a large rock, Rufus sprawled out beside him in quiet contentment as he rested an open book on his lap.
His eyes were lowered, his mind miles away amongst the fictional worlds of fire breathing dragons and sceptre wielding mages, anywhere but here. John cleared his throat, loud enough to draw his son’s attention away from the dog-eared pages.
Then he paused, managing to bite back the instinctive urge to scold. A vision of Abigail had flitted through his mind before the words could reach his lips and stopping him in his tracks, reprimanding him for the harshness with which he raised his son, sweetening slightly to ask if he could show a little more patience and understanding with the boy.
Patience and understanding, the complete antithesis to the way in which he had been treated in his own boyhood. But he could do patience and understanding, he thought.
Jack stared, wide-eyed like a deer and waiting for his father to speak. John always found it curious how he was nothing like him, nor his mother, neither feisty nor loud-mouth and foolish like they were.
At length, he said, “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you without your nose in one of those books.”
“Yeah,” was all that was offered in response. John supposed from the nervous flicker in his eyes that his voice had came out more as a gruff sound than the jest he had intended it to be.
He should have known it was gonna take a whole lot more to extract something other than one word answers from Jack, but his attention no longer returned to the book, instead he closed it and his eyes remained on his father, perhaps calculating if the question was the set up for a scolding. Still, it was something, John had his attention now and a hundred possibilities of words to say to him, to show he was trying, to try and understand his son whose disposition had always eluded him.
“I s’pose you had no interest in fishing, then?”
“No, Pa,” Jack said regretfully. “Can I go back to the house, now?”
“Wait here a minute.” Again the words had come out too swift, too gruff; he could sense a repressed flinch under the weight of their tone. Rather awkwardly, John shuffled over to the rock where Jack rested his back against, taking care to crouch beside him while retaining a fair distance from the dog who was still yet to stir from his sleep.
“Look, I wouldn’t wanna spend time with me if I was you–”
“It’s not that–”
“Jack.” He took in a deep breath, exhaling the next words, “Your ma… she always tells me I’m too hard on ya. I guess she was right.”
“I know. I get it, you want me to toughen up, be more like you.”
“God, no!” John broke into a small, abrupt burst of laughter. “You don’t wanna be anything like me, son, trust me. I’m… I’m a real fool, have been for years. Hell, I still am a great blundering fool. Just ask your ma.”
A soft sound broke out from the boy next to him, a barely stifled laugh. Though he didn’t offer a response, John felt the tension he didn’t even realise was plaguing his shoulders gradually ease away.
“This is just…” he continued. “It’s all new to me, you know.”
“What is?”
“You know, talking, like this. Talking to you, tryna find the right things to say.”
“I get it,” Jack said, offering a small smile. “It’s new to me, too.”
“You’re a good kid, Jack. Better than what I deserve,” John replied after a time. “But you’re gonna face a lot of hardships in life. I just want you to be prepared for that; you just have to keep movin’ on, you’re gonna have to be tough.”
“I know.”
For a moment they sat in silence, looking out to the endless miles of pastures, the low hanging azure sky and lone traveller crossing the gravel road on horseback, the brim of his hat pulled low to shield his eyes from the beating sun. John thought of the gang, as they were after setting up camp in Horseshoe Overlook when the prospect of a future for all of them, together, was still something to hold onto during the cold wet nights in a soaking tent. When they were just a bunch of fools trying to survive together.
He expected to find a longing for that life again upon watching the lone traveller, and perhaps in a way he did miss some aspects of it: riding under carmine and amber sunsets with nothing but the clothes on his back and a gun at his hip, sitting around the fire at dusk singing with Uncle and Sean and Arthur, Javier strumming the guitar until the latest hours of night when the oncoming clouds came over the stars. But this was his life now, the ranch was his home where he would take his last breaths, the life of an outlaw on the run a vague figure of the past.
“How do you do it?” Jack had asked suddenly, breaking the spell of the reverie. “Be tough, I mean. I don’t think I know how.”
“I… Well, I guess it’s like riding a horse or wrangling cattle, or…” He looked down to the book still in Jack’s grasp. “Like learning to read a book. It comes with practice, you just gotta keep trying.”
“Oh, right.”
“You’ll get there, son.”
Over yonder, Abigail’s voice carried over the sloping hills. She waved and hollered to the guys from the entrance to Beecher’s Hope, and immediately Rufus had awoken, already having crossed half the distance in an excited frenzy before John and Jack had risen to their feet and gathered up the fishing equipment.
“Ma wants me to help with dinner tonight.”
“Then we’d better get you back home. Wouldn’t want to keep your mother waiting.”
“Yeah.” Jack paused with his book still in a tight grasp, watching as John pulled on his boots and waiting for his attention once again. “Uh, I was wondering… Can you– Can we go out riding later?”
“Hm?” John looked up at his son’s face, hopeful for an answer in the affirmative. He grinned. “You know what, sure. We can ride over Blackwater way, if you want.”
“And can we race on the way back?”
“Certainly, but you should know I’m not gonna hold back against you, son.”
“There’s no need when I’m gonna beat you, anyway.”
With a brazen grin thrown over his shoulder, Jack had already taken off running up the hill with Rufus backtracking to trail at his heels. John followed at a leisurely pace. Waiting for him at Beecher’s Hope, Abigail stood languidly against the fence, her warm face tinged pink from the sun, a smile and a nod granting some reassurance that he had at least done something good today. Maybe patience and understanding really weren't so difficult.