Chapter Text
Charles,
I ain’t a pious man. Whether or not God exists and sees us from birth to our graves ain’t my business to decide. However, I do know that Edmund Lowry Jr. were one hell of a sinful man. That’s the change behind it all. I weren’t nothing good as a boy, and I were something much worse as a man. I spose I’m writing this to you because you asked me what changed once. Hosea knew the details better at the time, my memory of the event is still fogged by the haze of him hitting me over the head with something. I won’t make this our longest letter, but you asked what changed. The change that I went through took time and it hurt. I guess anyone who changes hurts some.
I don’t much like thinking about Lowry, so I choose not to. His violence was for violence sake though. How different were we? We shot, robbed, did endless stealing. Violence for violence sake. I weren’t unlike those poachers you saw fit to put down. Miracles may not be possible, but it ain’t nothing short of one that I weren’t put down too. Like I said, I don’t care much for thinking about Lowry or who I was. How many people did we kill that spring. My hands may have run redder than Lowry’s. Guilt had been a new feeling, and guilt makes a man do funny things. I guess, in it all, Hosea had been the last straw. After him, I knew I had to leave and take what I loved with me.
It’s hard to stop the thoughts of death at night. I cannot help but see the cellar full of parts. A love for thunderstorms has turned into a loathing of gunfire on the wind. It started when I found that first body, it were a nasty thing beneath a train crossing. The poor bastard were human but he smelled more like rotting carcass than even the worst of our gang. In that moment I just thought he were a poor bastard, and that were it. The trail of bodies went on as we stayed in Horseshoe, and as I went to Strawberry. I found one not far from Mr. Mason, and that were the most nervous for a stranger I ever felt. Aside from Mason and his wolves, acourse. Then in Strawberry I saw Micah kill all those strangers and I saw myself in him and whoever killed those men. Change came to me in funny ways, but after all that you were at my side through most of it. I don’t care to recount what you already know.
How is things in Blackwater? Last I heard, you were in Saint Denis but now you’re telling me to write you at a place that wants us dead still? I spose you would be the one man to be just fine back there. I’m still in shock at you being down south and all, but I understand the need to move around. Come back north when you can, I found something I think you and Albert Mason both would find worth remembering.
Yours,
Arthur