Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

  Disgust twists Arthur’s face, knotted rope coiling around his brow. Between thumb and forefinger, he pinches the leech at its bloated midpoint and jerks it away from his ankle. A fat, black body, shining and swollen, engorged to the size of a walnut, writhes into itself as it’s plucked from his skin with a deflating sigh, like an overweight uncle sinking into an armchair after several helpings of Thanksgiving turkey. Arthur hisses, and throws it back to the water from whence it came. It sinks into the algae with a short, wet plop.

  “Fuckin’ Christ.”

“Language, Mister Arthur,” comes a stern voice from inside the shack, the shutters open, windows covered only by net screens.

“Sorry,” Arthur mumbles, growling through gritted teeth.

  A small, round bite joins the half-dozen identical marks spattered across each of his feet like wine stains on a pale rug. Squeezed under his thumb, blood beads from the wound in a squashed circle, slowly starting to drip along his ankle bone. He clicks his tongue, and reaches for the rag in the pan on the floor beside him. Expression contorted, mouth wide and stretched, giving him the cartoonish grimace of a very miserable toad, he holds the rag to the wound and presses it hard.

  In the sporadic flicker of the lantern light, there is little to see beyond his bare feet, only an opaque glass rippling between the deck boards, his soaked socks draped over the wooden railing as they dry, holey and frayed. Night in Lagras is absolute, dark as sleep, so all-encompassing that he can almost imagine he’s somewhere else, pasting mental postcards into the black pages around him, drenching the humid void with thoughts of sunlight, of clear skies and endless prairie. The soft lapping of the water could be pleasant in some other place, sticking to the thick posts of the shack’s foundations, rocking back and forth around the reeds like whiskey swirling in a glass. Crickets whine with the katydids, the rhythmic croak of bullfrogs, the atonal hum coming from the bait shop down the way as the owner counts crayfish into a tin bucket, shells clanging against the metallic sides, and if he shuts his eyes, it is almost bearable. Almost peaceful. Until the sweat in his eyelashes starts to sting, and the smell of the swamp sticks in the back of his mouth, brine and leaf rot, sour and suffocating, gas bubbles bursting through the algae like a thousand eyes. It’s a warm evening. Arthur would rather be anywhere else.

  That was the last leech, at least. Climbing out of the skiff onto Thomas’ deck, his boots had been full of water. Thick, green water, coated in algae, layered with sludge like cream atop milk. The three of them had waded up to their chests through the swamp for close to an hour, and still a green line is painted across Arthur’s shirt, a neat tide mark of slime bisecting his torso, bleeding into the sweat on his back, seeping into the seams under his arms. Thomas had offered him a change of shirt, but Thomas is about a third of the size of Arthur - stringy and slim, like a birch switch, his clothes barely big enough to cover one of Arthur’s arms - and so Arthur had reluctantly declined. At the time, it seemed a waste of effort to change. Dutch had only left to fetch the others from Shady Belle. He wouldn’t be long.

  Two hours later, Arthur is still impressively wet, jeans like they’ve been painted on, every inch below his sternum coated in an oily, stinking sheen. Strings of blanketweed have dried in the cotton weave of his shirt, fragments of leaf litter clinging in every sodden crease, a greasy residue like glue in the ends of his hair. Not to mention the blood. And the leeches. He feels disgusting. He smells disgusting. The entire evening has been disgusting.

  A cloud of mosquitoes swarms the hanging lamp behind him like a miniature storm, moths colliding with the glass, so big and so dazzled by the light that their shadows occasionally cartwheel across Arthur’s bare calves, wheeling like the bats that hunt on the water. It’s a wonder how - so far - he’s managed to avoid the rest of Lagras’ bloodsucking invertebrate population. He checks the bite wound beneath the rag, antiseptic running down his ankle as he dabs at the clotting blood. Leech and mosquito bites would really be the butter on the biscuit.

  With a sharp sigh, he tosses the rag back to the pan on the deck beside him, the boiled water inside now cold. He might manage to avoid infection, if he’s lucky, which - he stretches his wet legs with a grimace, jeans rolled up to his knees, and a deep grumble sounds from the water, creeping beneath the decking like thunder through a clouded sky - is not how he would describe his current feeling.

  Although, he supposes he is lucky. At least compared to Thomas’ hired hand, Jules. The poor kid lost a lot of blood. Some of it is still soaked into the rolled sleeves of Arthur’s shirt, painted across the front of his jeans in a rusty stain. It had dripped into the bottom of the boat as Arthur tried to slow the bleeding, squeezing the great furrows in Jules’ leg as if to hold a valley shut around a river, knit the two sides of land back together with only his wet, trembling hands. Half the kid’s calf was torn off and gone, ripped from the bone in deep strips, gouged by the teeth of the biggest alligator Arthur has ever seen. Bigger than his nightmares could conjure. A leucistic bull, white as death and just as silent. It could surely have killed them both. That the only loss was flesh and blood - and not even his own - is a miracle Arthur isn’t yet quite ready to process.

  The sun has since set in the bayou, a writhing night seeping down over Lagras, thrumming with constant noise. Their time at Shady Belle hasn’t yet acclimatised him to all the strange sounds of the swamp, and even if it had, Lagras is something far more alien than their camp in the coastal countryside. Arthur doesn’t recognise most of the bird calls, the hooting and shrieking amongst the trees, nor the insects’ whistling, clicking, whirring, buzzing. A permanent haze seems to coat the air, draped from shack to shack in great sheets as though hung to dry, spilling across the lake like reaching hands. Bald cypress trees crowd the scrap of muddy shore upon which the shacks are raised, gnarled and hunched like stooped old soldiers, crawling up the banks through tangled waterhyssop, fern fronds fanning their bare knees. Garlands of moss spill from their branches, dragging in the still water, giving them the appearance of half-melted candles at an incense-covered shrine, spilling wax in long, knobbly strings.

  Lagras sits at the heart of Lemoyne’s deepest swampland, isolated by dense forest and sprawled across the lake shore like the stilted shacks have been thrown, the Kamassa river sliding around its west side like a python. The whole place is permanently damp, there is no ground that isn’t mud, and the couple across from Thomas own the orneriest billy goat Arthur’s ever had the misfortune to be chased by. It’s only been two hours, but Arthur thinks he’d seriously start considering suicide by alligator if he knew he had to wait much longer.

  “You, uh… You done with them bloodsuckers, Mister Arthur?”

  Thomas moves in relative silence, seemingly without any effort. His feet are permanently bare, callused to a dull grey, toes like wooden clothes pegs, and he seems to instinctively know which boards will creak beneath his steps, despite having limited vision. It’s not the first time in the few hours they’ve known each other that he’s approached without Arthur noticing.

  Pulling a face, Arthur looks up at him from the floor of his front porch. His blind eye doesn’t reflect the light in quite the same way as the other, strangely dull in the glow of the lantern stretching past the low eaves. “‘Done’ is a real fine word for what I am,” Arthur says, huffing through his nose and leaning to snatch his socks from the railing. They’re mostly dry. “I am surely done.”

  With a tight expression, lip caught in his teeth, he wrangles one sock over his toes, gingerly pulling it over the numerous leech bites. “Thank you, though,” he adds, with a glance up to Thomas. “For the…first aid.” Consisting of a saucepan of boiled water and a rag soaked in some questionable antiseptic - which may or may not be some sort of bayou moonshine - but it’s better than nothing.

“Better leavin’ ‘em to eat their fill,” Thomas says sagely, collecting the pan and rag from the floor with a hand on his back. “Straight pullin’ ‘em soon as you’re bit… Well, I told you how that goes, didn’t I?”

“You sure did. Somethin’ I ain’t lookin’ to experience.”

“Mhm, no sir.”

  Arthur unrolls his jeans, nose scrunched at the smell of wet denim, the traces of green scum pressed into the folds, clinging to the damp hair on his legs. Grimacing, he pulls on his boots. “How’s Jules doin’?”

“Sleepin’ now. Stitched up, and ain’t bleedin’ no more. Nana’s seen to him.”

  A crease appears between Arthur’s eyebrows. “Nana? Like…Jules’ grandma?”

  Thomas exhales in a short burst, shaking his head. He rests his elbow on the porch railing. “Nah, nah, ain’t like that. She- Well, we don’t get no doctor out here, but Nana Brigitte can cure most anythin’. Merci, bon Dieu. She got the gift. Traiteur, we call ‘em. Traiteuse for women.”

“Huh. So like a healer?”

“Sure. Healin’ with her hands. Spells, herbs, prayer, y’know.”

  Turning in place, Thomas gestures with the pan in his hand, indicating to one of the neighbouring shacks, completely indistinguishable in the darkness. “Her family’s ol’ Cadien blood, oh yes. Can trace ‘em way back up to Canada. When it was French. Long, long time. That’s where lotta us folks’ ancestors came from, d’you know that?”

  Tilting his head, Arthur gives him a blank look. With a bare smile, Thomas takes hold of the railing with his free hand, fingers brushing along the bleached wood. “Well, ain’t much left now, but…some folks remember the old ways, pass ‘em down. Her Pa was traiteur here before her, and by right it should be one of her boys, or a grandson that carries it on, but…” Thomas looks out at the stagnant lake, watching the clouds hurry across the unsettled sky. The moon is mostly hidden, only a bright, pale light struggling behind the clouds. He gestures absently. “Her kids are grown, gone for work in the city. So…she keeps goin’ much as she can. We real lucky to have Brigitte, yes sir. Folks come from all over for her healin’.”

  Raising an eyebrow, Arthur speaks before he can wrangle the disdain from his voice. “Folks come here?”

  He grabs hold of his expression, mouth opening to form some kind of apology, but Thomas laughs, voice like a creaking door, wheezing dryly in his chest. “You a funny man, Mister Arthur,” he says, grinning with all of his very few teeth. One finger extended, he shakes his hand. “Funny sumbitch, you are.”

“I been called worse,” Arthur says amiably. “Today, even.”

  Gripping the railings in front of him, he pulls himself up with a stifled groan, every muscle in his back yelling in protest. With a wince, he rubs his shoulder, the fabric of his shirt still unpleasantly damp, tinged green below his breastbone.

  Chuckling to himself, Thomas walks around the extended deck back to the front door of the shack, disappearing inside with the pan and rag. Arthur follows, a sting in every step as his socks rub against the numerous leech bites, holding the railing even as they leave the water’s edge. The only light comes from the hanging lantern on the porch, the glow dimmed by the perpetual mist, as though it has frosted the glass. Moths continue to crowd the casing, shadows swooping through the orange pool like diving raptors snaring prey on the wing.

  “Sit yourself down,” Thomas says, emerging from the shack. He gestures at the haphazard collection of fishing paraphernalia that litters his front porch, reels of twine and knotted rope buried within a mess of netting and woven reeds. There’s a chair either side of the mountain’s peak, almost hidden by crayfish traps, snail pots and frog baskets. “Sure you don’t want nothin’ to eat?”

  Arthur picks his way across the porch, and holds the chair’s rickety back as he sits down with a wince, eyes shut. “Nah, I’m good,” he says, taking his weight off his feet. “Thank you. Appreciate you puttin’ me up, truly, but I, uh… Guess I don’t got much appetite after… Well.”

“Mm Lord, big tough boy like you, and you got a weak stomach?”

“I can stomach plenty,” Arthur says, shrugging as Thomas takes the other chair. “But gators are somethin’ else. Ain’t a fan of gators.”

“Mmhm. He was an angry one, oh yes.”

  With a hum of agreement, Arthur leans forward, looking down the length of Lagras. A muddy track is the only way in or out, weaving through the centre of the ramshackle hamlet and along the forested banks of the Kamassa, the river constantly encroaching upon the shoreline, eating away at the narrow strand. One day, it might swallow it whole. The mist dilutes the night’s colours, smudging the fans of saw palmetto amongst the knees of the bald cypress, waxy water plantain sprawling across the sodden mud in a patchwork counterpane of green and brown, algae and undergrowth, clay mud and bleached wood, black shadows stretched onto the water, air alive with insect song. He can barely see beyond the outhouse across the track. Even the sky is muddled and dark, restless clouds pulled in thick strings like an unravelling jumper, fuzzy clods of smoke-like wool strewn into messy lines.

  Resting back in the chair, Arthur sighs. He’ll hear the horses coming. It’s no use watching the road when there’s barely any light by which to see.

  Beside him, Thomas picks up a tangled shape from within the pile of various traps, and sets it on his lap, revealing a concave mat of tightly-woven reeds. It looks to be the beginnings of a basket, made from the canes that grow along the waterline. Arthur watches his fingers, each like an old oak branch, protruding at the joints like galls, moving precisely over the curved edge of the piece. He works by touch rather than sight, collecting the blunt strands and weaving them with unthinking ease, as though he has done so a thousand times before, and could still, even if he lost his remaining eye.

  Gesturing with a jab of his chin, Thomas glances at Arthur, the porch light dipping into the lines of his face. “Pass a smoke?”

  Arthur looks to his right. A battered pack of cigarettes is balanced on the porch railing, a matchbook lodged inside. Leaning out of the chair, Arthur takes the pack, offering it to Thomas. “Have yourself one too,” Thomas adds, pausing his weaving for a second while he sets the cigarette between his lips. Crossing one leg over the other, Arthur rasps a match against the sole of his boot and leans to offer Thomas the light, holding it steady as the flame sputters in the gloom. He then lights his own cigarette, and tosses the burnt match back over the railing, where the lake seeps into the mud.

“Mm,” Arthur hums, cigarette resting in his fingers as he exhales. “Thanks.”

  Thomas simply grunts, his eye staying on his weaving, sucking the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. It’s a wonder he can see at all in the darkness, the lantern shining valiantly against the rowdy crowd of flying insects, the rest of the world cut off by the persistent haze. Even the shack across the road is no more than a vague shape, an angular pile of beams and boards, just visible in contrast against the black sky, the gaping water. It can’t be more than twenty yards away.

  Arthur leans forward again, glancing up and down the meagre road for any sign of life, of activity beyond the patrolling of a diligent resident coonhound, who takes his duty of protecting the village’s wandering chickens very seriously. Tallulah is hitched a little way from Thomas’ shack, her head low, coat a dull white in the thick, humid air. Her ears twitch at the hooting call of an owl above the lake, but she doesn’t lift her head, a surer sign than any that there’s no one approaching Lagras.

  Thomas chuckles around his cigarette, a sound like a rustle amongst dry leaves. “You sure wanna be outta here, don’t you?” Even as he glances up from his work, his blind eye stays staring straight ahead, milky white and bottomless. “Got ants in your britches, boy, oh yes.”

“Ha,” Arthur says, scrunching his nose.

  Sitting back in his chair, he rubs his chin. It isn’t untrue. He’s glad to take the weight off his feet, glad to no longer be wading through swamp water, but he would much rather be glad in some other location than this. “Yeah, I… Don’t mean no offence,” he says, with a weak smile, no more than a twitch of his mouth. “S’just… Swamps. Leeches. Grievous bodily harm. That bastard goat ‘cross the way. Ain’t my first choice of how to spend an evenin’.”

  Thomas snickers again, smoke puffing from his lips in time with his laughter. “You a funny man, Mister Arthur. You in the wrong work.”

“Not that I ain’t grateful for your hospitality’n all,” Arthur adds, showing his palms. “Just…swamps, I reckon. Gimme a bad feelin’. Ain’t natural.”

“Ain’t for everyone out here,” Thomas says, eyes down. “Ain’t no Saint Denis.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“But some folks don’t get a choice where they end up. And others, well…this is the choice they made. They make the best of it.”

“Sure,” Arthur says, and sucks his cigarette. “I get that. Reckon I don’t got much choice about it neither.”

  Exhaling slowly, he watches the smoke in his breath rise towards the shack roof, swirling around the lantern. A moth the size of his palm has joined the crowd ogling at the glass, pressed against the casing in wonder at the flame within. “Swamps,” he says again, and wrinkles his nose. “Too many monsters for me.”

“Monsters everywhere, Mister Arthur,” Thomas says, wheezing his rasping laugh. “Ain’t you huntin’ one yourself?”

“Yeah, well… So Dutch says. If he ever gets back.”

  With another futile glance towards the road, Arthur sighs, dragging from the cigarette as if to comfort himself, expression drawn together into a sulking frown. He coughs with his exhale, sparkling smoke flooding from his mouth to his waiting hand, and leans his chair back on its rear legs, balancing between the shack wall and his toes.

  Maybe Dutch has simply decided not to return. Why bother, when he could make Arthur wait? When there’s surely a bottle of brandy to be opened, a box of fine cigars to be smoked, both of which can provide far more stimulating entertainment than Arthur ever could. Golden brandy, swirled in his palm. A rich, earthy cigar, rolled between his fingers. The seclusion of Shady Belle’s spacious balcony.

  Maybe he is seated on the chair with the cushion, his feet propped up on the balustrade while the phonograph crackles and whines, the baffle discarded to drown out the sound of Molly banging on the master bedroom’s double doors. Maybe he has had the tin bath brought up from the chuckwagon, a dozen buckets of water boiled over the fire, and is soaking the remains of Lagras’ lake away, breathing deeply in the steam.

  Arthur sighs. Dutch had seemed particularly annoyed with him all day. They hadn’t parted on the best terms.

  Drawing Dutch’s ire isn’t a new concept to him; he considers himself familiar with the planes and angles of Dutch’s sour moods, his impatience, his frustration, having been their cause more often than an innocent witness. He has found himself on the receiving end of Dutch’s short temper a fair few times in the twenty-one years of their relationship. Usually, he’s sure it’s justified. People often seem angry with Arthur, not just Dutch. He has learnt to assume blame for the anger of others, even if he doesn’t know what he has supposedly done to provoke their fury in the first place. It is simply the way of things. A certainty; that he is met with indignation and disappointment wherever he ventures, by virtue of his abrasive existence. His own father was angry with him for being born, and he’s sure he wasn’t half the asshole he is now as an infant. He is well-versed in how to receive anger, and used to it being deserved.

  With Dutch, he usually seems to offend in one of two major ways. Either he does something monumentally stupid, or he shows himself to be monumentally stupid. Sometimes both. Sometimes the two are one and the same. Either option is guaranteed to draw Dutch’s wrath, and Arthur has had plenty of experience with both making mistakes through his actions, and revealing the unavoidable truth that his very being is fraught with mistakes. Flaws inherent in his personality, his body, his mind, in the method of his manufacture. Somehow, exposing his own intellectual shortcomings always seems to be a greater failure to Dutch than anything else. Arthur could gamble the gang’s money, expose them to the Pinkertons, steal from Dutch himself, and it would only condemn him as guilty of the most unforgivable of crimes - that he is and always has been, at his core, an idiot. Unintelligent. Incompetent. An imbecile and a fool. That sentencing has haunted him since he met Dutch, pushing him into a lifelong battle to prove otherwise, to become something greater than the sum of his meagre parts. To show he has some worth beyond brute strength and a mean look.

  Arthur isn’t sure Dutch cares about bettering him anymore, if indeed he ever did. Maybe he decided it was futile long ago, and his current hostility is simply a residual frustration, sparked by Arthur’s continued inability to live up to expectation. His failure to understand his plans, his speeches, his vision. Perhaps Dutch has finally seen the truth, and realised he has wasted nearly twenty-two years of his life trying to teach a stupid little boy how to be a man worthy of a place at his side, when Paradise is found. Instead he has raised a buffoon, a thug who cannot comprehend the delicate machinations of Dutch’s mind.

  The ride to Lagras that afternoon had been one long row. Preceded by another row, only with Hosea in the ring with them. Arthur has replayed the bout in his mind throughout the hours since, and still can’t work out what exactly he did wrong. Having just finished a bowl of Pearson’s stew, and carrying a bucket of water to the hitching posts where Taima and Tallulah were cooling off after the ride back from Clemens Point, Dutch had shrieked from the balcony, voice like a kicked cat, demanding Arthur hurry up and join them upstairs. Maybe he should have ignored him. At least then he’d only have been yelled at once.

  Hosea had counselled restraint, in the weary way he often does, sounding exhausted of energy and patience as Dutch proposed taking revenge on Angelo Bronte. He’s been focused on putting together a potential bank heist, testing theories and plans in the city, mitigating the myriad risks. Arthur wonders if he ought to have given more weight to Hosea’s argument. If he had, he could be in bed. Or at least, wearing clean clothes. Free of leech bites.

  But Dutch had been convincing, shouting Hosea down in a way that was, again, familiar. Eliminating Bronte was a matter of business, he said. A strategic move in a game of chess Arthur is not astute enough to notice is in play, let alone have an opinion on. Thankfully, Dutch is astute enough, and taking out the king’s bishop is a gambit with more reward than risk. He said. Put so simply, it was hard not to go along with it. After undertaking so many fatally complicated ventures in the past few months, simple jobs are far more attractive, and easily agreed to. Arthur’s never really had the patience for chess anyway.

  Unfortunately, the conversation continued to be anything but easy. Dutch is wound so tightly of late, screwed into such a knot that he seems to be fraying by the day from the friction. They’re running out of time, running out of country, and Arthur would be relieved that Dutch seems to be taking their predicament seriously, if only it didn’t look so much like mania. If Dutch didn’t seem so volatile, somehow scattered, drawn between multiple ideas, flitting from one grand scheme to the next in big, bold brush strokes. The canvas fills quickly, but the painting shows nothing. There’s no detail, no shape, just broad blocks of colour butting awkwardly against each other, disparate and meaningless.

  With the horses tacked up and ready, Tallulah looking comically tall beside the diminutive frame of The Count, Arthur had blamed his stiff movements on a sore back as they left Shady Belle. A tenuous silence followed, weighty enough that Arthur felt driven to talk, to probe a little further in search of some reassurance.

  Asking about Tahiti was his biggest mistake. It was immediately obvious he’d crossed some kind of line. Dutch’s voice had cracked, snapped open like a compound fracture, tearing skin as the bone splinters free of the flesh. “Have some goddamn faith!” was volleyed at him like a punch, like a blow to the gut, the unyielding crunch of nose cartilage as it connects with a knee. And Arthur had scrambled, baulked at the words as readily as though they were physical, a childlike desperation bubbling up with his own voice, speaking in affirmations, in platitudes, diminishing himself so as not to provoke more injury. It hadn’t worked. Dutch railed at him again, spit flying from his mouth. He had turned in his saddle like he was reaching to grab Arthur’s collar, haul him from his seat over Tallulah’s poll. Fury frothed on his lips, positing that they break up the family, destroy Dutch’s most successful project due to Arthur’s toxic doubt.

  Only when Micah was mentioned did Arthur find some of his own anger, flaring at the questioning of his loyalty, and John’s for good measure. He has followed Dutch for twenty years. How could he doubt that? And when did asking questions become a crime of treason? How long has Arthur been a dog, praised for blind obedience to commands, collared and choked for lifting his head to smell a new scent on the air.

  Dutch had backed down, eventually, as they crossed into the sprawling forests of Bayou Nwa, humidity rising where the marshes sink into cloying mud, sucking at the horses’ hooves like a hundred greedy mouths. He had apologised, excused his words, a practised pain flooding his voice. As though he truly was sorry for the verbal barrage, not simply buckling under the sheer weight of Arthur’s disrespect. His lack. Lack of faith, lack of understanding, lack of recognition for the toll he takes on the man that all but raised him, that fed him, lifted him from the muck of a world that would never treat him with anything but disdain. Arthur is, and always has been, a burden of disappointment. How tiring it must be for Dutch to tolerate him, to have spent so long trying to make something of his small, unremarkable mind.

  He had stayed quiet after that. Lagras emerged from the forest like a measles outbreak, sudden and clustered, a handful of shacks clinging desperately to their stilt foundations, raising them above the muddy spit between the river and the neighbouring basin. Thomas had struck him as genuine at first impression, seeming to see more than his one blind eye would suggest. Otherwise, Dutch did the talking. Arthur has never been very adept at the talking part of these things.

  If he’s honest, he wasn’t much better at checking crayfish traps while up to his neck in water. It’s not a skill he has ever had the opportunity to practise. Still, at least he’d found Jules before he lost his leg. He’d managed to lodge a few bullets in the bull alligator’s snout, too, so maybe it wasn’t the abject disaster he feels it was.

  Carrying the lantern through the lake has made his left shoulder hurt more than usual. Keeping the thing above the water’s surface was harder than carrying Jules. His arm seems to freeze if he tries to lift it any higher than shoulder height, like there is something in the workings of the joint that can no longer allow upward movement, writhing with sharp, frenzied agony deep in the pitted scar. An amorphous, tendrilled creature shrieks when his arm is raised, squirming in the flesh of his breast, burning like a slug in salt. Arthur doesn’t know enough about the mechanics of shoulders to hazard much of a guess as to what exactly the problem is, or whether it might improve with time. Somehow, he doubts his shoulder will ever be as it was. Before.

  With a sigh, he holds his cigarette between his lips and rubs the scar tissue with the heel of his right hand. It aches in the aftermath of the exertion, like a hangover caused not by drinking but pain, nerves occasionally jabbing him with a cold lance, a numbness that trickles down his arm, fizzing in his fingers. He can still feel the ghost of Dutch’s palm, clapping him like a hit from a cast iron pan. Days ago, but remembered like a brand.

  Every minute movement of his muscles, every press to his skin, every tweak and tug of a tendon seems to leave a lasting impression now, stored within his damaged flesh as though it has its own memory, sensation lingering long after the physical touch is gone. It’s tiring, a constant feedback droning through his nervous system. Though he realised many weeks ago that the pain is likely as permanent as the cavity gouged into his chest, he hadn’t quite anticipated how relentlessly exhausting it would be.

  With a slow draw from his cigarette, Arthur shuts his eyes, and tries to imagine they never left Clemens Point that morning. Charles is still pressed to his back, sliding his hands over his chest. The water is clear, sparkling around their thighs as though playing with the sunlight, cold enough that he shivers at the heat of Charles’ breath, the sumptuous drape of his body against him, the confident touch of his fingers. As he focuses on the pointed ache of his shoulder, he can almost feel Charles holding his arm aloft as he had hours ago, one gentle hand supporting its weight while he washed him. Only Charles could make scrubbing his armpits into something blissful, something so tender and sensual that Arthur flushes from the memory alone. Charles takes such care. It’s maddening. He is light in Charles’ embrace, unburdened, his tattered old body made precious and vital, a vessel of comfort, of visceral, formative sensation. The relief he had felt as the dead, dragging weight of his arm was lifted is as clear in his mind as the touch of Charles’ lips, warm and heady like the taste of tobacco, the absence of such constant discomfort as joyous as the pleasure that followed. His mind slides, slipping into thoughts of Charles’ arms around his waist, the blunt buck of his hips, the overwhelming satisfaction of being filled.

  Arthur exhales slowly, smoke drifting lazily from his nose. It’s almost unbelievable that it only happened a matter of hours ago. His back is sore, his thighs, his entire ass, and that was the case before he’d gone wading through a swamp. There’s a good chance he won’t be walking very well tomorrow. But then there’s an equally good chance he’ll get shot in the manicured gardens of Angelo Bronte’s mansion, whenever they eventually get to it, so there's probably little point worrying.

  “So, Mister Arthur…” Thomas still hasn’t touched his cigarette with his hands, somehow able to keep it in the corner of his mouth without it falling or disintegrating. The end nears his lips, smouldering slowly, a drooping trail of ash falling into the air with a jerk of his chin to the side. “Sure this ain’t your kinda place. Where’s home for you and your boys?”

“Ha, that’s a question,” Arthur says, and clears his throat of the thickness in his voice.

  He rubs his face with one hand, thankful for the low light obscuring his flushed cheeks. “Dutch didn’t tell you he’s plannin’ on sailin’ us to a tropical island while you was fishing?”

  With a dry snort, Thomas shakes his head, the lines of his face catching the glow of his cigarette as he inhales. “No sir, he made no mention of that,” he says, his chuckle like brittle floorboards creaking underfoot.

“Well, since you’re buddies now, maybe you can convince him it’s a notion half-baked as tomorrow’s pie,” Arthur says, and can hear the undercurrent of frustration seeping into his voice, taking a long pull from his cigarette.

  The end crumbles, and he brushes the ash from his jeans with a flicked hand. “He ain’t so keen on hearin’ it from the rest of us.”

“Can’t say I know much about tropical islands,” Thomas says, thoughtfully. “I know fishin’ and I know fishin’ boats, ain’t know no more than that. No sir.”

“Wise way of livin’.”

  Lips pulled closed, Arthur chuckles, but it doesn’t reach further than his mouth. Leaning back on his chair’s legs, he looks out to his right, where Lagras extends around the strand of mud and silt, shacks looming through the tall figures of the bald cypress trees. The water slurps at their stilts, bubbles belching on the surface in a faint, wet rhythm, the layer of algae like a thick green carpet rolled beneath the porch.

  Behind Thomas’ shack, the land veers out into the lake, collapsing into mismatched islands, cast clumsily into the water like a handful of skipping stones. One shack sits on the edge of the peninsula, a crude shopfront built in the porch space, where the owner sells live bait and intricate fishing lures. “Home for me is…” Arthur says, and watches a dog appear from the direction of the bait shop, sniffing the ground as it follows the mud road. “Nowhere. Reckon I never had one.”

“That ain’t right, Mister Arthur,” Thomas says firmly, not looking up from his weaving. “Every man needs a home.”

“Mm,” Arthur hums, taking a final draw from his cigarette, the stub barely extending past his fingers.

  He crushes the crumbling end between his index finger and thumb and throws it over the railing to the water.

  The dog wandering towards Thomas’ shack is pregnant. It’s obvious even in darkness and from a distance. Her belly hangs, gait heavy and lolloping, like she’s resisting the urge to simply lie down in the mud. Every few steps, she stops to sniff at something that catches her interest - a rock, a boot print, a pelican feather - and then continues on, tail wagging.

  Arthur watches her with a fond fascination. “Reckon home ain’t a place for me,” he says, letting his chair fall back to all four of its legs, the wooden clunk echoing between the porch floor and the water beneath them. “Couldn’t be. Never stayed nowhere long enough. Sometimes, Dutch talks about land and plots and such, but it’s never come to nothin’ in all the years I known him. Nowhere was ever what he thought it was, I think.”

“Long time, you known him?”

“Yes, sir,” Arthur says, with a lacklustre smile, drooping like a wilted flower. “Since I was fifteen. So…more’n twenty years.”

  Thomas purses his lips, and whistles a low note. His own cigarette has disintegrated into a scrap of squashed paper, ash trickling from his mouth in a soft shower as his lips move. He spits the end to one side. “Long time. Feller gotta mean a lot to you.”

“Ha,” Arthur says, huffing a short laugh. “Guess so. Maybe I just got nothin’ else.”

  The dog has meandered around to Lagras’ main road, if it can be classed as a road. Boards have been placed along the track in an effort to keep carts from sinking in the mud, the land barely higher than the water lapping at its edges. Nose aloft, the dog pauses to scent the air ahead, watching Tallulah from a little way away, as if trying to work out what she is in the low light.

  “But, uh, if home can be people… I reckon that’s what it is for me,” Arthur says, shrugging his good shoulder. “Dutch and everyone, I guess. Hosea. Folks I…care for.” His voice flickers just slightly, wobbling like the flame in the porch light, besieged by the army of flying insects. Charles sits heavily in his mind, in his chest, as near to the concept of home as Arthur has ever known. There’s no place in this world in which he belongs, nowhere he misses, nowhere he longs for. There’s only Charles. He could sail the entire ocean, cross deserts, fly to the moon itself, and still feel at home if only Charles was beside him. “Guess home is where he- They are. You know?”

“Sure, I know,” Thomas says.

“I…I tried havin’ a family once, but… Well.”

  Clearing his throat, Arthur drums his fingers on his thigh. He swallows, frowning. Thomas doesn’t look up from his work. Whether he can sense Arthur’s discomfort, or he truly isn’t interested, Arthur can’t tell. He doesn’t mind either way, simply grateful he isn’t asked to elaborate.

  Standing in the road opposite them, the dog scratches her ear with one hind paw, balancing awkwardly on her remaining three, and Arthur suddenly huffs as if to laugh, head turned to Thomas. “Y’know, best friend I ever had was a dog. Better to me than any-” He clears his throat again. “-woman o-or any flesh and blood family, that dog was.”

“Is that right?”

  With a grunt, Arthur gets up, rubbing his lower back. He picks his way past the lobster pots and crayfish traps to the porch steps, illuminated by the dim glow of the hanging lantern. Hand on the railing, he sinks down with a wince, and sits on the top step. Lips set, he whistles through his thumb and forefinger.

  Tallulah looks up from across the road, ears turned towards him as if to ask what he expects her to do while her reins are hitched to a fence. She huffs, tossing her head, and her ears flick to the ungainly waddle of the dog, hurrying over to the steps as quickly as she can with such a heavy belly. Arthur’s face splits into a grin.

  “Hey there,” he says brightly, opening his arms as the dog lumbers up to Thomas’ shack. She ducks her head as she reaches the steps, sniffing his boots and jeans, tongue lolling as though she’s also smiling. “Howdy, li’l lady. Look at you! It’s real nice to meet you.” With a slack grin, the dog plants her paws on the second porch step, her whole body wiggling with the motion of her wagging tail. Leaning forward, Arthur touches her shoulder, gently rubbing through her short coat. “Are you beautiful? You sure are. You’re so beautiful! Yes, you are. Oh, you like havin’ a shoulder rub, huh? You like that? I know, sweetheart, just be careful- Whoa- Okay!”

  Harrumphing her weight up on her hind legs, the dog stands with her front paws on his thigh, stretching to reach Arthur’s face, licking his stubbled cheeks. “O-Oh okay, that’s- Mmf, that’s real kind of you. Thank you, what a good girl, huh?” He pets her shoulders, trying to encourage her to get down, to little avail. “What a beautiful girl. Okay, that’s enough kisses, thank you, I know I need a bath, but- C’mon, quit, come sit here.” She pads up the steps to his gesturing hand, and slumps by his side, her nose turned up to snatch a couple more licks of his cheek. “There you go, that’s better. Sit yourself down a second.”

  With a delighted chuckle, Arthur rubs her hanging ear, letting her rest her head on his thigh. Nose wet, she huffs against his jeans, lounging contentedly on the porch, her tail thumping the deck boards. The fact he’s covered in swamp slime seems to matter little to her. “Look at you, darlin’,” Arthur says, gently scratching behind her ear. “You’re gonna be a mama, huh? How many puppies you got in there, fifty?” He wipes his face on his damp sleeve, which is probably only marginally less unhygienic than the dog’s licking tongue.

“No doctors in these parts,” Thomas says from behind him. “No dog doctors neither.”

  Arthur exhales with his smile. For a moment, he’d forgotten Thomas was there. Still smiling, he clears his throat. “She a Catahoula Leopard?”

“Psh, I don’t know dogs. She a dog.”

  She is, Arthur knows she is. Her short coat is a beautiful grey, splotched with dark brown and tan, mottled all over like she’s had an unfortunate encounter with a colliery wagon. Almost as spotted as Tallulah, only the pattern is far less regular, more disorganised. She has a tall but sturdy body, a high rectangular head, folded ears. A textbook Catahoula Leopard Dog. “You’re beautiful,” Arthur chirps, “yes you are. You’re gonna have a hundred beautiful puppies.”

  Beneath the shadow of the porch roof, Thomas doesn’t look up from his weaving. “That one’s lazy. Don’t belong to no one, just hangs around the bait shop,” he says, disinterested. “Wandered up one day. There’s other curs folks got for baying hogs and such, but that one don’t do nothin’. Barks somethin’ awful but don’t care much for workin’. Maybe her pups might be useful.”

“Hey, now don’t you listen to him, girl. Workin’ hard is for suckers. Yes it is. You a smart one, ain’t you. Yes you are.”

  There’s a short chuckle from behind him. Thomas has both eyebrows raised, his good eye watching Arthur with amusement. “Finally found somethin’ to get a smile outta you tonight, Mister Arthur. Dogs, huh?”

“Sure,” Arthur says, stroking the dog’s soft head, watching her eyes fall closed on his thigh. “I like dogs. More’n I like most people. Ain’t many good things in this world, but dogs is one.”

“Well, maybe you come on back one day when her pups is born. Take one with you. So you got somethin’ good on your tropical island.”

  Arthur’s expression falls, as sudden as if he’s walked into a door. He turns to Thomas, deadpan. “Are you bein’ serious?”

  At the look on his face, Thomas snickers, almost fond. His hands are still, the mat of reeds balanced in his lap. “Sure, why not? We don’t need no hundred pups that ain’t gon’ work for their keep.”

  Arthur blinks at him. A breathless grin breaks his closed mouth. He turns back to the dog, gently rubbing her ear. “‘Course that’d mean you gotta come visit the swamp again,” Thomas says behind him, with a sharp tut of his tongue, the lantern light falling on his lips as he smiles. “And we sure know you ain’t no fan of swamps. Don’t like swamps, do you, Mister Arthur-”

  “Found him! Hey, look here, Dutch! Arthur’s made a friend!”

  The voice is almost as unwelcome as the leeches had been. Bill Williamson appears from the road, stomping through the mud with much the same bloated figure as the bloodsucking parasites, the same gaping mouth, open around his loud guffaw. Without a coat to cover up, Bill reveals himself to be a man made in entirely incorrect proportions, like his creator became distracted while crafting his torso, and consequently had no materials left to form his legs. He resembles a dressed potato, only Arthur can’t find the good humour required to laugh at him. Instead he’s sure he can feel his blood pressure spike in response.

  With a halfhearted bark, the dog picks her head up from Arthur’s thigh, and watches as Bill approaches Thomas’ shack, John and Lenny behind him. Next is Dutch, in a completely different outfit to the one he had been wearing several hours ago. Finally, Charles brings up the rear, leading Taima by her reins to the same fence post to which Tallulah is hitched, leaving her a way away from the geldings further down the road.

  Arthur inhales, and watches Charles join the others, catching his eyes as Dutch begins to laugh. He stands before Thomas’ shack like he was expecting a welcoming party, planting his hands on his hips. “Would you look at that,” Dutch says, in a tone so falsely jovial it almost drips. “My, Arthur, I didn't think you had it in you! Finally found yourself a girl.” Eyebrows comically raised, Dutch shares a look with Bill. The latter hoots with laughter. Even John’s lips twitch into a smirk. Lenny gives a wincing smile. “And got real busy too! I thought I told you to behave.”

“Ha! ‘Cause it’s pregnant! That’s funny, Dutch.”

“Yes, Bill, you've accurately identified the joke.”

  Face taut, red and rattling like a screeching tea kettle, Arthur gapes between them, lips twisting as he tries to find something to say. He blinks a few times, his hand shrinking away from the dog’s shoulder. “The fuck is wrong wit’ y’all?” he finally snaps, sudden as a smack, voice bursting from his mouth. Turning in place, he gestures to Thomas, showing his palm in apology. “Sorry, Thomas, language- But Christ, do you wanna maybe try that entrance again? Fuck. Bunch of assholes.”

  Expression tightly unimpressed, Dutch scoffs in deep disappointment. “Oh it is so sad when a man loses his good humour on account of a female with child.” His eyebrows crease, mouth downturned, and he stares pointedly at John for an uncomfortably long second, before he turns back to the pregnant dog. “Even if she is a bitch-”

  Getting to her feet, the dog grumbles, a conversational sound with the timbre of a growl and the swooping pitch of a howl, and flops down the porch steps, trotting around the crowd of strangers to return to the peace of the bait shop. Bill laughs in a blank monotone, jaw slack, like he’s suffering from concussion. He slaps John on the shoulder, making him stumble a few steps forward into the shoreline mud.

  Lips quirked sharply upwards beneath his moustache, Dutch strides to the porch, placing one black boot on the lowest step, next to Arthur’s foot.

  “Thomas, my friend,” Dutch says, and gestures briefly to the brim of his hat. “I trust this reprobate did not cause you too much trouble while I was gone.” He pats Arthur’s downturned head. With a sharp snort and weak shrug, Arthur simply stares at his boot, a visible disgust wrinkling his nose. A part of him wants to get up, maybe find Charles in the crowd, accidentally kick Bill in the shin as he passes him - but Dutch has him blocked in, and Arthur can’t bring himself to look up. His ears feel hot. “He ain’t quite so domesticated as some.”

“Huh. No, sir, Mister Dutch. No trouble at all.”

“Excellent. Shall we, then? I am eager to set sail. We have an appointment to keep, after all.”

“Sure,” Thomas says, and sets his weaving project down amongst the traps and pots, picking up the porch lamp from its hook beside the door, scattering the swarm of mosquitoes with his hand. “Come round back, I’ll get her ready.”

“Are you going to move, Arthur? Or just sit directly in my way.”

“Christ, alright, I’m movin’.”

  Eyes closed as he winces, Arthur gets to his feet, standing aside at the bottom step while Dutch passes. “And make sure you’ve got what you need for our…house call with Signore Bronte.”

“Yeah, yeah. Sure.”

  Waving his hand in a dismissive gesture, he turns away from the shack with a shaken head, giving Bill and John a wide berth as he walks across the boarded road, heading towards Tallulah. He keeps his head down. To think, Lagras was relatively peaceful until a few moments ago. Familiar faces have somehow managed to make it worse. Maybe it’s just his turn to be the gang’s punching bag.

  Mud squelches beneath his steps, water soaking into every clod of dirt, every patch of sparse grass. The sound of his boots is wet and heavy, pain prickling around his ankles as his damp socks rub against his leech bites, and it feels a little like the universe is punishing him, if Arthur was to believe in such things as cosmic retribution. For spending his morning with Charles, for such an indulgent, self-serving act as loving him, he is condemned to this backwater to be reminded of the day-to-day misery of his insignificant existence. Leech-bitten feet and a swim through a swamp is his just reward for daring to experience a few hours of pleasure. The constant taste of sweat on his lips, clothes that reek of wet decay, of brine and blood, the feeling of nausea in his upper stomach, like he has swallowed something slithering - a barrage of unpleasant realities that feel as cruelly inevitable as a hangover after a bottle of whiskey. He really should have expected a hideous evening to follow a carefree morning. Life is quick to humble optimists.

  Tallulah is hitched to a dilapidated fence across the track, Taima now beside her. A striking pair in such dreary surroundings. Without Thomas’ porch light, the village bathes within the darkness, submerged in deep black beneath the haze in the air. It would likely be a perfect place to see the stars, so undisturbed by civilisation, untainted by the lights of the city, the factory smoke, the towers of brick and stone. But the sky is as blankly empty as the water, and just as opaque, swimming with troubled cloud mirroring the strings of blanket weed, the waxy leaves of water hyacinths, of arum and plantain, choked by the scud of algae still and stagnant between the bald cypress roots. There are no stars to be found above or below, only an unsettled, frothing gumbo, strange bird calls amidst the insect chatter, a humidity that’s hard to breathe. His shirt is plastered to his chest and back, likely permanently tinted green, and the feeling that he can’t fully expand his lungs within the soggy, slimy fabric is particularly difficult to ignore.

  “Arthur.”

  He jumps; he hadn’t heard anyone following him. Quite a feat with such loud mud underfoot. Still, Charles’ voice brings instant relief even as he flinches, whipping around in surprise. “Shit,” Arthur mumbles, and laughs like it’s been forced from him, high in pitch and mostly air. Charles stands by Tallulah’s flank, smiling just enough that Arthur can see it beneath his cheek, and for a moment the entire swamp is golden like a summer prairie, infinite and promising, the sky alight and yawning open, so that it would be easy to leap up and fly. Arthur stares at him in the green-tinged gloom. For a moment, he can breathe. “One of these days, you’re gonna give me a fuckin’ heart attack, you know that?”

“Sorry,” Charles says fondly, without sounding particularly sorry.

“Can’t just stomp around like the rest of us, oh no. Too goddamn graceful, that’s your problem.”

“Graceful, huh?”

  Eyes briefly pulled down, as if he can hide his amusement, Charles brushes Tallulah’s side with his fingers, letting her know he’s there. “Don’t think anyone’s ever called me graceful,” he says, with a matter-of-fact tone that says he knows Arthur is joking.

“Then I am glad to be the first,” Arthur says, triumphant. “Real prima ballerina, you are.”

“Reckon I could lift you up with one hand?”

  With a snort, Arthur laughs through his nose. “I’d like to see you try,” he says, and suddenly coughs, a catch spiking in his throat and tripping his voice, tangling the legs of his laughter. He splutters a few times - still snickering throughout, which doesn’t seem to help at all - and takes a step away from Charles, holding the fence to which the horses are tethered.

  After another cough, he finally clears his throat, leaning against the pale boards. “Think I swallowed swamp water,” he mutters, and heaves a dry sigh, scraping his hair back from his forehead as he looks at Charles. His smile persists despite the interruption. He tilts his head. “God, am I glad to see you after the afternoon I’ve had,” he says roughly, scrubbing his cheek as he continues to take Charles in, tired eyes slowly moving about his face. “Best thing I seen since I last saw you.”

  Charles chuckles, warm and fond. He moves as if to follow Arthur the couple of steps to the fence, but stops when Arthur flaps his hands. “Wait- Just…don’t come too close-” he says, shrinking back to the wooden post behind him. “I’m covered in swamp. I stink like the inside of a dead whale. You don’t wanna touch me. Don’t get near me, actually, you can prob’ly smell it a mile off.”

  His expression falls to a sheepish, humourless grimace, brow creasing. “‘Least Dutch got to change, I been like this for hours. Reckon I gotten used to the smell some, but I’m still wet! How is it fuckin’ possible I’m still wet?” With a terse huff, he gestures at his stained shirt with one hand, nose wrinkled with his pursed lips. “Gonna have to bathe in fuckin’ turpentine. And this shirt’s ruined. I don’t even got that many shirts left that ain’t covered in somethin’ or other, y’know? After that mud in Valentine and then everythin’ in Rhodes, and the riverboat, and the O’Driscolls. I’m gonna have to buy more. It’s fuckin’ hard gettin’ anythin’ out a shirt when one of your arms don’t work right, let alone goddamn swamp water, all the algae and the blood, and… Shit.” Arthur winces, shaking his head as he looks down at the state of his clothes. “Maybe I’ll just burn this whole outfit-”

  Charles kisses him. He closes the distance between them in two strides, steps between his legs, and takes Arthur’s face in both hands, pressing into his mouth in the middle of a word. Lips a little squashed, Arthur blinks until he adjusts to what’s happening, tilting his head to kiss Charles back, a soft sound caught in his throat. His body melts, tension sliding from his shoulders as Charles’ fingers brush his hair above his ears, cradling his face in solid warmth. He doesn’t remember what he was saying. It probably didn’t matter anyway. Their lips lock and relock, Arthur’s fingers brushing gently against Charles’ sides, hesitant to let himself hunger, to touch him with such dirty hands.

  He hums, voicing a plaintive sigh when Charles’ lips leave his, his hands falling away from his face. It only lasts a moment, but Arthur drowns as though it lasts an hour, swept away in a rush of comfort until his chest feels full. His eyes open slowly, and he blinks as he finds Charles’ face in the low light, expression unusually tight, nose slightly wrinkled, giving his thoughts away. Arthur huffs. “It’s bad, ain’t it?”

“It’s real bad,” Charles says, at least sounding regretful about it. “You stink.”

  With a groan, Arthur stands up from the fence. “Goddamnit, I hate this place.” Slipping past Charles, he turns to Tallulah, resting a hand on her neck while he looks over her saddle holsters. He takes his revolver and his sawn-off shotgun, and sheathes one at each hip. “I had leeches’n all, can you believe that?”

“Leeches?”

“Yeah. Both feet. They get in your boots. Through socks, even. Thomas said I had to wait ‘til they was done bleedin’ me before I pulled ‘em off, or else they-”

  With a strained frown, Arthur pauses at Tallulah’s side, thumbing the long barrel of his repeater, sheathed in the saddle’s cinch holster. “Uh… I’ll tell you later.” He drops his hand, leaving the gun where it is. Instead, he plucks his hat from Tallulah’s saddle horn, and places it firmly on his head.

“You’re okay, though?” Charles asks, watching him pet Tallulah’s withers, fiddling with a lock of her mane.

“Sure.”

  The fingers of his left hand are shaking, trembling gently against Tallulah’s saddle blanket. He brushes her neck with the other, sending a plume of dust and loose dander into the air. “Could’a done without the vaudeville act back there-” Waving towards Thomas’ shack, he sighs, and closes his left hand, clenching his fist. “But… Sure,” he says again, and pats Tallulah by way of goodbye.

  Hesitant, Arthur moves a few steps away from her, pausing to wait for Charles. He already has a long gun slung over his shoulder, sawn-off shotgun at his hip. Hand briefly touching Taima’s flank, he meets Arthur’s eyes and holds them for a moment, lips tightening as though weighing his words. Whatever he was going to say is swallowed. Instead, he joins Arthur, and says, “Dutch mentioned the alligator.”

“You should’a seen the size of it,” Arthur replies, with a humourless laugh, dry and brittle, like a bundle of kindling, rustling as his voice tries to spark. “Damn near took the village kid’s leg off.”

  He gestures aimlessly at his copper-stained jeans, unrolling his sleeve an inch to reveal the extent of the blood still covering his clothes. “But yeah, I’m- I’m fine. I…y’know. Just…tired.” His voice sinks, volume dropping, and then almost immediately rebounds, bouncing back to a place adjacent to humour, as though his tone had veered too close to honesty, and he grabs for jest as a blanket to cover himself, to avoid facing the truth for too long. “And sore,” he adds, with a smirk. “Which is mostly your fault.”

“I get more blame than the alligator?” Charles asks, warmth in his expression.

  Arthur’s sure he notices the deflection - he always does - but Charles doesn’t comment, and he’s grateful for it. “You got me walkin’ like I been beat ass-backwards. Gator maimed a kid, but he didn’t even scratch me. You, on the other hand-”

“In my defence, you did ask me to. Multiple times,” Charles says, lips quirked at the corner, eyes flicking to Arthur’s mouth. “Begged, if I recall correctly.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright, I ‘begged’.”

“You did. I remember since it was only this morning.”

  With a huff, stifling his smile in the swell of his cheek, Arthur almost audibly rolls his eyes. Charles simply watches his face, eyes black in the darkness. “I liked it,” he says quietly, and meets Arthur’s raised eyebrows with his own understated smile. He keeps his voice low. “Come on, they’ll be waiting.”

“Yeah,” Arthur says, and sighs, holding Charles’ gaze for a moment longer before he starts to walk. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Charles hums in reply, and they walk together back to Thomas’ shack, fighting not to lose their boots in the mud.

  Though the shack isn’t large in itself, its porch is extensive. Wrapping around its squat frame on all sides, and jutting out into the water at both the side and rear, the decking covers a fair portion of the lake shore, giving boats a place to launch and moor, and providing fishermen a sturdy spot from which to cast a line. Water laps at the stilts, slopping around the wooden posts as Arthur climbs the front steps and walks along the side of the house. He glances sidelong at the water in the dark, as if warning it not to try anything, the surface wobbling like green blancmange.

  “So, Dutch,” Bill says, from somewhere around the back of the house. “What’s Tahiti like anyhow?”

“I have no idea. But I hear it’s paradise.”

  Sliding down into his chest, Dutch’s voice becomes breathy, almost whispered, setting a scene of awe and wonder. A verdant idyll of tropical fruit and lawless peace. The maniacal giggle from Bill hammers through the quiet like a woodpecker. “That’s what they said about the West,” he says, with an arrogant smirk, lips parting to show his teeth. “And look how that turned out.”

  As they reach the back of the shack, Charles following behind him, Arthur moves away from the edge of the decking and pauses a little way from the house, at the juncture between the pooled light of Thomas’ lantern and the moon’s pale glow, ghostly white butting against yellow kerosene like two puddles of paint. Across from them, Dutch takes an emphatic step closer to Bill, who seems to deflate, beard bouncing as he hurriedly shuts his mouth.

  “It’s men…like Mister Bronte, like Mister Cornwall, who ruined the West,” Dutch says, tersely. With a shake of his head, he turns back to the end of the dock, watching Thomas inspect the skiff moored alongside. “Who ruin everything.”

  Fidgeting in place, Bill looks thoughtful. As much as it is possible for Bill to look thoughtful. The expression could easily be mistaken for constipation. “So…there’s no folks like that in Tahiti?” he asks, eyes wide as Dutch turns back to him.

“There’s folks like that everywhere,” Dutch says.

  He extends his hand as he speaks, conducting an imaginary orchestra, voice grating like a dog’s growl. “But in Tahiti, to my understanding, folks feed ‘em to sharks, rather than make ‘em kings.”

  Another deranged giggle bursts from Bill, and he grins with the exuberance of a child, nodding emphatically. “That would be paradise!” he declares, and then stops short, suddenly frozen as Dutch prods him in the chest with one ringed finger, leaning close to Bill’s face.

“Exactly,” Dutch says, voice a low drawl, eyes narrowing as he smiles.

  With a scoff, he turns back towards the skiff, ignoring Bill’s yapping laughter. As Dutch turns, he notices Arthur and Charles closer to the house, and calls out, the silver buttons on his vest catching the lantern light like a cat’s reflective eyes, glinting through the haze. “Arthur, there you are. Get over here. Thomas, let’s get going.”

  Thomas steps from the skiff to the dock, watching Arthur and Charles. His eye flicks quickly between them, then to John, Lenny, Bill, and back to Dutch. “I- Mister Dutch,” he says, holding a tall wooden setting pole in his hand, its submerged end firmly planted in the bed of the lake. “We gon’ have one extra feller on the return trip, that right?”

  Arms held out for balance, Dutch steps carefully into the skiff, and sits in the centre with a haughty overconfidence, posture upright and impatient like it’s the head of a grand table, and he’s waiting to be served his meal. “I should think so, all bein’ well. We’ll be entertaining Mister Bronte. Why?”

“We got one too many,” Thomas says, with a slight frown, glancing towards Arthur. “No room for more’n six plus myself. We’ll be too heavy.”

“Ah.”

  With some difficulty, Dutch turns in his seat as though calling the waiter to bring him the wine list, the skiff swaying on the water as his weight shifts. He looks up at the five men assembled on the dock. “My apologies, Thomas, I am certain you told me that before. I must have plumb forgot.” His laugh is short, rolling his eyes at his own mistake. “Arthur, get in with us. Charles, get back to camp.”

  Across the deck, neither Charles nor Arthur move. Blinking dumbly, Arthur shakes his head, then looks at Charles. “What?” he says, voice rough. He opens his mouth to say something more, glancing back at Dutch for a second before he hears Charles inhale. The air around them seems to turn cold, as though the magnitude of Charles’ affront has caused the pressure to drop, fury bristling from him as easily as his usual warmth. In an instant, Arthur returns to the poachers’ camp in the Heartlands, the slaughtered bison fresh in his mind, thick in his nostrils, sour and metallic in his mouth. So many months ago. Charles had granted him the privilege of standing beside his anger, soaking in it, bathing in a font of meticulous brutality that to Arthur may as well have been baptismal, sprayed with the mist of a stranger’s brain matter and born anew in Charles’ infinitely competent hands.

  The fact that Dutch is opposite them in the present - in place of the poachers - sits oddly in his chest, as though he has failed to thoroughly chew a mouthful of food which then drags uncomfortably through his gullet, prematurely swallowed.

  Staring straight at Dutch, Charles is the picture of calm, showing no reaction discernible to anyone but Arthur, standing right beside him, able to see the narrowing of his eyes, the flex of muscles in his chest as his posture widens, solidifies. “You asked me to come,” he says, in a clipped, careful monotone, the hinge of his jaw clenching ever so slightly as he grits his teeth. It is an expertly-crafted statement, in that it would take even the most suspicious man great effort to find any hint of accusation within its contents. There is no offensive edge, despite the sharpness of the words.

  Dutch holds Charles’ gaze across the deck, the lantern light bouncing about his slicked hair, his silver buttons. The distance between them is several yards, but the exchange could easily be a fistfight with how closely they watch each other. “And now,” he says slowly, leaning on every consonant as though chastising a child. Arthur feels the hair on the back of his neck prickle. He again looks at Charles, and wonders whether Dutch always speaks to him in such a patronising manner, whether he somehow hasn’t noticed before. “I’m telling you to go.”

  A muscle tightens in Charles’ cheek, jolting the corner of his mouth by a few millimetres. “Rest of you, get in,” Dutch says, snapping with a jerk of his head, turning back to the bow of the boat. “This has been a long time comin’. Let’s get a move on.”

“Right you are, Mister Dutch,” Thomas says quietly, stepping up to the skiff’s stern, the lengthy setting pole in his hands. The boat rocks in the water, dipping and rising as John and Lenny take their seats beside Dutch, Bill sitting alone at the bow with his rifle. Leaning on the pole, Thomas works on loosening the mooring line, uncoiling the rope with flicks of his wrist.

“Right,” Arthur murmurs, frowning just enough to create a crease between his eyebrows. “I’ll…just…” He takes a step forward and blindly touches Charles’ hand, letting their fingers brush together for longer than could be accidental before he moves away.

  Water sloshing against the hull, Arthur steps down into the skiff with a wince. It sinks another inch into the thick green sludge, wood creaking as he sits on the thwart at the stern, Thomas standing just behind him. He glances back across the deck. Charles watches the group in silence, an opacity to his expression that Arthur feels inherently disquieted upon seeing, frown knotting his brow.

  Having freed the mooring line, Thomas piles the coiled rope beside Arthur, and lifts the pole from the lake bed, a wad of blanketweed sliding from its end. He pushes the pole against the dock, jolting them into sluggish movement, the water slurping as it yields, algae parting like heavy curtains, pulled apart by unseen hands.

  As they glide away from the lantern light, Thomas punting the skiff forward, Arthur turns again, and holds up a hand, waving slightly at the figure of Charles, standing alone in the haze. He raises a hand in return, watching as the skiff is swallowed by the darkness, drifting quietly into the lake.