Big Damn Hero

8

Allister seemed to be recovering some of his wits as he and Jayne walked to his apartment. To Jayne it was obvious the kid had never been in a fight before. It wasn’t just that Allister hadn’t managed to land a decent blow on his opponents. He had been shocked by the violence itself, as though he just hadn’t been expecting it and didn’t know how to cope with it. That, as much as the blows he’d received, was what had left him stunned and shaken, and only now, nigh on a half-hour after the event, was he starting to get over the experience.

Jayne, at Allister’s age, had already known his fair share of scraps. But then he’d always been a rough-and-tumble youth who let his fists do most of the talking because his mouth wasn’t so good at it.

“Maybe,” Jayne said to him, “you can explain to me why someone as young as you was hanging out at a dive like Taggart’s.”

“Just wanted to celebrate Alliance Day, like everyone else,” Allister said. “Taggart’s seemed as good a place as any. You never drank underage?”

At that, Jayne could only shake his head guiltily. “Got me there, kid. But you could’ve chosen any bar. There’s plenty a whole lot nicer’n Taggart’s, and plenty where you’re less liable to get your head busted.”

“Maybe I wanted to be where the action is.”

“Or maybe you wanted to be nowhere near home.”

Allister looked furtive. “Kinda.”

“So’s you’re less likely to bump into someone who’d recognize you and could rat on you to your mom. She even know you’re out?”

The kid shook his head. “She doesn’t pay much attention to my comings and goings, on account of how sick she is. I look after her, do my best for her, but I need a life of my own. You understand? I need to get out now and then, have a little fun. Caring for a sick person ain’t easy, ’specially one with Foster’s Wheeze. Mom’s coughin’ all the time, sometimes like as though she’s going to choke up a lung. I never know from one day to the next how bad she’s gonna be, but I do know she’s not likely to get better.”

Jayne sympathized, perhaps more than Allister realized. His little brother Mattie suffered from an incurable respiratory disorder not unlike Foster’s Wheeze: damplung, and it blighted his life and that of their mother too.

Eavesdown’s riverside district might once have been pretty— desirable, even — but its heyday was long past. The river itself, which had never been graced with a name, was a slow, turgid waterway clogged with weed, junk and sewage, and the houses which clustered along its banks were low, mean edifices with tumbledown roofs and sagging walls.

Allister led Jayne up a precarious outdoor staircase to a fourth-floor apartment that was not what you might call spacious. Anyone who got it in mind to swing a cat in there could expect a lot of thumping and irate meowing.

On a cot in a corner of the main room lay an emaciated woman whose complexion was the color of cream gone sour. Blood-flecked tissues were scattered around her like gruesome confetti, and dried encrustations scabbed her nostrils and the corners of her mouth. The air smelled of stale sweat, human waste, and, beneath it all, the faint whiff of rotten flesh.

The woman managed, with some considerable effort, to raise herself as Allister and Jayne entered. Her hair hung lank about her face like damp seaweed, while her eyes were sunk so deep in their sockets, they were almost lost, like pebbles embedded in deep hollows. Jayne could tell she had been attractive once, before the sickness had ravaged her. She was still fairly young, although her haggardness made her look about a hundred years old.

“Allister?” she said in a frail voice. “That you?”

“It’s me, Mom.”

“Your face. Those bruises.” Her brow furrowed. “What happened to you? What have you been doing?”

“Nothing, Momma. Just had a little… mishap, is all. Got jumped by a couple guys.”

Not far from the truth, Jayne thought.

“They tried to take my money,” Allister continued, “only I didn’t have none, so that made ’em mad, and… Well, you can see the result. I’m fine,” he added. “Really. Just a few lumps and bumps. This man saved me. His name’s…”

Allister suddenly looked puzzled.

“Not sure I caught it, as a matter of fact,” he said.

“Cobb,” Jayne said. “Jayne Cobb. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” He removed his hat. Mama Cobb had raised him to be polite when the circumstances demanded.

Allister’s mother eyed him up and down. “That was mighty kind of you, Jayne Cobb. I am much obliged. My name’s Barbara, by the way. Barbara—”

Then a coughing fit overtook her. Her body heaved, wracked with spasms. She covered her mouth, but Jayne saw blood and sputum spatter against the palm of her hand.

Allister hurried to her side, handing her a tissue. Then he fetched her a glass of water, which she sipped gratefully.

“I thought I should return Allister home safe and sound,” Jayne said. “He told me you might be able to fix him up. And now that I’ve done that…”

“Won’t you stay?” Barbara said. “We’ve food in the house. Coffee too. Ain’t much but we’re willing to share, ’specially with someone who’s helped us out.”

It was tempting. Jayne was hungry, and he was never less than a slave to his appetites. However, there was Mal to think about. He couldn’t hang around.

“Thanks, but I got some pressing matters need attendin’ to.”

“You mean partyin’ with all the other fools.”

“No. Yes. No.” Jayne was not proficient at lying, so he changed the subject. “Fools, you say? I’m guessing you’re no fan of Alliance Day, then.”

“Ha!” Barbara swung her legs over the side of the cot. The strain of moving herself even that much showed on her face. “Well, put it like this. There’s some as reckon the war was the best thing that could ever have happened to the ’verse, and there’s some, like me, as think it was the worst. Not to mention the pain and sufferin’ it caused.

“I used to be a nurse. Worked for the military a whiles. The Independents, only I don’t make a big noise about that owing to the fact that they were the losin’ side and folks round here don’t feel too kindly disposed towards them, as a rule. I was stationed at a number of forward operating bases—”

She broke off to cough again. It was painful just to watch her; Jayne could only imagine how painful it was to be her, undergoing this torture. He knew that Foster’s Wheeze was invariably fatal; but the condition could be managed for years, its worst symptoms reduced almost to zero, if you had access to the right drugs and the wherewithal to pay for them. Barbara had neither, which meant she was sentenced to a purgatory of chest pain, restricted breathing and these brutal coughing fits. The disease would gradually run its course, killing her by degrees, but it might be as much as another three or four years before it finally polished her off.

“They were just tent hospitals,” she continued. “Describing them as crude would be paying them a compliment. Sometimes it would come down to medical techniques like out of Earth-That-Was history. You know, sawing off ruined limbs without any anesthetic beyond a shot of bourbon, which we also used as disinfectant. That bad. But we made do, us doctors and nurses. Had to. It was an endless parade of misery, Mr. Cobb. Men, women — kids, even, scarcely older than my Allister — being brought in on stretchers, screaming, riddled with bullet wounds, guts mangled, maybe an arm hanging on by a shred of flesh, some of ’em pleading to be put out of their misery…” She shuddered at the recollection. “Alliance put those Browncoats through the mincing machine and didn’t even think twice about it. That’s what we were fighting against, that level of slaughter, that level of callousness. Shoulda won, deserved to, but I guess it was not to be.”

“Kind of an unpopular opinion to hold,” Jayne said, “place like this, on a day like this. I ain’t heard nothing but abuse against the Browncoats all evening.”

Barbara gave vent to a bitter laugh, which degenerated into yet another fit of coughing.

“Abuse?” she said. “That ain’t all. There’ve been rumors…”

“Mom, I think maybe you’ve said enough already,” said Allister. “You don’t need to go bothering Mr. Cobb with any of that other stuff.”

Jayne himself didn’t much want to be bothered with any of that other stuff either. He was chafing to get going. But the woman was desperately sick. Least he could do was fake interest. “Rumors?” he said.

“You tell him, Allister,” Barbara said. “You’re the one that overheard it.”

“Weren’t nothing,” Allister said after a moment’s hesitation. “Just some guys talking. I was fetching some groceries, you see, and—”

“No, you weren’t, Allister,” his mother snorted. “Fetching groceries! I know what you were up to. You were picking pockets.”

“Was not!” her son protested.

“Don’t think I don’t know how you help us make ends meet, boy. I see how you come home sometimes and you’ve got cash in your hand.”

“Which I earned, doing odd jobs.”

“For who?”

“For people. Just… people.”

“Just because I’m sick doesn’t mean I’m blind,” Barbara said. “You’re only telling me that to protect me. That cash is ill-gotten gains. I see it in your face every time, that little furtive look. A mother can tell these things. I don’t condone it, but I don’t disapprove neither. You’re tryin’ to do your best, seeing as I can’t make a living outta nursing anymore.”

“Say,” said Jayne to Allister, “those two guys who attacked you at…” He almost said at Taggart’s. “In the street,” he amended. “Had you just tried to rob them?”

Allister looked sheepish.

“I knew it!” Barbara declared. “You weren’t mugged at all, Allister. You were pickpocketin’ and you got yourself caught.”

Allister looked even more sheepish. “Well, this ain’t relevant anyways,” he said, deflecting. “Jayne wanted to hear about the rumors.”

“This conversation is far from over, young man,” his mother said. “If you’re going to go around committing thievery, at least try not to get hurt doing it. Speaking of which… Mr. Cobb, there’s some antiseptic cream over there, and some cotton swabs. While I’m up, I may as well set to fixing Allister’s face.”

Jayne brought over the materials, and Allister submitted to his mother’s ministrations, which she halted every so often in order to turn aside and cough. Jayne was keener than ever to leave, but he felt he had to stay at least until Allister told him what the rumors about Browncoats were. Politeness again, coupled with a glimmer of curiosity. Could it be the Independents weren’t as noble-hearted and clean-handed as some folk, namely Mal and Zoë, liked to paint them? That’d be ammunition for Jayne, next time those two got on their high horses about the war.

What Allister said, however, was nothing like what Jayne had been anticipating.

“So this man I was shadowing…”

“With a mind to liftin’ his wallet, no doubt,” Barbara interjected.

“Shadowing,” Allister continued, still vainly maintaining the pretense that he was as pure as the driven snow. “This was about a week ago. He met up with another man in the street, and they talked awhile and I just kinda hung back, biding my time. Wasn’t eavesdropping, exactly, but I couldn’t help hearing what they were saying. Conversation turned to Alliance Day, ’cause it was coming up, and the first man said something about how the Browncoats won’t be celebrating, and the second man laughed and said the Browncoats have even less reason to celebrate this year because it seems there’s a whole bunch of people on Persephone who think they’re nothing better than war criminals and who are going around bringing them to justice. Kind of like a vigilante movement, or even a lynch mob. That’s why you need to be extra careful these days what you say about the war, Mom, and what you did in it.”

“When you’re as sick as I am,” Barbara said, “kinda doesn’t matter so much what you say or don’t say.”

“Matters to me,” said her son. “At any rate, those two guys seemed to think it wasn’t just talk. Those vigilantes were real. Both of them thought it was pretty funny, too. Browncoats getting attacked for being Browncoats. Like it was no more’n they deserved.”

“They say anything else?” said Jayne.

Allister shrugged. “That’s as much of it as I recall. Conversation moved on to other things.”

“Might be gossip,” Jayne opined. “Might just be the one guy spinning the other a line of bullcrap.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, though, if there are Persephonians out there who’ve got a mad-on for former Browncoats,” said Barbara. “In case you haven’t noticed, Mr. Cobb, the majority of folks on this planet are misguided souls who think the Alliance winning was a godsend. They’re happy to grovel to the victors, and I guess you could say targetin’ the losers for punishment is a form of groveling. Maybe the ultimate in groveling.”

“Huh.” Jayne processed what he’d just learned in the manner in which he always processed things, which is to say slowly and tentatively, like someone picking their way barefoot over wet, slippery rocks. There was, he reckoned, the possibility of a connection between Mal’s mysterious disappearance and the existence of a group of anti-Browncoat vigilantes. Equally, there might easily be another explanation for where Mal had gotten to, and the vigilante rumors were just that, rumors. Second-hand rumors, indeed, given they were reaching him via someone else, namely Allister.

He shifted his feet. It was way past time he made tracks. “Well, been nice meetin’ you an’ all,” he said, “but…”

“But you should be going,” said Barbara.

“Yeah. I really do have business to attend to.”

“Thank you again, Mr. Cobb, for lookin’ after Allister and bringin’ him back.”

“Please,” Jayne said, “call me Jayne.”

“I think, Jayne, that you may be a good man,” Barbara said. “I think, deep down, you have compassion. That’s a rare thing.”

“I think you may be confusin’ me with someone else,” Jayne replied gruffly, but as he left the apartment there was a quiet and rather sad smile on his lips, nestled amid the rough bristles of his goatee.

He clicked his comm link.

“Zoë?”

No reply.

He clapped the device against his palm, hoping he might joggle it back into life. Then he tried calling Zoë again, with the same lack of result.

Damn contraptions. What good was technology if it didn’t work like it was supposed to?

Swiveling around to get his bearings, Jayne set off towards the dock where Serenity was berthed.