The Gun Fight

Chapter Nineteen

It was nearly midnight. The brass hands of the hall clock hovered a breath apart as Jane Coles closed the door behind herself and moved silently along the hall rug.

At the door to Robby’s room, she hesitated a moment, holding the robe closed at her throat. She stared down at her frail fingers curled around the cool metal of the doorknob and there was a slight clicking in her throat as she swallowed.

Then, after a moment, her hand slipped from the knob and fell against her leg and there was a loosening of muscles around her mouth. She turned away.

After a step, she hesitated again, her face tight with nervous indecision. She stood there silently in the cool hall, looking with hopeless eyes at the door to her and Matthew’s bedroom, visualizing the immobile bulk of her husband stretched out on the bed, his mouth lax, the firm authority of it gone with the teeth that lay submerged in water on the bedside table, his snores pulsing rhythmically in his throat.

Her lips pressed together suddenly and she turned back. Her fingers closed over the doorknob and, with silent quickness, she entered Robby’s bedroom.

The pale moonlight fell across the empty bed.

Jane Coles caught her breath and felt a sudden harsh sensation in her stomach as if her insides were falling. Then she turned and hurried out of the dark room and down the hall and stairs, a cold hand clamped over her heart.

In the downstairs hall she stopped, then, abruptly, leaned against the wall and listened with a drained weakness to the sound of Robby clearing his throat in the kitchen, the attendant sound of a cup being placed onto its saucer.

After a moment, she drew in a long breath and pushed away from the wall.

As she came through the swinging door, Robby looked up with a nervous jerk of his head, the dark pupils of his eyes expanding suddenly. She saw his Adam’s apple move and a nervous smile twitch on his lips.

“Oh . . . it’s you, mother,” he said.

Jane Coles smiled at the only person in the world she really loved, for some reason, never having been able to feel the devotion toward Jimmy that she did for her older son.

“Can’t you sleep, darling?” she asked, walking up to the table where he sat, seeing a thin drift of steam rising from the coffee cup in front of him.

Robby swallowed. “No, I . . .” He didn’t finish or pretend he had a finish for the sentence. He lowered his eyes and stared into the cup.

Jane Coles shuddered. She loved Robby so much and yet she could never speak to him nor get him to speak to her. There was always a barrier between them. Maybe, Jane Coles had sometimes thought, it was because Robby needed someone strong to love and encourage him and she was weak, vacillating, without resources. No wonder then he couldn’t confide in her and seek out her judgment. No wonder then he could do no more than love her as his mother and avoid looking for anything else in her.

“Are you hungry, son?” she asked.

“No . . . mother, I’m all right.”

She stood there, wordless, the smile fixed to her tired face, wanting desperately to speak to him, to have him need her sympathy and love.

Impulsively, she drew out a chair and Robby looked up in poorly veiled surprise as the chair leg grated on the floor. His mother smiled quickly at him and sat down, feeling the pulsebeat throbbing in her wrists. The sickness of despair was coming over her again. Robby was her own son, the only one she really cared for and yet she could not speak of a situation which might lead him to his death.

She swallowed and clasped her hands in her lap until the blood was squeezed from them. She had to speak of it.

“Son,” she said, her voice a strengthless sound.

Robby looked up at her. “What, mother?”

“You . . .” She looked down quickly at her white hands, then up again. “You’ve . . . made up your mind?”

“About what, mother?” he asked quietly.

She didn’t say anything because she knew he was aware of what she spoke about. She looked at him intently, feeling as if the room and the house had disappeared and there were only the two of them sitting in some immeasurable void together—waiting.

“Yes,” he said then and she saw how his fingers twitched restively at the porcelain cup handle. He opened his mouth a little as if he were going to go on, clarifying, explaining. “Yes,” he said again.

Mrs. Coles felt as if someone had submerged her in icy, numbing water. She sat there staring at her son, feeling a complete inability in herself, feeling absolutely helpless.

She blinked then, forcing through herself the demand to think, to act.

“Because of Miss Winston’s . . . visit?”

Robby turned his head away a moment as if he wanted to escape but, after a few seconds, he looked back at her briefly, then at his cup.

“Because of everything,” he said.

She stopped the trembling of her lips before she spoke again. “Everything?” she asked.

Robby took a long drink of the coffee and she watched the convulsive movements of his throat muscles. She was about to tell him not to drink coffee or he wouldn’t sleep but then she got the sudden idea that if he didn’t sleep and was exhausted the next day, his father might not demand anything of him. She remained silent.

Robby clinked down the cup heavily.

“Mother, it’s got to be done,” he said, his voice tightly controlled. “There’s no other way.”

The dread again, complete and overwhelming, like a crawling of snakes over her and in her. “But . . . why?” she heard herself asking faintly. “Surely, there’s . . .”

Robby twisted his shoulders and she stopped talking, feeling a bolt of anguish at the realization that she was only making it worse for him.

“Mother, there’s no other way,” he told her in an agitated voice. “If I don’t do it, Louisa will never be able to lift her head again in Kellville.”

That’s his father talking, the thought was like an electric shock in her brain. She stared at him helplessly a moment but then knew suddenly she had to go on because, if she didn’t, his decision would remain the same.

“But . . . John Benton didn’t admit to doing what . . .” her shoulders twitched nervously, “. . . what they said he did.”

“It’s not enough, mother,” Robby said, almost angrily now. “Can’t you see that? The whole town believes he did it and . . .” he punched a fist on his leg, “. . . and Louisa is suffering for it. I have to speak for her, mother, can’t you see that I have to?”

She sat in the chair shivering, staring at his tense young face, knowing that he was trying desperately to hang on to his resolve, feeling, in her body, a twisting and knotting of sick terror for him.

“No . . .” she murmured, hardly realizing it herself. In her mind a dozen different questions flung about in a weave of stricken panic. But you didn’t ask Louisa if it were true, did you? Why should John Benton do such a thing? Why do you believe everything they tell you? Why do you let them all make your decision for you? Robby, it’s your life! There’s only one! A rushing torrent of words she could never speak to him in a hundred years.

“What are . . . what are you going to do?” she asked, without meaning to.

They were both silent, looking at each other and Jane Coles could hear the clock in the hall ticking away the moments.

Then her son said, “There’s only one thing.”

Her hand reached out instinctively and closed over his as a rush of horror enveloped her.

“No, darling!” she begged him. “Please don’t! Please!”

Robby bit his lip and there was a strained sound in his throat as if he had felt himself about to cry and fought it away. He drew his hand from her quickly, his face hardening and, for a hideous moment, Jane Coles saw the face of her husband reflected on Robby’s pale features.

“There’s nothing else, I said,” he told her tensely.

“But not with—!” She broke off suddenly, afraid even of the word.

“Yes,” he said and she could see clearly how hard he was trying to believe it himself. “There’s no other way a man like him would understand. It’s all he deserves. He won’t apologize or . . .” He saw the straining fear on her face and his voice snapped angrily. “I believe Louisa! She wouldn’t lie to me! Not about something like this. It’s my duty to . . . to defend her honor.”

“Oh dear God!” Jane Coles slumped over, pressing her shaking hands to her face. “Dear God, it’s your father talking, it’s not you. It’s him, him! Oh, dear God, dear God . . .” The tears ran between her trembling fingers.

Robby sat there stiffly, staring at his mother with half-frightened eyes, desperately afraid that he was going to cry too. He leaned back in the chair looking at her with an expression in his eyes that shifted from resolution to pitying contrition and back to resolute strength again.

“You don’t have to cry, mother,” he said, feeling a twinge at the cold sound of his voice. “I’m not afraid of John Benton. I . . . I’m not a little boy anymore, mother, I’m twenty-one.”

His mother looked up with an anguished sob. “You’re not old enough for this!” she cried, almost a fierce anger in her voice. “You mustn’t fight him, son, you mustn’t!”

She kept crying and, for some strange reason, Robby felt suddenly remorseless and cold toward his sobbing mother. There was no strength in her, the thought crept vaguely through his brain, there was only weakness and surrender. He was a man now and he had a job to do. He was going to do it no matter what happened.

He wished it was morning so he could buckle on his gun and get it over with. He found to his astonishment that he actually wasn’t afraid of Benton now, that he wanted only to get the job over with. Louisa was his intended bride; someday she would be his wife. His father was right; he had to defend her, now and always, it was his responsibility. When men stopped fighting for their women, the society would fail, he was certain of it.

“Go to bed, mother,” he said in a flat, emotionless tone, “there’s nothing to cry about.”

Jane Coles sat slumped on her chair, still weeping, her thin shoulders palsied with sobbing. Robby sat looking at her as he would look at a stranger. He felt cold inside, hollowed out by determination, drained of fear, empty of all but the one resolution he knew he had to obey.

He had said tomorrow. Tomorrow it would be.

Slowly, consciously, his fingers closed on the table top; they made a hard, white fist.

Twelve twenty-one, the end of the second day.