I hadn’t even realized he was alive when I rucked him back to the station. Dead of winter, covered in snow and blue as the ocean. Cold to the touch, then all of a sudden he’s wiggling on my back, grunting curses and throwing up red. Damn near dropped him, the only thing I could think of at the time was to pat his ass and tell him he’s safe.
It took five days for me to learn his name. It wasn’t as big a deal when he told me. He wasn’t infamous yet.
“Tuck Haggardy, I escaped Solace, I guess,” then his coma took him again.
I threw out a lot of stew waiting for that young man’s story. What I got wasn’t what I wanted either. Should have known.
“Solace is fifty miles east. You’re on Shadowfall, in my ranger station.” That was the first thing I said to him.
The boy nearly died from laughter; I thought he’d pop a stitch.
“Damn, I figured the mouth of hell would have been closer to that shit hole.”
I got angry. I worked hard to protect this mountain.
“Mouth of hell?”
“Yeah, I’m sure it was close to where you found me. That’s where I come from.”
Of course, I was confused. His whole face was black and blue, swollen, split-open and leaking. He could have been telling the truth for all I knew. He looked like Hell— Hell may have been where he came from.
I got up from my chair set next to his cot and crossed the lookout, opened the cabinet, and brought my bottle of rye.
“That’ll help. Then you can have some food.”
He drank greedily.
“That’s all we got, so pick your lane.”
Once he was full he set it down next to him and said thank you.
“I can tell I owe you somethin’… I got nothing’ to give though.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t need anything from you. Don’t burden yourself. Just tell me your story and we’ll call it square. Not tonight, but when you’re ready. Snows packing in and we got a few nights to find out where you come from.”
It only took a day to hear the whole thing. This is what I wrote down afterward. So I could remember.
Sometimes I wish I had thrown it in the fire.
***
Course, it started like everything else.
Money.
I didn’t have it. Someone told me I could find some.
Headed out west after I picked the pocket of some old timer in Chariff, sixteen nuggets of gold in a torn envelope from someone named Carlton.
Only took one nugget for the river boat out there.
Gamblers took a few more.
Bandits for the rest on the last leg. Killed the showgirls and cut my calf muscles so I couldn’t walk back.
Called it funny.
I didn’t think so. They were pretty.
I crawled most of it. The irony… we were almost there.
The last five hundred yards the Preacher carried me. Like you did I guess.
That’s what preachers are supposed to do—help those in need.
“The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down—Psalm 146:8.”
That was the first one he taught me. Be grateful, it could be worse. I didn’t know any better. I believed him.
“Your path hath led you here, opened you up—you’ve bled on my threshold and taken my nourishment. Now that you’re here, it is my duty to inoculate you against the fever of wickedness.
“But you must submit. Obey to your lord thy god.”
But I didn’t I much have a choice, did I? I wasn’t walking out of there anytime soon.
And by the time I could, I didn’t see a reason to.
I could have tripped over it on the way out.
You didn’t do that.
You just sit there and listen. Make me breakfast, feed me whiskey.
Why?
Hmm.
Well, as I gained my strength back, I became more useful. Chorin’, running boxes from the grocer to homesteads. I kept busy.
Sometimes the preacher would make special requests.
Sometimes he’d get angry.
And I just let him. It was my penance.
Payment.
As you can see, I ain’t no kid no more.
I was there for a while. Part of Solace I guess.
I never felt peaceful. Not ever.
Course, I wasn’t the one the town was named for.
Some people don’t live in a place, they just help make it run. When they can’t no more, they just get replaced.
That’s the thing about badness, once you got a bit of it, there’s no pulling it back out. Barbwire ‘round your soul. Once the banker started coming to the church for late night meetings.
That’s when I picked something up that had been laying at my feet quietly.
There’s something wrong when the bank and the church are the only brick buildings in a boomtown.
“God is good. God is great. God puts gold in the offering plate.”
And I told them miners do. The town folk do.
And they ignored me.
So I told them in church. I told them everything.
They should have listened to me, instead of the bullshit the Preacher was spewing.
He’s a black magic preacher.
And I’m just a thief.
And the whole town beat the shit out of me.
Damn that whiskey startin’ to make me feel better.
***
“How’re your legs now?” The only thing I could think to ask. His puffy eyes looked at me.
“What?
“You’re going back. It’s fifty miles, I’m not carrying you.”
It was a statement of fact so I said it plainly.
The young man didn’t speak for a bit—considered his next statement—knowing being this naked with another man in his condition was dangerous. At least that’s what I think was happening.
He could have just been summoning the strength to reply.
“They’re fine—Preacher took good care of me.”
I found myself in a spot I didn’t like. There was something about his stillness, even though he looked like a thousand year old saltwater barn it made him terrifying.
“What do you plan on doing?”
This was what he wanted to talk about. After another sip, he coughed and said: “I told them if they send me to Hell, I’d come back, and Hell was coming with me.”
I didn’t blame him. I’d want to burn it down too, at his age. I remember when my life was a small price for revenge. I remember Haw Haw and One Time staring down that terrified kid, knives out, ready to skin him for sleeping on the fire line.
“You’re not worried about salvation? Is your soul worth the satisfaction?”
That’s when I realized Tuck only had half his teeth remaining.
“That’s not my concern anymore. It’s gone already, how do you think I got back here?”
“That’s not true boy. You’ve got a choice. You can let them collapse on each other. I’ll give you a job. You can work your penance protecting something instead of destroying it.”
Outside, the snow fell softly on cedars.
“There are some things you can’t forgive. Twisting faith for profit. That’s evil. I’ve seen evil. It helped me see what I wasn’t. All of this, my face. My legs. Everything…
“I ain’t Job,” Tuck said.”
“Telling on yourself a bit there, aren’t you?”
“Hell’s that supposed to mean?”
I tried to meet his eyes. This was important. I needed to be heard.
“Job was chosen by god. That what you’re saying?”
“I am the righteous hand of god. The devil they forgot,” sent shivers down my spine. Who was this boy.
“So you kill ’em all then, or you gonna leave the women and children, devil?”
“Yes.”
I’d known killers, mountain men protecting their traps, men who’d been told to kill for their country and given a rifle.
I’d come close in a bar about Tuck’s age.
But I’d never had this look of hurt and fury that sat bandaged before me, sipping his whisky and speaking of murder.
“Now I have a choice, don’t I?” It was a mistake to say it out loud to the man who just crawled out of hell, but the company had afforded me some grace.
“You saved an executioner. That’s what you’re getting at.”
“No. I saved a man. What he does after that is his business. Your choices don’t affect me, Tuck. You are the master of your destiny.”
“It’s a shame I hadn’t crawled to Shadowfall. Things would have been different.”
“Definitely, but you made it anyway. That’s what matters now. You don’t ever have to think about Solace again. You can outlive the bastard. You could spit on his grave.
But not if you burn that town to the ground.”
“How many more people does he have to enslave to earn his punishment?”
“He’s not an infection to be burned out. The people in that town are just like you. Under his thumb.
Don’t commit suicide for them.”
It was at that moment Tuck lost all respect for me. It was undeniable in his eyes—all traces of humanity vaporized like slush on the stovetop.
“I said something. They didn’t. We are not the same.”
Then Tuck stood, somehow… and for a moment I was completely terrified.
“Thank you for your kindness. It looks like the snow has stopped.”
Then he left, using my spare wool blanket. I didn’t even think to follow him. It’s not in my habit to chase after things I can’t understand.
Like you know, three days later he strung that preacher up in the town square, saving him last as the town was engulfed in flames.
That’s the story I heard that next fire season, told around small campfires by my crew. Only one person left, a boy whose luck is still to be determined.
Can I say I tried my best? I’ve lost sleep with that. A good thing leads to a tragedy. It was a miracle that boy had survived—frozen solid and alone in the wilderness. I spent five days building the strength that leveled a city.
Guilt is not a thing one should assign themself.
But we do it naturally.
[Image Credit : Photo by Donald Merrill on Unsplash]
by 
They are currently transcribing a collection of American Gothic tales, testing antique America against our new reality.
Please, partake at my Substack. https://substack.com/@kylebigham
Latest posts by Murdered by Crows (see all)
- Hell’s Coming With Me - June 26, 2026
0 Comments