Friday, December 26, 2008


Pale Horse



When storm clouds rolled in from the North Hassle always lost his nerve to drink. He never lost his nerve to kill. Killing is an exercise of his power over others, while drinking merely sapped his control in an all round fashion. Dark clouds rolling in always made him feel like a helpless dead man with his casket closing over him only able to watch the last remnants of light wink out.

He stumbled in the dark over the step in front of his cottage. Northwest Arkansas gets dark and misty when cool air comes rolling over the mountains from the North. Some folks recently began likening it to the aggression of the Yankees into the South.

Hassle is an evil man. Not born that way, but nurtured evil by despicable parents. He had been named Matthew Dobbs, but shortly after his parents realized they didn’t want children and resented him they began calling him Hassle. They felt it appropriate.

Hassle, when he was twelve, watched his father beat his mother to death one night in a drunken rage. His father cried for days after burying her. When his father quit crying, Hassle shot him early in the morning as he was walking into the barn, ever since Hassle had lived as an evil man.

He wasn’t the flashy kind of evil that ends up on the front page of the paper in some big city back east. Hassle’s evil was like a deep dark pool in a bog with something just under the surface waiting to take any passerby. He mostly waited for people to fall into his evil and then he would take them mercilessly. Perhaps the only other person in these parts of Arkansas more evil than Hassle is his wife Matti.

Hassle entered his cottage on the edge of town and took off his boots. As he entered the small parlor to the left of the front door he looked up to see his wife sitting upright in her rocker stone dead with a gaping hole in her chest and pieces of her heart on the wall and floor behind her. Her knitting lay in her lap with her hands still clutching the needles.

She gazed at him with glazed eyes and a shocked but mocking sort of smile, the sort of smile that always creeped into her mouth when she foresaw his folly before it happened to him. To her right, sitting in his chair, is a young man named Craig Patterson dressed in Confederate grays loosely holding a carbine. Hassle looked at his wife one more time in contempt.

You bitch.

As if reading his thoughts Craig briefly glanced over at the woman he had shot two hours ago and then leveled his gaze back on Hassle. Hassle sighed deeply and leaned against the doorway.

“You fightin for the Confederacy huh?”

“Yes sir, riding in the cavalry till couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh yeah, did ya lose your nerve an run off? Come to get your due while all the fighin’s goin on?”

“No sir, not at all.”

Hassle studied his face again trying to recognize him.

“We met before?”

“No.”

“I cause you some kinda trouble?”

“No.”

“Then what the hell are you doin in my house?”

“I came for the reckoning.”

Hassle thought this over for a moment.

“If your trouble’s with my wife you done blown her heart out already. An if all’s well for you, well, you can just walk on outa here if you want.” Wouldn’t that just kill her if she wasn’t already dead. For her to think she saw his imminent death only to have the reaper walk out the door in front of her cold dead body with him watchin the whole thing.

“No, sir, it’s not just your wife I came for you too.”

“Well shit son what the hell you waitin for I’m standin right here.”

“Your days are up, but you still got some words left so I’ll just let you say whatever you need to till you run out.”

“What you mean like confession or somethin?” Hassle was getting annoyed at this point.

“Somethin like that.”

Hassle thought for a long time. He had always wondered what he’d think about when his time came, now it was here all he could think about was how ugly his life had been.

“Well, I don’t suppose its much use for me huh? I magine I done used up Jesus’s mercy and worked him right into a spittin rage huh?”

Craig pursed his lips in thought for a moment.

“I don’t suppose it ever really runs out.”

Hassle looked around the room at all the things his lying and stealing had gotten him. None seemed so valuable anymore, not that he ever really enjoyed things anyway. He just liked stealing and killing.

“What are you talking about a reckoning? Are you with the law?”

“You could say that. I was in a special cavalry dispatch in the army. We were crossing into the union and raiding their supply lines and trying to kill officers in their camps. One night it got real hot and everything went to chaos. I sprang upon a union officer. I took him off his horse and he hit the ground laughing. I was so shocked to hear anyone laughing in the middle of a gunfight I just stared at him stunned like. He looked at me and said, ‘Son, you’re the only man to ever touch me an live.’ He just kept laughing real loud slapping the ground on his hands and knees. He said ‘Hell, you took me clean off my horse. I’m sorry, you don’t understand do you? I’m death son. You just knocked death off his pale horse!” He laughed and laughed at that. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do. Somehow I just knew he wasn’t lyin. This whole time bullets are flying all around us and he’s just laughin, watchin me waitin to see what I do. Then He finally stops laughing and says ‘Well what are you gonna do now that you’ve wrestled death off his horse?’

I thought about it for a moment, and then I said “Well if I can’t kill you…

‘No you can’t do that’

Well if I can’t kill you I’m gonna at least take your horse and your guns.

‘Alright, you can take them. But I’m telling you that horse is on a mission, a reckoning until the apocalypse. If you ride him, you’re on his mission.’

Then I was really shocked. You see this wasn’t just death’s horse, this was the pale horse form the apocalypse, straight out of revelations. I said,

Alright, how do I do that?

He said, ‘Well son, you’ll need one of my eyes in order to recognize the harvest.’
Then quick as a bullet he sprung up and tackled me. He held me down and ripped out my right eye, my shootin eye, and then ripped out one of his and put his eye where my eye used to be. I screamed out in terrible pain but before I knew it, it was over and I could see, only different than before.

He was still on top of me smiling with one of his eyes missing and dripping blood all on my coat. He let me up and said, ‘Well, you better be on your way. There is a great harvest and now you are the sole sower.’

Then I got on that pale horse and started ridin. Ended up here. I knew when I saw you and your wife I’s gonna rid the earth of yalls wicked ways.”
Hassle had spent his life being unimpressed by the things he encountered but this story profoundly struck him.

“You know, I’ve never much liked this life, and its never really…”

The sound of the carbine firing cut Hassle’s words off abruptly. Hassles fell back into the hall way against the wall clutching his chest gasping for air. He couldn’t yell, and didn’t really want to anyway. He slid to the floor and fell over as Craig rose from the chair and walked into the hallway to stand over him.

“Your words were up Hassle.”

Craig pointed the carbine at Hassle’s head.

“Now your time is up too.”

1 comment:

tito said...

nicely done there, flex