((The following scene was written, edited, and posted with permission from the ever gracious Tag ))
His working hours begin before the sun rises. When the morning still has a chill on it and when the house still slumbers, most of the time. That was how those sorts of manual labor jobs went. No one wanted to work in the heat of day, especially in Summer, so the working shifts started early and ended early. By mid-afternoon he was home, minding Penny and Ame while Madison worked the bar. It was only part time that he helped and he wasn't scheduled for busing that day at Charlie's or as many as he had been in the past since Charlie had been hired.
Nearly the last leg of the afternoon, when the sun had just started to set, he was walking with Penny towards the front of the house. At a distance he may have seemed misshapen but that was due to the cloth sling that kept Ame cradled to his chest. One of his arms was twisted back with the elbow pointed vertical and three limp creatures dangling from it. Maybe rabbits. Penny, who was around eleven, walked ahead of him stiffly. Her eyes were angry and her bony arms were crossed with a fierce resolve over her chest. There were tear lines down her cheeks that no longer sparkled but it was the dust that clung to the old riverbeds which gave away the fact they had been there. He stopped at the bottom of the three stairs that led up the porch while Penny scaled them all with long, coltish legs.
Glenn had been planning on paying the man a visit for some time. Since before the night at the party, in fact. Though in his bouts of madness his reasons were ever changing and fluid, he had recently resolved himself to seek Tag out with a clearer purpose. He was entirely unsure how events would unfold, if he could be trusted to keep his own admittedly poor temper in check, let alone what the other man might do. He seemed a calm sort but they spoke only a few words together in the time since he had returned from beyond the pale to make Madison's life miserable again. So he waited and waited, prowling streets and bars in the early hours of the morning when he was the lone patron until noon came and went and he figured it was time to get a move on.
He knew where they lived. He?d seen it more than once when his mind had been taken over by darker impulses, and so he found the place with no confusion but held back for a spell, seeing Tag with children he did not recognize. He knew the smallest to be Ame and assumed the older to be Tag?s own daughter, whose name he never learned. The sight of them made his stomach turn over and his throat catch for a moment, children were complications he would never be suited to. Maida was a testament to that.
There was an exchange between him and Penny. He said very little but she saw quite a bit, her hands spiraling out in the air, pointing at him. Something about "not fair" was being said, sharply in the air. He said something to her, but it seemed more like a directive than actual conversation. Her lips flattened in a line, she spoke again. Tag weathered the storm and at last when he did not speak to her final outburst, she turned and went inside, slipping off her shoes and shutting the door behind her. He cleared his throat, twisting his arm so that the limp furry bodies slumped against the top step of the porch. The sling was pulled and the bundle was set away from the edge of the porch and down.
With one leg propped on the bottom second stair he reached into his side belt and withdrew a knife, carefully working the tip in a few select places. The rabbits had been field dressed at the snares and it was then and there that he would on slipping them out of their pelts. There was a moment, briefly, that he seemed to think he was being watched. His eyes lifted but, not immediately seeing anything, they dropped back to the task at hand. He was hoping to finish it before the evening swallowed everything.
Glenn watched the exchange and wondered at what he might do in Tag?s shoes. His own father had not been prone to let such outbursts persist and more than once, Glenn and his brothers had been on the receiving end of a belt, or--as they grew older--a fist. The memory was blinked away in an instant. He came down the lane then and made sure that he was directly in front of the man he was approaching, lest he be accused of trying to sneak up on him. His hands were at his sides. He wore white shirt with rolled sleeves and some jeans. His belt held a holster and a gun. He didn?t speak but stopped some ten or so feet away and just watched the knife in Tag?s hand.
The steps announced him and he glanced up, but finished peeling off the skin of the first rabbit and laying it flat on the porch. He said what was obvious, "Madison isn't here." Glenn had never been interested in pursuing him directly. Perhaps this had something to do with the Soiree. He pointed the end of the blade down at the rabbit, "The skin must come off tonight." It seemed a motion to excuse why he then picked up the second one instead of giving Glenn his full attention.
It was there, though. A glance at Ame and then back to the gunslinger. He had removed a rabbit or two from a snare and their skin enough that, like a practiced hand a knitted, he didn't have to keep his gaze loyal to what he was doing once some key points were checked.
The gunslinger nodded at the statement and took a couple more steps forward. He drew his gun and ejected the magazine with his thumb, then racked the slide back to eject the round that was carried in the chamber, which he snatched out of the air and pocketed. He then tossed the gun and magazine on the ground beside him and continued his approach. "Ain't hear to see Madison," he explained. "Came to talk to you, actually," he watched the other man work at the rabbits and the knife.
Upon being closer he looked as though it had been a long day. Ame wiggled, made one half-grumble of a sound and then settled. When he'd moved Tag watched him, breath held like parents often are when they aren't sure if their child is winding up for a cry. Now wasn't the time he needed Ame to cry, and for the time being the outcry was held at bay. His attention went down to his hands for the final slip-off of the rabbit skin. Fleshy side up, beside the other on the stair.
"What can I do for you?" His dark gaze was on Glenn, concerned. Maybe it was easier to be concerned instead of cold when a gun and its magazine were set aside. He glanced down to check that the cut around the rabbit's paw was clear and then started to slip the third and final creature from its coat.
"Need to talk to you," he said, and it was clear through the grit of his teeth that this situation made Glenn uncomfortable. A part of him hated Tag, for obvious reasons, but also for his ability to sit there and be calm in spite of everything he knew Glenn Douglas to be. "About the party and everything, and everything before and after that," he explained. "I come to..." he searched for the words and found that he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do. Glenn had never attempted to make peace with anyone before. The old way was to shoot a man you disagreed with, as far as he knew.
"I'm listening."
The door opened, though, and there was Penny. In her hands was a large pot that seemed full of water. She froze when she saw Glenn, looking from him to her father. The surprise had been enough to shake her out of the upset pouting that had occurred before and to focus on the important matter of this stranger being at their home. She knew her father and Madison had started being more outgoing, inviting over friends, but this didn't feel like a friend. She approached anyway, determined to smile as she set down the pot which was half full with salted water.
"Penny, this is Glenn, an old friend of Madison's." The introduction was brief, cut short by his indication to Ame, "Will you take him in and check his diaper? It's getting close to time."
"Sure." She smiled and scooped up her baby brother. One last wary look over the bone of her shoulder to im before she stepped inside. The rectangle of light that illuminated them died. Most everything seemed blue, now.
Glenn froze when Penny stepped out and he did his best to not look directly at the young girl. He watched the exchange with a better understanding of the man before him, or so he believed, and nearly sighed with relief when she took the baby in with her. He thought to inquire about Penny and her age, maybe to strike up small talk that would help him ease into things. But Glenn was a man better suited to taking a problem head on rather than trying to find a work around, so he said, "I'm here to apologize. To bury the hatchet or whatever the hell you want to call it. To reach out, Tag."
"Do you have many hatchets?"
Tag lifted up one of the rabbits and started peeling the tight sheets of muscles off the bone and putting it into the pot. Soaking rabbit meat in salt water helped it taste less gamey when it was cooked. The heads and feet were in tact so Tag only fooled with the major muscle groups. With fields rabbits that size, the quantity of meat was not overly impressive. Afterward he stepped away from the house to one of the bins about ten yards from the porch steps and dropped them in. It seemed while he did it that his knife disappeared back into his pocket. Mostly bones with some lean areas remaining. When he returned he went about the final task, which was stringing up the skins on empty wooden circles so that the skin was taut. If Glenn was anything like Madison, the activity wouldn't have been unnerving. He only pinned six points of it, tomorrow he and Penny would reviewer the finer details of converting a rabbit into a skin.
The three were leaned up against the inside of the railing before he sat, at the top stair of his porch. If Glenn had secretly been wanting the dark man to stare at him directly, the wish was now being granted.
The question made Glenn smirk. "Buddy, you don't know the half of it," he said, and the thought seemed to encourage him some. He took another step forward. "I imagine how must see me," he began. "Shit, I see myself the same way you do, probably. I ain't a proud man, at any rate, and I come to say I know I've done wrong by Madison and you. I can't take back what I've done or said and...well, I had my own reasons for doing them, twisted as they were, but that don't make it right," he said all this only after Tag had given him his full attention. He seemed more at ease under the direct gaze of the other man than he had when he was but a distraction from Tag's chores, none of which seemed to upset him in their grisly nature.
"If there are so many hatchets.... why bury this one?" His elbows were on his knees, he was unaffected by Glenn's growing closeness. He wondered, briefly, if he would have the same prairie in his clothes and written on his skin as she did, or if life had written itself in him differently than it had her.
He had reasons but that didn't make it right. There was still the smears of rabbits blood on his fingertips which, at this point, were impossible to discern from shadows or grim in the dark.
?Because Madison's important to me, and I wanna do right by her," Glenn shrugged and stopped moving, shoving his hands into his pockets. "How much do you know?"
Tag's head tilted to the side as necessary so that Glenn could pour his voice down one of his ears. The apology was for himself, to relieve his guilt about the expression of his reasoning and to set things right with Madison. He wasn't certain, then, why it was that Glenn thought his visit had anything to do with him. The man's listed purpose didn't even include him, he was collateral damage to making Glenn feel better.
"I'm still learning."
"Well good luck there, because I don't think either her or I have the full head of things," he admitted. "She told me you were a good man," he worded it like somewhere between a question and a statement. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and slipped one between his lips, a lighter following. He had already struck flame before pausing to look at Tag. "You mind if I smoke?"
His hand rolled in the air, motioning that he could have a smoke even though he'd taken a half motion to already do so. He turned to pick up the pot and spoke to Glenn, "I'll be right back." A motion with the pot to indicate, more clearly, that he was handling the situation. All he did was place it in the fridge and then wash his hands. When he returned it was with a short word spoken to Penny, two glasses and a bottle. It had been a gift that Fin had given them. Some sort of liquor from Scotland, he believed it was from his hometown. The seat at the top stair was regained, "You can have one, if you want." He poured himself a glass and then thought for a moment before speaking, "Do you think the hatchet is buried?"
While Tag went inside he finished lighting the cigarette and took a long drag from the cigarette. He stood outside that house and it made him feel very, very small. He didn't care for that feeling and so put it out of mind as best he could and instead considered how best to proceed. When Tag returned with a bottle and two glasses he took the offer and grabbed the second glass and poured himself a drink after the other man had done so for himself. Then he looked at him, thought about his question for a second, and said, "No."
"Look I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. I don't know what I hoped I'd accomplish, but I did you wrong and she says you're a good man. I figure..." he shrugged, had a taste of the liquor, and continued. "I figure I oughta be grateful to you, all things considered."
"I'd have shot me if I were in your shoes."
"You said you came to bury a hatchet." Tag tipped his glass back, took a careful sip and then studied Glenn carefully. It was not a mean glare, but it did pick him apart, appraise him as if he had never been seen before and that somewhere, in the details of him, would be something else that Glenn wasn't saying.
"English is not... my first language." He admitted, because Madison had caught him on more than one occasion butchering it. Being confounded by it. Finding an alleyway in the letters that was there, though, perhaps unintended. Still, "This hatchet is a metaphor. It means the problem you have with someone?"
"Yeah, but it ain't so simple as that. I could come and tell you I'm sorry, say let bygones be bygones, and then walk away and pretend everything is peachy but that ain't honest," he took another drag off the cigarette. "And I'm doin' my best to be honest right now, which you should know is against my nature. On my best days I'm still just a petty criminal and on my worst..."
"Hmmm." There was a small nod after Glenn spoke, the slightest gesture that the dark man had absorbed what he was saying. One foot moved, resting on the lower step while his other stayed the same. He thought he could feel Glenn twist a bit, even under the confession of what a great weight honesty was to him. Petty criminal and then...
"This hatchet... I don't carry it." There was a sip. He didn't know if this drink was supposed to have some notes in it that would taste of Scotland. Tag set his glass down, the glass making a gentle thunk against the stair, "It's your hatchet to carry, and your hatchet to bury. You can carry it as long as you need."
Glenn took a last drag and then lifted his foot to smash the cigarette against the bottom of his dirty boot. He looked up during the action at Tag and frowned visibly. "What do you mean?" he asked, flattened cigarette and glass still in hand. "Ain't you pissed at me?"
"No." The dark man thought it over. He thought about lightning, about storms in the desert and about not just what it was like to have Madison there, but for the four of them to be like roots growing under the foundation of whatever home they shared. Wherever he walked her would be home. Tonight Penny had been frustrated with him and cried. The idea of hunting rabbits, of snaring them and snapping their necks had all been a vision far removed from the reality, a lesson left in dust and tear trails. Ame would cry in the night for them and the garden would always have different weeds to sort. The heartbeat that moved along his life remained.
"Have you started digging a hole, yet?"
He drank the glass in its entirety after that statement and question and the burn of the drink washing down his throat sparked a memory of a time when he had been purely himself. He had not been a saint then, either, and had killed and robbed many, but he had been him and not the twisted mess he found himself to be today. He missed that simpler time to some degree. "No," he said, setting the glass down on the step beside Tag. "I can't get the measure of you. I don't know what goes on in your head and I get the feelin' like it's the opposite for you with me, and I don't rightly care for that. Any other man would be angry, knowin' who I am and what I have done, and tried to do. Especially after that party."
?You are not a friend to me," he asserted, but this was not maliciously. It was a statement of fact. His eyes went to the house and then back to Glenn, "I don't need your approval, your love, your kindness or your hate. None of those things matter with you." He turned to regain his glass. Tag usually just nursed a drink all night, the same as he was doing just then, "It was only Madison who could have hurt me... and she did not kiss you." For him the situation was clear and he was uncertain why Glenn seemed invested in him being angry at him. Had he hoped, quietly, that in private circumstances a fight could be brewed because that was the comfortable way of handling things for him? He wondered how many fights Glenn had been in just to feel comfortable.
Had he asked, Glenn would be unable to answer for certain. Violence was his comfort zone and how he had learned to settle any and all disputes throughout his life. He sighed at Tag's answer, though it was unclear if it was a sigh of disappointment or relief. "You're a better man than I am," it took no effort to admit this much, at least. Glenn knew what kind of person he was. "I come to tell you that I'm leavin' you and her alone, and that I'm sorry, for what it's worth. And that I hope you two will be happy," the last word seemed unfamiliar to him and it came out in the way someone spoke when trying out a word in a different language. He walked over to where he'd tossed his gun and the magazine and bent down to retrieve them. "There's a man named Patrick Foley who's been hangin' around town lately. He's bad news. He's interested in me and that makes him interested in Madison, given our history. I thought you ought to know."
?You should try to dig that hole... a man can only carry so many hatchets." He wasn't sure if Glenn meant it, if he could do as he was saying he wanted. He had only repented his behavior and still, wasn't the underlying problem there? He was sorry that there was a hatchet and Tag wondered if a man carrying so many did not wobble beneath the weight of it. He had not enjoyed Madison becoming enraged at the party, but that had been her fight.
Patrick Foley. It wasn't an unfamiliar name. Though Tag wondered now if Glenn was still in a moment where he struggled and shoved at him as much honesty as he could before retreating to him familiar habits, or was this final comment a throwback to 'classic glenn', saying something he thought might slip under the skin? Patrick Foley.
"Thank you."
"Yeah," Glenn slipped the bullet from his pocket into the locked chamber and then hit the slide lock to let it all slide back into place with his thumb. He slapped the magazine back in and holstered the weapon. "Consider the hatchet buried, then," he turned and started away but paused and said. "I aim to kill him before the week's end, but in the meantime...I'm stayin' at the Penny Moon, if you get into any spot of trouble with him or his men, you can find me there. Ask Madison where it is," then he continued walking.
Tag didn't think it was buried, that one conversation could mend something that was festering. This was where someone said it was 'the thought that counts.' He could have been wrong, just that he doubted that Glenn had been affected so profoundly by someone he'd just resolved to acknowledge and start to respect. The Penny Moon.
Tag looked up he saw that the moon had almost filled itself into the shape of a silver coin. Penny Moon. It made him this of his daughter's crayons scratching over paper, of lakes and something dark and hollow. When his gaze lowered Glenn was already out of earshot, highlighted in sharp, brief moments as he passed through the lines of tree shadows and moonlight.
His working hours begin before the sun rises. When the morning still has a chill on it and when the house still slumbers, most of the time. That was how those sorts of manual labor jobs went. No one wanted to work in the heat of day, especially in Summer, so the working shifts started early and ended early. By mid-afternoon he was home, minding Penny and Ame while Madison worked the bar. It was only part time that he helped and he wasn't scheduled for busing that day at Charlie's or as many as he had been in the past since Charlie had been hired.
Nearly the last leg of the afternoon, when the sun had just started to set, he was walking with Penny towards the front of the house. At a distance he may have seemed misshapen but that was due to the cloth sling that kept Ame cradled to his chest. One of his arms was twisted back with the elbow pointed vertical and three limp creatures dangling from it. Maybe rabbits. Penny, who was around eleven, walked ahead of him stiffly. Her eyes were angry and her bony arms were crossed with a fierce resolve over her chest. There were tear lines down her cheeks that no longer sparkled but it was the dust that clung to the old riverbeds which gave away the fact they had been there. He stopped at the bottom of the three stairs that led up the porch while Penny scaled them all with long, coltish legs.
Glenn had been planning on paying the man a visit for some time. Since before the night at the party, in fact. Though in his bouts of madness his reasons were ever changing and fluid, he had recently resolved himself to seek Tag out with a clearer purpose. He was entirely unsure how events would unfold, if he could be trusted to keep his own admittedly poor temper in check, let alone what the other man might do. He seemed a calm sort but they spoke only a few words together in the time since he had returned from beyond the pale to make Madison's life miserable again. So he waited and waited, prowling streets and bars in the early hours of the morning when he was the lone patron until noon came and went and he figured it was time to get a move on.
He knew where they lived. He?d seen it more than once when his mind had been taken over by darker impulses, and so he found the place with no confusion but held back for a spell, seeing Tag with children he did not recognize. He knew the smallest to be Ame and assumed the older to be Tag?s own daughter, whose name he never learned. The sight of them made his stomach turn over and his throat catch for a moment, children were complications he would never be suited to. Maida was a testament to that.
There was an exchange between him and Penny. He said very little but she saw quite a bit, her hands spiraling out in the air, pointing at him. Something about "not fair" was being said, sharply in the air. He said something to her, but it seemed more like a directive than actual conversation. Her lips flattened in a line, she spoke again. Tag weathered the storm and at last when he did not speak to her final outburst, she turned and went inside, slipping off her shoes and shutting the door behind her. He cleared his throat, twisting his arm so that the limp furry bodies slumped against the top step of the porch. The sling was pulled and the bundle was set away from the edge of the porch and down.
With one leg propped on the bottom second stair he reached into his side belt and withdrew a knife, carefully working the tip in a few select places. The rabbits had been field dressed at the snares and it was then and there that he would on slipping them out of their pelts. There was a moment, briefly, that he seemed to think he was being watched. His eyes lifted but, not immediately seeing anything, they dropped back to the task at hand. He was hoping to finish it before the evening swallowed everything.
Glenn watched the exchange and wondered at what he might do in Tag?s shoes. His own father had not been prone to let such outbursts persist and more than once, Glenn and his brothers had been on the receiving end of a belt, or--as they grew older--a fist. The memory was blinked away in an instant. He came down the lane then and made sure that he was directly in front of the man he was approaching, lest he be accused of trying to sneak up on him. His hands were at his sides. He wore white shirt with rolled sleeves and some jeans. His belt held a holster and a gun. He didn?t speak but stopped some ten or so feet away and just watched the knife in Tag?s hand.
The steps announced him and he glanced up, but finished peeling off the skin of the first rabbit and laying it flat on the porch. He said what was obvious, "Madison isn't here." Glenn had never been interested in pursuing him directly. Perhaps this had something to do with the Soiree. He pointed the end of the blade down at the rabbit, "The skin must come off tonight." It seemed a motion to excuse why he then picked up the second one instead of giving Glenn his full attention.
It was there, though. A glance at Ame and then back to the gunslinger. He had removed a rabbit or two from a snare and their skin enough that, like a practiced hand a knitted, he didn't have to keep his gaze loyal to what he was doing once some key points were checked.
The gunslinger nodded at the statement and took a couple more steps forward. He drew his gun and ejected the magazine with his thumb, then racked the slide back to eject the round that was carried in the chamber, which he snatched out of the air and pocketed. He then tossed the gun and magazine on the ground beside him and continued his approach. "Ain't hear to see Madison," he explained. "Came to talk to you, actually," he watched the other man work at the rabbits and the knife.
Upon being closer he looked as though it had been a long day. Ame wiggled, made one half-grumble of a sound and then settled. When he'd moved Tag watched him, breath held like parents often are when they aren't sure if their child is winding up for a cry. Now wasn't the time he needed Ame to cry, and for the time being the outcry was held at bay. His attention went down to his hands for the final slip-off of the rabbit skin. Fleshy side up, beside the other on the stair.
"What can I do for you?" His dark gaze was on Glenn, concerned. Maybe it was easier to be concerned instead of cold when a gun and its magazine were set aside. He glanced down to check that the cut around the rabbit's paw was clear and then started to slip the third and final creature from its coat.
"Need to talk to you," he said, and it was clear through the grit of his teeth that this situation made Glenn uncomfortable. A part of him hated Tag, for obvious reasons, but also for his ability to sit there and be calm in spite of everything he knew Glenn Douglas to be. "About the party and everything, and everything before and after that," he explained. "I come to..." he searched for the words and found that he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do. Glenn had never attempted to make peace with anyone before. The old way was to shoot a man you disagreed with, as far as he knew.
"I'm listening."
The door opened, though, and there was Penny. In her hands was a large pot that seemed full of water. She froze when she saw Glenn, looking from him to her father. The surprise had been enough to shake her out of the upset pouting that had occurred before and to focus on the important matter of this stranger being at their home. She knew her father and Madison had started being more outgoing, inviting over friends, but this didn't feel like a friend. She approached anyway, determined to smile as she set down the pot which was half full with salted water.
"Penny, this is Glenn, an old friend of Madison's." The introduction was brief, cut short by his indication to Ame, "Will you take him in and check his diaper? It's getting close to time."
"Sure." She smiled and scooped up her baby brother. One last wary look over the bone of her shoulder to im before she stepped inside. The rectangle of light that illuminated them died. Most everything seemed blue, now.
Glenn froze when Penny stepped out and he did his best to not look directly at the young girl. He watched the exchange with a better understanding of the man before him, or so he believed, and nearly sighed with relief when she took the baby in with her. He thought to inquire about Penny and her age, maybe to strike up small talk that would help him ease into things. But Glenn was a man better suited to taking a problem head on rather than trying to find a work around, so he said, "I'm here to apologize. To bury the hatchet or whatever the hell you want to call it. To reach out, Tag."
"Do you have many hatchets?"
Tag lifted up one of the rabbits and started peeling the tight sheets of muscles off the bone and putting it into the pot. Soaking rabbit meat in salt water helped it taste less gamey when it was cooked. The heads and feet were in tact so Tag only fooled with the major muscle groups. With fields rabbits that size, the quantity of meat was not overly impressive. Afterward he stepped away from the house to one of the bins about ten yards from the porch steps and dropped them in. It seemed while he did it that his knife disappeared back into his pocket. Mostly bones with some lean areas remaining. When he returned he went about the final task, which was stringing up the skins on empty wooden circles so that the skin was taut. If Glenn was anything like Madison, the activity wouldn't have been unnerving. He only pinned six points of it, tomorrow he and Penny would reviewer the finer details of converting a rabbit into a skin.
The three were leaned up against the inside of the railing before he sat, at the top stair of his porch. If Glenn had secretly been wanting the dark man to stare at him directly, the wish was now being granted.
The question made Glenn smirk. "Buddy, you don't know the half of it," he said, and the thought seemed to encourage him some. He took another step forward. "I imagine how must see me," he began. "Shit, I see myself the same way you do, probably. I ain't a proud man, at any rate, and I come to say I know I've done wrong by Madison and you. I can't take back what I've done or said and...well, I had my own reasons for doing them, twisted as they were, but that don't make it right," he said all this only after Tag had given him his full attention. He seemed more at ease under the direct gaze of the other man than he had when he was but a distraction from Tag's chores, none of which seemed to upset him in their grisly nature.
"If there are so many hatchets.... why bury this one?" His elbows were on his knees, he was unaffected by Glenn's growing closeness. He wondered, briefly, if he would have the same prairie in his clothes and written on his skin as she did, or if life had written itself in him differently than it had her.
He had reasons but that didn't make it right. There was still the smears of rabbits blood on his fingertips which, at this point, were impossible to discern from shadows or grim in the dark.
?Because Madison's important to me, and I wanna do right by her," Glenn shrugged and stopped moving, shoving his hands into his pockets. "How much do you know?"
Tag's head tilted to the side as necessary so that Glenn could pour his voice down one of his ears. The apology was for himself, to relieve his guilt about the expression of his reasoning and to set things right with Madison. He wasn't certain, then, why it was that Glenn thought his visit had anything to do with him. The man's listed purpose didn't even include him, he was collateral damage to making Glenn feel better.
"I'm still learning."
"Well good luck there, because I don't think either her or I have the full head of things," he admitted. "She told me you were a good man," he worded it like somewhere between a question and a statement. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and slipped one between his lips, a lighter following. He had already struck flame before pausing to look at Tag. "You mind if I smoke?"
His hand rolled in the air, motioning that he could have a smoke even though he'd taken a half motion to already do so. He turned to pick up the pot and spoke to Glenn, "I'll be right back." A motion with the pot to indicate, more clearly, that he was handling the situation. All he did was place it in the fridge and then wash his hands. When he returned it was with a short word spoken to Penny, two glasses and a bottle. It had been a gift that Fin had given them. Some sort of liquor from Scotland, he believed it was from his hometown. The seat at the top stair was regained, "You can have one, if you want." He poured himself a glass and then thought for a moment before speaking, "Do you think the hatchet is buried?"
While Tag went inside he finished lighting the cigarette and took a long drag from the cigarette. He stood outside that house and it made him feel very, very small. He didn't care for that feeling and so put it out of mind as best he could and instead considered how best to proceed. When Tag returned with a bottle and two glasses he took the offer and grabbed the second glass and poured himself a drink after the other man had done so for himself. Then he looked at him, thought about his question for a second, and said, "No."
"Look I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. I don't know what I hoped I'd accomplish, but I did you wrong and she says you're a good man. I figure..." he shrugged, had a taste of the liquor, and continued. "I figure I oughta be grateful to you, all things considered."
"I'd have shot me if I were in your shoes."
"You said you came to bury a hatchet." Tag tipped his glass back, took a careful sip and then studied Glenn carefully. It was not a mean glare, but it did pick him apart, appraise him as if he had never been seen before and that somewhere, in the details of him, would be something else that Glenn wasn't saying.
"English is not... my first language." He admitted, because Madison had caught him on more than one occasion butchering it. Being confounded by it. Finding an alleyway in the letters that was there, though, perhaps unintended. Still, "This hatchet is a metaphor. It means the problem you have with someone?"
"Yeah, but it ain't so simple as that. I could come and tell you I'm sorry, say let bygones be bygones, and then walk away and pretend everything is peachy but that ain't honest," he took another drag off the cigarette. "And I'm doin' my best to be honest right now, which you should know is against my nature. On my best days I'm still just a petty criminal and on my worst..."
"Hmmm." There was a small nod after Glenn spoke, the slightest gesture that the dark man had absorbed what he was saying. One foot moved, resting on the lower step while his other stayed the same. He thought he could feel Glenn twist a bit, even under the confession of what a great weight honesty was to him. Petty criminal and then...
"This hatchet... I don't carry it." There was a sip. He didn't know if this drink was supposed to have some notes in it that would taste of Scotland. Tag set his glass down, the glass making a gentle thunk against the stair, "It's your hatchet to carry, and your hatchet to bury. You can carry it as long as you need."
Glenn took a last drag and then lifted his foot to smash the cigarette against the bottom of his dirty boot. He looked up during the action at Tag and frowned visibly. "What do you mean?" he asked, flattened cigarette and glass still in hand. "Ain't you pissed at me?"
"No." The dark man thought it over. He thought about lightning, about storms in the desert and about not just what it was like to have Madison there, but for the four of them to be like roots growing under the foundation of whatever home they shared. Wherever he walked her would be home. Tonight Penny had been frustrated with him and cried. The idea of hunting rabbits, of snaring them and snapping their necks had all been a vision far removed from the reality, a lesson left in dust and tear trails. Ame would cry in the night for them and the garden would always have different weeds to sort. The heartbeat that moved along his life remained.
"Have you started digging a hole, yet?"
He drank the glass in its entirety after that statement and question and the burn of the drink washing down his throat sparked a memory of a time when he had been purely himself. He had not been a saint then, either, and had killed and robbed many, but he had been him and not the twisted mess he found himself to be today. He missed that simpler time to some degree. "No," he said, setting the glass down on the step beside Tag. "I can't get the measure of you. I don't know what goes on in your head and I get the feelin' like it's the opposite for you with me, and I don't rightly care for that. Any other man would be angry, knowin' who I am and what I have done, and tried to do. Especially after that party."
?You are not a friend to me," he asserted, but this was not maliciously. It was a statement of fact. His eyes went to the house and then back to Glenn, "I don't need your approval, your love, your kindness or your hate. None of those things matter with you." He turned to regain his glass. Tag usually just nursed a drink all night, the same as he was doing just then, "It was only Madison who could have hurt me... and she did not kiss you." For him the situation was clear and he was uncertain why Glenn seemed invested in him being angry at him. Had he hoped, quietly, that in private circumstances a fight could be brewed because that was the comfortable way of handling things for him? He wondered how many fights Glenn had been in just to feel comfortable.
Had he asked, Glenn would be unable to answer for certain. Violence was his comfort zone and how he had learned to settle any and all disputes throughout his life. He sighed at Tag's answer, though it was unclear if it was a sigh of disappointment or relief. "You're a better man than I am," it took no effort to admit this much, at least. Glenn knew what kind of person he was. "I come to tell you that I'm leavin' you and her alone, and that I'm sorry, for what it's worth. And that I hope you two will be happy," the last word seemed unfamiliar to him and it came out in the way someone spoke when trying out a word in a different language. He walked over to where he'd tossed his gun and the magazine and bent down to retrieve them. "There's a man named Patrick Foley who's been hangin' around town lately. He's bad news. He's interested in me and that makes him interested in Madison, given our history. I thought you ought to know."
?You should try to dig that hole... a man can only carry so many hatchets." He wasn't sure if Glenn meant it, if he could do as he was saying he wanted. He had only repented his behavior and still, wasn't the underlying problem there? He was sorry that there was a hatchet and Tag wondered if a man carrying so many did not wobble beneath the weight of it. He had not enjoyed Madison becoming enraged at the party, but that had been her fight.
Patrick Foley. It wasn't an unfamiliar name. Though Tag wondered now if Glenn was still in a moment where he struggled and shoved at him as much honesty as he could before retreating to him familiar habits, or was this final comment a throwback to 'classic glenn', saying something he thought might slip under the skin? Patrick Foley.
"Thank you."
"Yeah," Glenn slipped the bullet from his pocket into the locked chamber and then hit the slide lock to let it all slide back into place with his thumb. He slapped the magazine back in and holstered the weapon. "Consider the hatchet buried, then," he turned and started away but paused and said. "I aim to kill him before the week's end, but in the meantime...I'm stayin' at the Penny Moon, if you get into any spot of trouble with him or his men, you can find me there. Ask Madison where it is," then he continued walking.
Tag didn't think it was buried, that one conversation could mend something that was festering. This was where someone said it was 'the thought that counts.' He could have been wrong, just that he doubted that Glenn had been affected so profoundly by someone he'd just resolved to acknowledge and start to respect. The Penny Moon.
Tag looked up he saw that the moon had almost filled itself into the shape of a silver coin. Penny Moon. It made him this of his daughter's crayons scratching over paper, of lakes and something dark and hollow. When his gaze lowered Glenn was already out of earshot, highlighted in sharp, brief moments as he passed through the lines of tree shadows and moonlight.