The run down farmhouse stood lifeless against a pale gray sky as the clouds moved so fast behind it, they almost looked like liquid running off a glass dome. Clinging to it’s original white paint but peeling badly, it had lost it’s doors and windows to a past storm perhaps or scavengers. A toppled barn behind it, and seemingly hundreds of acres of tall grass and nothing surrounding it, the dusty dirt road stopped right there in front of the homestead. It’s been twenty-five years since a car used that road, and the house was probably beautiful back then. Now it‘s just another reminder of the ways things used to be.
The wind howled across the prairie like sirens of justice, smashing a piece of loose siding against the side of the house like a broken metronome when the outlaw scurried towards the gaping front doorframe. Visibly tired with a dust trail a country mile long that followed him, he tripped up the steps of the porch and wasted no time hastily returning to his feet and disappearing into the ghostly interior of the gutted farmhouse. The storm was imminent. Upper atmospheres moved so fast now, that storms were usually fierce but blew over quickly. In minutes typically, but some were over in a matter of thirty seconds or so. There was the constant tapping of the siding and the wind blowing, but now there was the clucking of an approaching horse too. Trotting in its own time towards the house at the end of the road.
The thick black trench coat flapped in the strong winds like a cape as the rider dismounted the horse a hundred feet in front of the farmhouse. His shoes brand new, a pair of classic cream coloured Chuck Taylor’s hit the dirt road below and sent dust plumes in either direction which were quickly carried away by the strong wind. Flicking the last few puffs of his cigarette into the ground and sending fiery ashes dancing into the air, the rider left his horse to graze and methodically walked towards the doorframe. Each step confident and assertive with no sense of hurry, he entered the farmhouse just as the rain started to fall.
Inside the farmhouse felt more like a cave than anything. The strong musty smell of neglect was overwhelming and the ground was slick with mouldy cardboard and garbage. The structure was known to house scavengers, squatters and passing coyotes, which was evident by the mounds of fecal waste and trash scattered throughout. The rider stood just inside the doorframe as a curtain of heavy rain fell behind him, drenching the outside landscape and his horse to boot. Glancing up the staircase he couldn’t help but imagine it with carpet and family photos climbing the wall beside it, now there were no portraits on the wall and a trail of water rushing down the steps from a hole in the roof presumably somewhere on the second floor. The rider forgot about the carpet and family photos and climbed the stairs. By the time he reached the top, his creamy white shoes were a brownish black and the bottoms of his black corduroys were too.
The riders reputation preceded him wherever he went, and wherever he went he was loved or feared. A fearless man with flowing black shoulder length hair and a Shakespearian moustache that had a slight curl, he was thought to be in his fifties. Known for his impeccable collection of classic clothes, he made the black rancher hat iconic in these parts. An elder. A survivor of the cough who had seen it all it seems. He was the model of the movement that was weakening by the day in the consciousness of mankind, peace and justice. Although that was about all that was really known about him, there was one more defining trait that he wore like his prideful demeanour. He was ruthless. An experienced and educated executioner for the name of the people, he was judge and jury just the same.
The outlaw turned out to be a boy of about eighteen. He was holding a foot long piece of pipe with both hands in front of him, and his back against the wall in the largest bedroom on the upper level of the farmhouse. With no furniture or objects to hide behind, this made some strategic sense to him. Shaking from fear at an almost hypothermic level, he looked rather pathetic as he prepared to fight for his life if his shaking body would let him. He had an ’x’ branded onto his left cheek which meant one thing , rapist. As opposed to the right cheek which meant another, murderer. The idea was to outcast offenders from the towns who committed the two most heinous crimes. They were universal brandings not uncommon throughout the remembered lands, so if the accused drifted to other towns the citizens would know their history. It was also meant to deter repeat offending, which didn’t always work.
Everything was wet. Water was running down the wall behind him soaking his back and neck, uncomfortable he could not move. Footsteps approached the room he was in, and the outlaw tensed up and tried to contain his fear. Though the sound of the rain hitting the shambled roof was deafening, he was sure his heart was beating louder. It was as though the rider had followed the sound of the heartbeat, because the slow walk was getting closer. Pointing his shaking pipe at the doorframe, the outlaw could not blink or breathe it seemed, just wait. As the rider entered the room, the outlaw dropped his pipe and slid down the wall onto his ass. He was done for. It’s not everyday Tennessee D. comes to take your life.
Tennessee was already taking off his coat when he walked into the room, showcasing his belt and holster. On his left thigh he had a sheathe which was holding a very large knife, eight inches or so. The leather was very high quality with an intricate native American style design bearing the clichéd eagle. He walked by the quietly sitting outlaw without a glance to hang his coat on a chunk of depleted wooden wall. This time the outlaw caught a glance of the right thigh. On it, hung a very well kept sidearm revolver. Firearms were rare enough these days, never mind a well kept classic six-shooter. The reason usable guns were rare wasn’t because there was a lack of usable guns, there was a lack of ammunition. Although, it wasn’t uncommon for people to be killed with a gun out there, truth is, they were usually bludgeoned to death with it. This was different though, the outlaw had heard too many stories of Tennessee to second guess his ammunition supply.
“What’s your name, son” asked Tennessee in his usually calm, grizzled voice as he stood over the slouched outlaw, about ten feet in front of him. The outlaw kept his head down staring at the ground, too afraid to look at the man in front of him. Tennessee already knew the answer but started again, “I don’t like leaving my home, I don’t like taking my horse out in the rain and I sure as hell don’t like repeating myself” resting his left hand on the butt of his knife, his calm grizzled voice less calm this time.
The boy looked up. “My name’s Andy Dolls” his voice cracking and anxious, he quickly looked down again.
There was a dozen seconds of silence as Tennessee pulled out a cigarette tin and lit one with a purple Bic lighter. “Do you know what irony is Andy Dolls?”
The boy looked up at the cigarette and then at Tennessee with a scared blank stare.
“Irony is this, son” he paused to take a haul of his smoke, “that same look in your victims eyes, the one of helplessness and despair right before you rape them and kill them, is the same look I see in your eyes right now as I stand before you.”
Andy’s head sank again, hiding his eyes in the floor. His knees crunched together in front of him, and his arms wrapped around them, he knew the roles had reversed. Audible thunder crashes could be almost felt as the storm seemed to be climaxing outside, blowing what seemed liked gallons of water through the windowless frames in the bedroom. The cold water didn’t help with Andy’s shaking.
Tennessee went on “Long before the chaos of the world today, we lived under a rule of law. Harmony. Peace. Respect.” Although Tennessee knew better than anyone how ungodly the early twenty-first century had been, with its wars and its environmental and natural disasters it had been a thousand times better than now. “In a world with no institutions, and a world where no one could tell you the definition of institution, I have become the law. Do you understand me Mr. Dolls?”
“Yes I do.” was all that came from Andy. Quiet and defeated, he had no idea what institution meant. His shaking had calmed a bit, although the storm was still over them.
“That ‘X’ on your cheek. What town had the pleasure of your company?” asked Tennessee in a curious ruffled tone, this time not knowing the answer. He took another pull of his cigarette.
Andy looked up again. “The town that I’m from. It’s called Parry. It’s a ten day walk up the tracks from here.”
Tennessee knew the town well. He also knew that it was unlikely for a town to execute it’s own, excommunication was most likely. This was ideology he didn’t agree with, rehabilitation was never an option. They end up wandering down the tracks for ten days and re-offending. Tennessee’s voice agitated now, he grunted “You stand accused of rape and murder in these parts Mr. Dolls, and in these parts I don’t burn or brand you” he stopped to look at his cigarette, then tossed it into the soaked ground below. “In these parts I take care of problems, I don’t pass ‘em along to the next town. You took a five year old girl from her home in this town, raped her and then you murdered her.” He stopped to let it resonate with the boy. “I want you to stand up, son.”
Andy Dolls stood up, now whimpering. Tears fell from his eyes and were exaggerated by the rain from the storm that poured through the roof above them.
Tennessee took three steps towards him, until he was within two feet of Andy Dolls nose. “Do you have any last words, before I show you to your maker, boy?”
Andy started in a stuttered, upset voice “I am sorry. I know it is wrong but I can’t stop myself.”
Tennessee stared into his eyes, and saw the sincerity most others had lacked in these last moments. He said in his calm voice which had returned “In the old world, there were methods to treat people like you, but now this is the only help you will receive, son.”
At that, the rider unsheathed his blade with one hand and grabbed the back of Andy’s head with the other. Tennessee watched the outlaws expression as the blade was brought up to the right side of his throat, something he promised the family of the victim he would do. Andy Dolls was crying like a child, he was in fact a child himself, when Tennessee plunged the blade into his throat and ended his life.
By the time Tennessee had laid the body down on the floor of the bedroom, the storm had blown over. He bent over to wash the blood off his hands in a stream of water running down the wall beside the window frame. Quiet and unchanged, he remembered when killing people still affected him. That was a long time ago. He stood up and put on his trench coat then made for the door.
The air was heavy and the ground was soft as Tennessee walked out of the doorframe and towards the dusty road, which was now muddy. The sky was overcast but calm now, as the storm could be seen in the distance running across the endless skies that surrounded the old farmhouse. It was very quiet now, the piece of siding had been ripped off in the storm, and the only sounds were of Tennessee’s soggy footprints and the impatient grunts of his soaked horse standing on the muddy road. His cream coloured Chuck Taylor’s brown, red and wet, he mounted his horse and rode away in his own time, from the farmhouse at the end of the road.
