At Sunset

Darling

The days had gone on since the Hatfields had played host for a short time to that strange girl from the North. She had been there and then she had been gone, and those few who had witnessed her being there had started to wonder if they had all gone mad from the heat of that day. Levicy Hatfield had not spoken of it again, and she had urged both Betty and Nancy to do the same. Later that same night Devil Anse had been informed of the ambiguous house guest by his wife, and his stern words on the matter had been not to bring a Yankee into his home again. That was his only words.

For Johnse and Cap, it was more difficult to forget. They had brought her back bloody and cold, looking very much like a victim of something gruesome and unmentionable. No search group or flyers had been rounded up around Mate Creek, and their Uncle Wall hadn't mentioned anything, so it was a safe assumption that she had made it back home to her father. Word or proof of that would have been comforting. It seemed Cotton still hadn't given up on his mission to spot them, and one day Johnse—jokingly said—that they ought to join him. Cap had laughed off the idea, yet come Thursday he had made a flimsy excuse to venture out to go and see Uncle Ellison and his soft hearted cousin.

It was early afternoon, abnormally hot with the sun at its highest in the sky. Cap sat under the shade of a tree, Cotton beside him while humming a tune to himself. His cousin's tenacity and patience amazed him. His pale eyes hadn't moved from the looming house down the road, and he might have quit blinking too. Cap had brought a book with him to stave off the boredom of the wait, but the ink on the old, dry pages was starting to blur together, and he found his focus kept going back to the house. How often had Cotton done this now?

He snapped the book shut with a grunt of annoyance, letting it fall into his lap as he crossed his arms over his chest. To see Clarice again had become something of an obsession for him. It wasn't for a romanticized reason nor was he enamoured by her presence, as such a short time he had spent in it. She had blown right out of his life just as quickly as she had come into it, and the feeling was only comparable in his mind to the rare few times he had ever missed a shot. With his rifle it was being deprived of that completion to see the light leave his kill's eyes, but with Clarice it was just the opposite; he wanted to see the light come back into them. Out in those woods, she had looked dead, even without all of the blood and gunk.

"Wuts'a Yankee like Cap?" said Cotton so suddenly that it caught him off guard. His cousin hadn't even turned his head away to direct the question.

Cotton had found out a day later about Clarice entering their home. Uncle Jim did have a big mouth, and he had spread it around to the rest of their kin by daybreak the following day. Cotton was never one to feel animosity, but his lip had trembled in disappointment at not being able to get that first glimpse. Afterwards he had quickly moved on to curiosity, following their Ma around with questions until she had to politely shoo him away from her skirts with a wooden spoon. Everyone had remained tight-lipped about the issue, and that hadn't settled well with Cotton. Cap was actually glad he was asking now though, because his thoughts had been running amuck with Clarice as well, and there hadn't been anyone to talk with about them seeing as things between him and Johnse hadn't improved much.

"I suppose they ain't all that different from us, 'cept for the way they talk of course."

Cotton's brow line furrowed. "They don't look different?"

"Nah, they're jus' as ugly as you n' me." He teased.

Cotton laughed back with a few big gulps of air, his cheeks immediately brightening. "Johnse said she was real pretty, like an angel."

Of course he did. Cap rolled his eyes skyward as he ran a hand back through his hair. He suspected his brother would eventually start to tire of the McCoy girl, advance to those same early stages that Cap had seen time and again with Johnse. His eyes would soon start to linger, and all of that fuss for Randall McCoy's kin will have been for nothing.