Better Not Look Down - Red Dead Redemption II

Part 3 - José Javi Inez Garcia?

You better not look down

If you wanna keep on flying

Put the hammer down

Keep it full speed ahead

You better not look back

Or you might just end up crying

You can keep it moving

If you don't look down.

— B.B. King

JUNE 1899

The saloon was fairly dim, despite it being the middle of the day. The walls were covered with various decorations, including wanted signs, photos, and a variety of weapons—all antiques. The bar was in the middle of the room, with several stools sitting in front of it. A few wooden tables and chairs were scattered about. In the corner, an old piano sat, waiting to be played, and a small stage next to it. There were only a few patrons inside, all of them sitting at separate tables, nursing their drinks.

Javi sat at the bar. He was waiting for nothing in particular, not even drinking, just sitting and staring at the countertop as he wallowed in his own pity. Coming down to the saloon was a waste of time, he never did anything inside it, all he was doing was killing time. It wasn't as if he was gonna pick up a working girl—no matter how hard they tried.

He wasn't keeping track but it was probably around the fifth town that year he ended up in. Valentine was where he found himself as he dug into a bowl of stale peanuts. Valentine smelt of horse shit and the whole place was covered in mud, but it was bearable.

It wasn't often he ventured into towns. Too many people, too many chances to get recognized. However, as time went on he looked less and less like the drawing on his wanted poster.

He missed Strawberry. He missed the way the trees smelt, the way the rain used to stream down the window pains in his childhood home, the people, the birds, all of it felt like home. But, thanks to his father, he'd never be able to set foot there again.

It wasn't that he had ever been a normal person, it was that he never wanted to be well... wanted. The life of an outlaw never appealed to him, he had so many things he wanted to do with his life, but none of them were achievable anymore. He was forced into this constant cycle of running and stealing, and nothing would be able to take him out of it.

His wanted poster was a sketch of him all those years ago when his so-called father died, he was fourteen then. That was over eleven years ago. He outgrew the baby fat and the childlike look in his eye, yet he remained that wanted man. Bounty hunters, the law, and random folk who need money, all somehow managed to recognize him after years of being on the run. The running had become less pertinent after he entered his twenties, a welcome change, but it was still a threat always looming in the back of his mind.

Four-thousand dollars. Over his head constantly. Dead or alive, though dead would cut the bounty to three-thousand-five-hundred. In over a decade of trying to get that money, he onto ever managed to scrounge up about two thousand.

And it kept going up, as he'd rob a place for the cash, and then the amount he robbed would be tacked onto the price for his head. So getting money illegally did little to help, but it wasn't as if he could get it within legal bounds. Nobody was gonna hire some mid-twenties colored man for anything that paid well enough to get that kind of money.

I can't even picture five-thousand bucks, as a visual representation of it—I'm drawing a blank, I've never seen that kind of cash up close and in person. I wonder how heavy that amount of bills would be, how heavy is just one stack of bills?