Marshal's Law

MARSHAL'S LAW #7: TALK LESS. SAY MORE

Marshal’s gaze turned to the house.  He was leaving.  But it wasn’t the same thing.  Not at all.  He was leaving an apartment.  It was the end of a rental agreement because there wasn’t a place to rent   anymore.  He shook his head.  “That’s ridiculous, boy.  It don’t have a thing to do with it.”

“Whatever you say, pop,” he said and turned to the door.  The rain fell in sheets.  “Maybe I’ll just go ahead on over to Mark’s place tonight.”

Leaning against the roughhewn wall, Marshal shrugged a bit.  Didn’t matter any to him where the boy stayed the night.  He could go to his brother if he wanted.

As for him, he was staying out here.

It seemed a damn sight safer than going back into that house.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Monica hid like a coward while Marshal and his sons packed up the pick-up trucks with boxes and furniture. 

At first it had been easy.  Roxie had loaded up the kids to take them to her place so that Monica could focus on her own packing.  She had simply forestalled the leaving.  She gave Roxie things to do and prattled with aimless conversation for as long as she could manage. 

Eventually, Roxie still left.

Standing in the middle of a house devoid of the sounds of her children, filled with shelves to be emptied, Monica felt lost.  There was more to do than she could prioritize.  And, below her, she could hear the sounds of men lugging heavy boxes, the door opening and shutting.  Even their radio station sounded more productive than she.  Determined to focus on her own chores, Monica turned on some country music and started on her bedroom.

It was the wrong room.  It was probably the wrong music.

In the midst of a song that could have been her life, Monica left the stuff piled on her bed and leaned against a window frame to watch Marshal go out to his truck and back into his apartment, over and over again.  The music shifted to wail about the end of a life and a love and still she didn’t move.  He looked as numb as she felt.  He didn’t smile.  There was no cheerful banter with his boys.  His mouth mashed flat and his moustache bristled, he moved with jerky determination.  And then, as another song promised love higher than the mountains and deeper than the seas, they all squeezed into the cabs of their respective trucks and left.

Marshal hadn’t even looked up into the window where she’d watched him.

He never came to say good-bye.

Still standing at that window, her arms crossed over her middle, hugging her waist, she ignored the tears.  They were just a part of her life anymore, a part of the sadness and loss she couldn’t seem to get past.

Then, without any definitive reason why she did it, Monica shuffled down the stairs until she stood at the door between Marshal’s apartment and her rec room.  She stared at the empty rooms, telling herself she was looking for anything he might have missed.

That wasn’t what she was looking for at all.

She wanted some reason for him to return.  There wasn’t any.  The rooms were entirely empty.  The carpets cleaned, the kitchen cabinets bare, the bathroom bereft of everything but the smell of him.  He was gone and he wasn’t ever coming back.

Her back against a wall, she slid until she was nothing but a puddle on the floor.  She hid her face in her hands and cried until she slept- right there, where his bed once sat.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Hiding behind his newspaper, Marshal was acting like a jerk, and he knew it.  Maybe it just comes from making a jackass out of yourself.  What had he been thinking?  Kissing her?