The Five Dollar Mail Book 3: The Road Home

31: First Blush

Cover painting by Angela Taratuta. Chapter artwork of Wash by Angela Taratuta. All graphics by me.

Book 1: The Green, Book 2: Lynch's Boys, Book 3: The Road Home, and the Riders & Kickers Anthology are available on Amazon under the name Regina Shelley. So if you hate waiting for chapter posts and/or want a more polished read, the finished product is available now.

It was going to be sodding embarrassing to walk into that classroom today.

Wash clicked his tongue, urging Waddell and Arabella forward as they pulled the buckboard down the rocky road to Green River town. He knew he wouldn't be able to start his studies right away. He'd have to talk to Mrs. Plunkett, pick up some supplies from the mercantile, and get back to the station. But as soon as his crewmates returned, he'd either have to find a tutor or start showing up for classes, and if the latter happened, it was going to be humiliating. After all, Wash was a grown man, and he knew he was going to look and feel like a complete sodding eedjit sitting there among a bunch of kids, most of whom were little girls. He was not, to put it mildly, looking forward to it. For what felt like the millionth time this morning, he gave serious thought to changing his mind.

But then he remembered that wounded look in Luis' eyes when they'd talked last night, that trembling but firm handshake when had Luis sealed the deal on their wager.

I'm going to have to do this, so I am. I'm going to have to go to school. And I'm going to have to learn to read. Bollocks. What was I thinking, promising him that?  Wash sighed heavily, glancing at Rosie and Luis, flanking him on the wagon seat. I was thinking to spare him. Wash set his jaw and fixed his eyes resolutely on the road ahead. I was thinking I want the lad to have more choices in life than I had. He's a smart lad, despite it all. Maybe if he manages to learn to read, he can be something other than someone else's hired thug. Maybe he won't have to bleed to make money for smarter, more educated men. The way I had to. If I can spare him that..it will be worth it. All of it.

He pulled the buckboard up to the front of the whitewashed schoolhouse, wincing in dread. Wash had never been inside a school, even as a boy. Children in the Five Points, particularly ones that lived in the tenement at the old brewery building, didn't go to school. They went to work, honest or otherwise. The idea of school would have been laughable.

He puffed out his cheeks and blew out a long, resigned breath through his pursed lips. He saw Rosie looking at him as if she really didn't believe that either he or Luis were actually going to go through with it. "What?" he said, feigning innocence.

"You're going to do this?" Rosie said, letting Luis help her down from the wagon.

"Aye, so I am," he said, hopping down after her.

She turned to face him, her blue eyes wide. "You're going to come to class?"

"If I have to. But I'm hoping it won't come to that."

Luis helped him secure the horses. "I wasn't sure you were serious, muchacho."

"I'm serious, me boyo." Wash frowned unhappily. "So you'd better be, too, because if you ain't, you're in for a thrashing, so you are."

There were kids loitering around the schoolyard, mostly girls. An expensively-dressed teenaged girl, her hair in dark ringlets, stared openly, her mouth agape in surprise. The lone boy Wash saw was sauntering over to get a better look, his face as shocked as his classmates'.

Ignoring their stares, Wash pulled Rosie's satchel out of the back of the wagon and handed it to Luis. "One of us will be back to bring you two home later," he said, glancing nervously at the schoolhouse door. "She in there?"

"Mrs. Plunkett?" Rosie asked. "Yessir. She comes in early, before we arrive."

Wash nodded, steeling himself, and headed up the schoolhouse steps.

"Hey, Mister!" called the boy that had been staring at him as if he were a sideshow curiosity.

Frozen on the porch with his hand on the door, Wash turned to look at him. "Aye?"

"You're Wash Monahan, ain'cha? From the express station? You're really a gun fighter?" The boy was ruddy-skinned and sturdy, his head cocked back under his cap as he surveyed Wash with critical eyes. "You really shoot a murderer dead out there at Lynch's station?"

Jaysus. "I'm a coach guard, lad. I don't go about getting into gunfights and shooting people for fun. We ran into trouble with a bad sort..."

"So you killed him?" The boy pressed on, stepping forward as his eyes widened.

Wash sighed heavily, taking his hand off the door. "A lot of terrible things happened that night, laddie. It's not just..."

Rosie piped up, taking Wash by the arm and turning him back towards the door. "Jeb, don't be so rude. C'mon, Wash. Don't mind him. He's awful." She pushed open the door and steered him inside.

Gratefully, Wash let her lead him away, but Jeb was not to be deterred.

"Are you wearing a gun right now, Mister Monahan? Is that the same one?"

The boy's voice echoed in the mostly empty schoolhouse, reverberating like the ringing of a bell in the church-like quiet, scraping across his spine like a striking steel and making him cringe. The dark-haired woman at Mrs. Plunkett's desk jerked her head up in surprise at the door opening and Jeb's shouted interrogation. She stared at Wash with startled, almost frightened brown eyes. Wash had not prayed in years...in fact, he had given it up entirely. But right now, right at this moment, he was begging the Almighty to allow the earth to open up beneath his feet and swallow him. He reached up and snatched his hat violently from his head.

"Ma'am..." he started, mortified, feeling heat flood his face.

"Hey," the boy called from the doorway. "If that's the gun you shot that man dead with, can I see it?"

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