The search party returned four days after setting out. The townsfolk gathered in the street to hear the news. Jem Clayton stood on the steps of his father’s office and watched the men enter from the security gate with lowered heads.
“Well, we found him,” Walt Junger said. “He’s dead.”
There were gasps in the crowd and everyone turned to look at Jem, who remained motionless. Anna put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. “Where’s the body?” she said. “Why didn’t you bring it back?”
“It’s at the bottom of a ravine,” Billy Jack Elliot said. “There’s no way to get to it. Them savages massacred him and the animals had at him after that.”
Men in the crowd started to call out for revenge. Walt Junger told them to settle down, but Anna shouted over him, “Why didn’t you bring him back home? He deserves a decent burial.”
“I told you!” Elliot shouted back. “It’s not possible.”
“I want to see him, then,” she said.
Elliot’s face turned bright red but then he let out a laugh. “Why am I answering to a little girl with a crush on a dead man here?”
Walt Junger tapped Old Man Willow on the arm and said, “Tell her.”
Old Man Willow looked at his daughter without speaking. Jem Clayton was staring at Willow with hard, unblinking eyes, and Walt Junger leaned close to Old Man Willow and whispered something. Willow’s eyes watered and he said, “It’s true, Anna. Everything they said. That’s the end of it.”
“I think all of you are goddamn liars.” Anna grabbed Jem’s hand and tried to pull him from the steps, but he let go of her. He remained standing, staring at the searchers until they moved away from the crowd and went off to talk amongst themselves.
Jem Clayton’s eyes became hollow after that day, and even as people took him and his sister in out of charity, the boy refused to settle into any new home. He left in the night and wandered into the wasteland where he built blazing fires from sagebrush and sat staring into the flames.
The last time Anna saw Jem, he was returning to the settlement at daybreak, half-naked, covered in dirt and ash, grinning like an idiot. He tipped his head as he passed her, “Good morning, Miss Anna.”
“What has gotten into you this morning, Jem Clayton?”
“Had a vision.”
“Of what?” she said.
“Of myself. I’m gonna be the baddest man that’s ever lived.”
“Nobody as skinny as you can be a bad man,” Anna said, stifling a laugh. “Come to my house and I’ll put some food on for you. You look starved.”
“Can’t,” he said as he continued walking. “No time.”
He was headed toward his father’s house. Anna put her hands on her hips and said, “No time because of what? Where exactly do think you are running off to?”
Jem stopped and looked back at her. His blue eyes blazed in the early morning sun and to Anna, he looked so much like his father that she had to look away. “You’ve been real good to us, Anna. Take care of Claire for me.”
He turned and left even as Anna called out for him to wait. It was the last time anyone saw him.
That was over twenty years ago.
Anna pulled the framed photograph of Sam Clayton away from the wall and removed the small brass key from the base of the frame. She went to the closet at the end of her office and moved several boxes and laboratory coats out of her way to reveal a locked wooden box sitting on the floor.
The box had not been touched since the day her father delivered it to her office and said, “Keep this, but promise me you won’t ever look inside of it.”
“What is it?” she said.
“It’s for Jem Clayton, if he ever decides to come back.”
Anna set the box down. “And what if he doesn’t?”
“He will.” Old Man Willow touched the framed picture of Sam Clayton reverently. By then, her father’s eyes were spoiled by cataracts that looked like saucers of milk inside his pupils and he had to squint to see his old friend’s face. “Just make sure that boy’s ready for it.”
“Ready for what?”
Willow sighed, then turned around and took his daughter’s hand in his. His hands shook and his skin was purple and splotchy with liver spots. “Every man has a destiny, Anna, and not all of them are good ones. Jem Clayton’s destiny is inside that box. Swear to me you won’t ever open it. Please.”
“Fine, I swear it.” She tried to ask him more questions, but her father started coughing until he wheezed. He touched his lips and saw blood on his fingertips. Just a few days after that, Old Man Willow passed from the world.
She bent down to look at the box and tapped the key on the lid. She hardly ever looked at it, and the urge to open it rarely emerged. Anna believed that as long as she didn’t open the box, the boy who once told her he was going off to become the baddest man that ever lived would someday return.
The Sheriff of Seneca 6 moved through the town like a monarch visiting his subjects. He played the beneficent regent, handing out candy to children and small coins to destitute women. He dropped a coin into the palm of one old woman and she grabbed onto his sleeve, staining his expensive shirt with her grimy fingers. “Sheriff, why don’t you go after the real criminals in this town?”
“What criminals would that be, my dear?” he said, trying to pluck her hand from his arm.
“The damn money lenders,” she said. She pointed at the Savings and Loan storefront, “They don’t tell you about their fees and penalties till after you miss a payment.”
“I think it’s only fair they should expect to be paid what is their due in a timely fashion. Don’t you agree?”
“But their payments are due the last Thursday of the month, and the unions don’t pay out until that Friday. There’s no money left by then. And if you don’t pay, they put so much interest on top of the payment, you can’t never get out of it. Can’t you do something?”
He smiled at her and tipped his hat. “I will go and discuss the matter with the mayor straight away. Maybe he can help you. How does that sound?”
“Oh, thank you,” she said. The Sheriff hitched his belt up over the lower fold of his belly, hoping the belt would girdle some of the bulk. He walked across the road toward the mayor’s office, knocking on the sign that read “HONORABLE WILLIAM J. ELLIOT, TOWN MAYOR and JUDGE.”
No one answered the door. The Sheriff took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirt sleeve. He tried peeking through the office window but the blinds were drawn tight.
“Sheriff Junger?” a thin, worn out man said, looking up the steps.
Walt Junger turned and fixed his hat back to his head. “Yes?”
The man looked to see if anyone was watching him, then whispered, “You still giving out money for information related to specified activities?”
Junger took one step down the rail and fixed his hand on his gunbelt. “That depends on the information and the activity.”
“I know you and the mayor got a special interest in a few things around here. In particular, the ‘Proud Lady.’” The man cocked his head toward the well-maintained saloon down the street with thick swinging oak doors.
Junger considered the man for a moment and said, “Let’s just say I’m interested in every establishment around here, but there are some I’m willing to pay more for than others.”
“And the ‘Proud Lady,’ sir?”
“That’s one of them.”
“There’s a bartender named Phil Claren giving out free drinks to his buddies for extra tips, and then he shorts the register at night.”