The High Ground

It was beautiful up here. Spectacular. Even this slight elevation made everything clearer, his sublime state of mind augmenting the view by crystallizing vision and emotion into perfect harmony.

Money was meaningless, he could see that now. Everything is so much clearer from up here. What was it Solomon said — everything is vanity.

He laughed out loud. Why hadn’t he seen this before. Why did he have to wait until now to have his eyes opened? So late in life. So very late. Estes Wilman savored the irony of the moment.

If only these thoughts had forced their way into his head even a week earlier. Just seven days. Better yet, seven years. But he would settle for days now.

He rode into the town on a Sunday. A quiet, sun-dappled morning. A place he’d never seen before, yet it felt like home. Home. How long had it been since he’d thought of that place? How much longer since he’d been there?

His horse found the livery stable without urging. Instinct. Breakfast. And with the self-same instinct, Estes found the saloon, and a steaming plate of steak and eggs. And his last two bits. Busted again.

No matter how much money he had, it never seemed to last. Burned a hole in his pocket. And no matter how much he spent, he never seemed to have anything to show for it afterward.

The horse shifted beneath him, breaking his reverie for a moment. He glanced up at the tree above, etched against the fire-orange sky of dawn. It was exquisite. Magnificent. Scrub oak. Green, leather-like leaves shivering in the breath of morning. Gnarled, twisted, like the hands of his father.

His father. A respect he never had suddenly broke upon him, like the coming dawn below. A dirt farmer. Penniless. Pious. Proud. Estes had hated him, hated his ways. Despised him. Needed him.

That’s why he was here at this moment in time. Because he was always trying to best his old man. Prove him wrong. And he had, or so he thought, until this very moment. And now — he didn’t want to think about it. He let his mind slip back again, back those last seven days.

Breakfast was a memory. And without money, the saloonkeeper soon ran him out. The sun burned hot, evaporating the serenity of the morning in this town so like home.

Estes strode the street, searching. It had to be simple, perfect.

The town was small. Tiny. Hardly a town at all. Nothing but a few rough wooden buildings lining a dusty earthen street. General store, saloon, livery, schoolhouse, makeshift church. Not even a bank.

And only one sheriff, who spent most of his time napping in a chair outside his office, precariously perched against the wall, his sonorous snoring providing the illusion of safety for the citizens.

Estes could never figure it out, even though he’d ridden through countless small towns throughout the territory. Why did they do it? Why would these strangers band together, rally around a ramshackle collection of shacks in the middle of barren wilderness, and declare themselves a town?

He much preferred the life of a wanderer. He’d once read a book he liked, about a scoundrel of the West, and adopted the term unto himself. Adventurer. He liked that.

But now the Adventurer found himself in this nameless community without a bank, and was beginning to fear his journey had been fruitless.

And then he saw the money change hands. A great quantity of it. Prime United States government greenbacks. Some farmer making his monthly purchase at the general store.

Estes made his decision in the twinkling of an eye. In a heartbeat. Those greenbacks would be his. He was surprised by the severity of the thought, the intensity of the greed. It was a passion that bordered on lust. It was lust.

The virulence of the memory snapped him back to the present for a moment. Had he always felt that way about money?

Dawn was imminent. The Morning Star resting on the Eastern horizon as a harbinger of the day to come, glaring, flaring, tauntingly bright. Bright and lucid as his memory of that day, vehement as his fateful decision.

In the glare of the noon-day sun, Estes made his way into the store, to case it, he told himself. Check it out so he could come back that night and liberate his money.

It looked like every general store he had ever been in. It was as if every shopkeeper had somehow secretly agreed upon the layout. It would be a simple matter to slip in tonight unseen, and be gone before dawn.

But as he saw the clerk preparing to ensconce the money in the store safe, Estes suddenly realized he couldn’t wait until tonight. That money was his. His right as an Adventurer. He had to have it now.

Before he knew it, his gun was in his hand, his body was at the counter, his hand was on the collar of the clerk. It was like he was watching himself perform the act. Unreal. Deadly.

Then they were there. In his hands. Greenbacks. They felt like silk. Like a woman. He loved their caress. Their smell. Intoxicating. Invigorating.

“Reach for the sky.”

The voice seemed to come to him from somewhere outside his current state of consciousness. But it’s meaning was sure — someone wanted what was now his.

There was something different about the voice, about the childishness of the command, something in the form of a warning, but it was far too late to do anything about it now.

Reflexes tensed and honed by years on the run were at work now. Thumb pulling back hammer. Arm swinging snake-like toward the voice. Finger compressing trigger, even before eyes had reached the target.

Body shot. Center of the chest. Another notch in the ivory. Another close call averted by the expert marksmanship of Estes Wilman.

At least the shot would have been in the chest, if the chest had been that high. But nine year-olds are considerably shorter than grown men. And this one, playing lawman with a wooden gun, would never grow up. Thanks to the expert marksmanship of Estes Wilman.

The gun dropped from Estes’ limp hand. The greenbacks fluttered into the spreading red pool on the floor, forgotten by owner and usurper alike.

What followed was for Estes a whirlwind of unreality. The arrest by the not-so-sleepy sheriff. The angry mob. The swift and venomous trial. The grief-stricken mother, now dead inside. The sentence. Death by hanging. Empty hours in the four-by-eight cell.

And now he sat atop a horse not his own on a hill overlooking this little town so like home. The leather thong binding his wrists biting into his flesh, the coarse hemp rope around his neck chafing him.

And suddenly Estes realized this was the self-same end of his beloved Adventurer in the book. His famous last line, “I’ll see you in hell” ringing in his ears. That is just what will happen. Very soon, Estes will meet the Adventurer — in hell.

Dawn broke upon the world, caressing the little town in the valley with a cleansing, heavenly light, and with it the certain understanding that it would be his last sight. The little town in the valley…

The new-found clarity that had come to him upon this hill would not yet relent. There was something more to be revealed, another mystery to be laid bare.

And in an electric instant, he understood. The clarity came to completion. Estes Wilman had come full circle. After all these years, whether by cosmic accident or long-denied need, he had ridden back into the town of his birth.

Estes slowly became aware that he wasn’t alone. He began to hear the voices imprinting themselves upon his consciousness. He looked up to the sea of angry, accusing, hate-filled faces surrounding him — and straight into the face of his father.

Shame consumed him like a lightning-struck wildfire, and every hateful, wicked thing he had ever done stabbed at his heart.

But there was no shame in his father’s eyes, in spite of all the wrongs his son had committed against him and others. Only love. Unconditional. Overwhelming.

And suddenly Estes saw. His father had been right. Right about everything. And Estes believed.

Only the love of the father could set the son free. An eternity passed between them, before eternity enfolded him.

The horse lunged, spurred by the dead boy’s mother. The rope snapped taut. Estes Wilman smiled. He had taken the low road back to the high ground. He was home.