It was 1884 and I was done riding like I done in my early days. I had settled in Denver with a good woman. Scrawny and feisty, but kind and noble in her own way.

She was always looking at law books, but something told me she should have been a doctor.

There was one night, I woke up in that fright which only gun men and possibly politicians know. The hands, obviously for slaying, and the head men for holding back entire territories and sometimes whole countries.

Well, she put her hand on me and soothed me right down to wellness. I remember, when I looked through the fog of the mirror, thinking, if it weren’t for my greys I’d still look like a man of forty.

It’s a mighty strange thing to reside in a place that is much younger than yourself. Colorado ain’t been here twenty years yet and Denver which was named after some bigwig from Kansas, well, even less than that.

Kansas, that’s where I last heard of Carter.

The last of my living partners, Carter, I heard went into the traveling carny circuit and his wife had a little baby that looked just like an old frog.

I leaped around some myself but I suppose not enough to have a toddler or toad. Anyway, I got to thinking the way some men do when nothing’s going on except the usual that it could be I’d do well getting myself some learning.

Don’t get me mixed up with the know-nothings, I learnt my words and I can sign my own letters. The thing is I was always better with a gun than schooling. A natural inclination, it could be said.

I told the battle-ax with the healing touch that I was going away to find me some thoughts which didn’t include eating, bathing, plowing, or arguing with her on the many reasons I would not shoot Nightingale even if sometimes it seemed like she should be put down to rest or why a woman should wear a corset to church on Sunday.

If you are going to cover your head, you might as well hide the gut, honey. For some reason, she didn’t take too kind to my sentiment and often we’d simply stay in instead of attending the ceremony like normal citizens.

I didn’t ever mean to imply that she was overweight, the plain fact was she was always as thin as the Republican River after a dry spell, but in her weekend dress the belly sentence weren’t any apparent period but exclamation point somehow and it made my eyes paragraph the need to buckle down that protuberance.

Honey, I don’t need nobody thinking of yourself as expecting and then looking at me like I been fiddling your banjo while the preacher’s doing his bible dance. Well, she said if I went out looking for information she might not be there when I got back.

I left regardless, feeling that most likely we’d come to the point of hating each other and although I honestly did appreciate her gentleness and calming manner I’d be a damn fool to expect anything more from the trouble and strife.

I love you, honey, I love you nearly the same as the horse, but the mare ain’t never kicked me in the middle of the night which might have been why I woke that night in a cold sweat and maybe that’s why you were so tender then and furthermore she don’t talk back when I say something.

I was gone weeks and I was long gone months. My beard was hard and the only thing I learned new was that it was better to be at home even if the wife was there too. I figured she’d be away into some new life with some man that didn’t care if they thought she was carrying and then looked at him as if he’d been plucking her violin while the preacher was doing his biblical twists and turns.

I do admit I was lonesome, way so and hungry for something that hadn’t been greased outdoors and cooked over a crooked makeshift flame. I might even admit that I was predisposed to making the peace by throwing out the corset.

Sometimes a man simply needs things the way they were or at least the way they were inside his perception. When I walked through the door, I was rather prepared for anything and almost dreading that she wouldn’t be there.

I ain’t no love-struck fool, but you could say I had me a hard sentiment for the lady that slept on the bed opposite mine.

There was rumbling and the semi-corpulent man I had met when I tied the marriage knot with her on the hill was right there big as day and looking at me as if I was the answer to her new found opium habit.

She ain’t been out of the bed in nearly two days and won’t talk except to ask for that tainted tea that got her fish hooked faster than Old Jimmy’s Snake Oil For The Senses and Instrument Surfaces, he told me and I shrugged just like a man would that had spent most of the year chawing down with some itinerant Injuns intent on some spirit dance that would bring back the Buffalo.

What could I say? I went in and she was there looking as frightful as a vulture desperately in need of a corpse in the land of the living,
but all I could see was the beauty I adored.

I reached for her hand, but she embraced me and we bit down on each other’s lips. It weren’t no kiss. It was simply a violent attack to claim ownership.

We held each other tightly, but she started spreading her right hand all over me as if to see that I was still in one piece.

I hadn’t been handled in a while and some of me got stiff as railroad steel. Before I could stop her, she pulled out my passenger car and gave it a peck. The action made me forget how to breathe, of course, but she ain’t the real riding type and just like that we were holding each other easy until her mother came through and we both got that nervous we are sinners bound for hell let’s get on our knees and pretend like we praying or at least looking for a lost earring.

Sometimes, when it’s a true couple, no words need be said.

Anyway, her mother simply gave us that look. The raised eyebrow glance that goes "hmm" but says I know something was going on and it wasn’t on the floor.

Her folks stayed around for a couple days as if to make sure I was myself good and stayed.

I was. Threw out the tea and the corset. Still, sometimes, when I’m standing there next to her I get that uneasy feeling from some fellow or gal glancing over at her gut and looking at me like my passenger car ain’t got no breaks.

Some day, I suppose the battle ax and myself will grind out a little Jake or a tiny Joaquiana, that is if she agrees to name the critter after me or after herself.

Dedicated to Marie and Mike & Rivka's Rinah