SADDLEBAGS, Trunks, and Tombs

Chapter 5

The Watcher:

Somehow I knew that the scene in the window was about to change.  This time, even though I remained fear struck, I was able to sit down.  The nausea didn’t come, though I truly expected it to.

The picture in the window became clear.  It was a little faster than last time.  I tried to convince myself that I was watching the largest big screen television in history.  Hey, my imagination is good, but not that good.  Nonetheless I sat and prepared to soak in as much as I could while the left side of my brain danced on the edge of panic.

The sign on the building said “The Hotel Brunswick”.  It seemed to be on an old dusty road with a small railroad station on the opposite side.  As the picture took me inside, there was an old piano to the right being attacked by a rustic looking man, a lot of people and activity at the bar, and the girls there were dressed in “Lady of the Night” clothes for that period.  

It looked like the old western bars I had seen on the old television show, “Bonanza” that I loved to watch while I was growing up.  Next it seemed as if a camera was taking me up a flight of steps, past working girls and drunken men.  Paying a little more attention, as I was writing this down, it seemed as if those who weren’t drunk, yet, were waiting for something.  

For a moment it seemed as if I was actually there, a part of the scene, but I realized that the picture in the window came to me as if I was there.  If I looked to the right, the picture looked to the right.  It was the same in any direction I looked.  The picture gave in to my curiosity even as it continually moved me forward to where it was taking me, like a small child holding onto his mother’s hand.  When I reached the first landing, the picture veered forward and then to the right.  

Looking back, I noticed that there was another flight of stairs, and at least one more floor above me, but it was on this second floor that the picture wanted me to be.  We ended up going down a long hall to a single door that led out onto a balcony overlooking the dirt road we had come in from.  

There was a young man with dark brown hair under a black cowboy hat, maybe in his early thirties. It was his eyes that caught me.  Something in the dark blueness of them made him look older as he stood leaning against the wall, looking into the street.  

The time on the clock behind him said it was five minutes until noon.  I looked out into the street and noticed that there was no movement what so ever.  Where there had been people a few minutes ago there were now none.  I turned my head to the right and on closer examination I realized that there was one lone figure in the road.  I was compelled to look to the left and further up the street stood another lone figure, opposite the first.  The window turned me towards the clock again, four minutes to noon and then to the young man leaning on the wall with what appeared to be a shot of whiskey in his hand.  There was going to be a gunfight and we, the man and I were watching it!!

Across the road, the train had pulled up and slowed to a stop.  I watched as the passengers unloaded and noticed a pretty, petite, though tired looking young lady, with the most beautiful strawberry blond hair, stepping off of the train.  

It was at this moment that the window took over and I was only allowed to see what it wanted me to see.  The picture went into slow motion.  The clock said two minutes until noon.  The young man that had been leaning against the wall had dropped his drink and was making his way down the steps off the side of the balcony.  A set of stairs that had gone unnoticed.  It appeared he also had noticed the woman at the same time as myself.  The young lady had turned around and bent over into the train.  The man had now hit the street and hollered out.  The town clock began to chime, the young lady turned around and began to run towards the road, the young man ran out into the road, hollering at the top of his lungs and the shots rang out.

When the smoke cleared there were two bodies lying in the road.  The young man and the woman he had tried to save were both lying still on the dusty ground.  The gunfighters at either side of the road, one of which should have been dead if not both, were nowhere to be seen.  

All of a sudden there was a bustle of activity in the street.  The men moved as if they had to get these bodies out of the street and quick.  Just as I was trying to focus on the scene in the street I noticed a little boy, maybe four years old, standing on the last step of the exit from the train.  He was looking toward the street and began to cry out for his mom. The window faded to black.

Vera Cole had been one of the first people into the street.  She too, like Jackson, had seen the young girl stepping off the train.  She had seen the picture on ‘Old Jacks’ night table numerous times since the first time she had gone to his room.  A couple of years ago on one of their evenings together, he had even spoken her name, Martha.  Vera had actually probably noticed the picture more than he had in the past year.  She was, no, she had been jealous of the pale, red haired girl that now lay in the street, lifeless.  

She had also noticed Jackson coming from the balcony moving with the speed of an African gazelle.  Now, as she neared his body, she could hear screaming.  Was that her? The cries came uncontrollably until she saw the child standing by the body of the young girl.  The young boy had strawberry blond hair like the dead woman but the eyes, the deep blue eyes...she stopped crying almost instantly and left Jackson’s body to run to the child.  Though his eyes were wet with tears and rift with the confusion a child would have at seeing his mother lying in the street, Vera was able to get the boy to tell her his name as she attempted to comfort him.  

He said his name was Charlie and he had a birthday coming up soon.  That was why his momma had brought him here, so he could have a happy birthday with his poppa.  Vera took his hand and led him away from the body of his mother and past the body of his poppa, the father he would never know, and into the hotel.  

As the days passed, no information could be found concerning Charlie nor an address for his mother’s kin.  Jackson had never spoken of a child nor his own people.  The boy was so small!  Vera began to realize that Jackson hadn’t known he had a boy, and never would.  Vera had no idea what to do with the orphaned boy.  Then one morning, as she watched him eating a bowl of oatmeal, it came to her.  She would do what Jackson would have wanted her to do.  

Vera gathered her savings and all the other money she could get her hands on, bought a small ranch at the end of town and took the boy home.  Over the years, she made sure that Charlie lived the life she knew Jackson would have wanted for him, the life of a gentleman.