Jagged #3

in #fiction5 years ago (edited)

Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight.
Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.
-William Blake

You can read the first part here and the second part here.
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Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

But there are things not even your most ardent supporters can love you through, and as Ollie Patterson continued telling his story – which wasn’t really his, it had begun so long ago, before he was even the mere idea of a person – she started questioning her loyalties, started wondering who the hell this guy was and what he’d done to her husband.
Because, to Nellie, he didn’t sound like the man she’d slept beside for the past three years, not the man who’d promised to lead her down the aisle, then woke her in the middle of the night, right before their wedding, to tell her they weren’t doing it anymore, that he just wanted her. All those lies, and now she wondered whom it had been had said ‘em.

‘I thought he was kidding, for a long time. You know, I figured he was some sorta crazy, plenty of them to go around, aren’t there? So, I thought why not indulge him, I’ll let him go on with his ‘job’ story and he’ll be none the wiser. Can’t hurt. But the more he talked, the more stuff came out about it, it was like...like something out of a nightmare, you know? Like I couldn’t wake up and I was stuck inside a dream with a madman, a dude so clearly insane he might actually be dangerous.
‘But hurting me was not what Burris had in mind, it seems. I was just about to buy the bar then, and I figured...hell, I don’t remember what I figured, but it sure didn’t seem like much. I thought he knew I was doing that and maybe he wanted to be on good terms, I don’t know, silly shit.
‘I don’t know how we got talking about that coffin, though. It wasn’t his normal talk, he was usually more chill. But one night, he came in and he was really agitated, y’know, really worked up about something and I couldn’t figure out what. Kept saying they were following him, that they’d get him in the end and how he didn’t want to go back. And when I asked where...’

‘He said the coffin,’ Lieutenant Burley finished, in his stead.

Patterson nodded.

‘Said they’d stuck him in there before, that he’d managed to crawl his way out just in time, but he was scared shitless. Because what if this time, he wouldn’t be so lucky?’

‘And you didn’t think to tell anyone?’ Burley couldn’t hide his impatience with the lad. Seemed to him like the kid was being stupid on purpose and Burley had no time for that. He had a dead body to watch over and an increasingly sick feeling in his gut that made him squirm in his chair.
‘Like I said, I figured he was crazy, plenty of those. Besides, what was I going to say? I was fairly certain he had no desire to talk to the police.’

He’d changed before the Lieutenant’s eyes. The confused kid who’d walked into his office two hours ago was a confused kid no longer. Patterson’s eyes had grown sharp and hidden, he never looked Burley straight in the eye now, like he was afraid the policeman would see things he didn’t want seen.

‘He said he was growing old, that his knees had weakened and he’d grown tired of fighting. Looking back, I realize he wasn’t scared of the coffin. He was angry. Pissed off that they should catch him when he was so close at getting out.’

‘Getting out of what?’

Ollie’s eyes softened when he turned to look at her again. She’d been the mystery in all of this, the great big mystery. Because all of Burris’ great plans for him, they didn’t involve Nellie. And Nellie saw that, finally, realized by the sadness in his eye that she was never meant to come along for the ride.

‘I sat with him that night. I no longer had to work, ‘cause the bar was practically mine by then. I guess by then, I was just going every night to meet him. He was fascinating, after a fashion. You’re not going to believe this, but I suppose it doesn’t matter, in the end.’

He took a deep breath and finally looked at the cop, ‘cause this story was as much for him as it was for Nellie.

‘Burris was always alone, that was one of the key things about his stories. Always alone. The first time, he had four siblings, though none survived. His father disowned him, thought he was the devil’s child ‘cause he was the only one had survived. Suppose he was right. After a fashion. That was one of his sayings, Burris, I mean. Anyway, he was out on the road by the time he was fifteen. And that’s when the old man found him. He trained him, I suppose pretty much the same way Burris trained me, sat him down by a warm fire. And it mayn’t be much to you, but a roaring fire is a damn lot to a freezing boy. These were different times, you understand and the young Burris had taken to doing a bit of highway robbery. Not a lot, but he knew it wasn’t something he wanted to do for the rest of his life.


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‘Besides, there was something in him, though what I don’t know. Burris always said I’d know when I found it, but that doesn’t tell us much now, does it? Anyway, the old man liked him, took him in. And convinced him, little by little. You know, to take over from him. Then one day, he left Burris.
‘Kid woke up to find the fire was still going, but the old man was gone. Left him some food, though, and a few other valuables. His way of saying ‘you’re on your own, kid’, I guess. Burris returned to robbing travelers for a bit, but it wasn’t the same. Something had changed inside his brain, like there was a voice at the very back, whispered things about the travelers.
‘He knew. He always knew, when the guy passing was an asshole or a good guy, and if he was the latter, Burris would let him pass unharmed.’

‘A sort of Robin Hood,’ Lieutenant Burley murmured.

‘After a fashion. Except Burris didn’t give back to the good guys, or the poor. That wasn’t his job. His job was to give back to something greater than that. I never said the assholes were assholes by your judgment or mine, sir. They just were, they’d done something, somewhere, that needed to be righted.
‘Burris just knew that sort of thing, saw it in people’s eyes. He was a doctor another time.’

‘And he killed the “assholes”?’

‘Sometimes, though not often. Killing is easy and it’s a particular sort of punishment, not all deserve killing. That’s the part of the story always scares me when I think about it, you know? Because he punished those people, hurt them something awful. See, Burris knew how to make them get sick, how to create diseases inside them. And he did. He didn’t even bat an eye when he told me, though I don’t suppose that would’ve done much good now. He hurt a lot of people and he was unapologetic about it. It was his job, after all.’

‘I don’t understand, Mr Patterson. When exactly was this? Why didn’t you report –’

‘Because there was nothing to report, sir. This was long ago, and by the time I found out about these things, the great grandchildren of these people were long dead, so what was I to say? Burris lived many lives and he went by many names, but he was always Burris in his own mind. And he was always alone. Sometimes he was married,’

-here, he spared a look at his wife, whose eyes were swimming in tears, still trapped in understanding whether her beloved husband had gone utterly insane or if what he was saying was actually true. And trying to decide which was worse -

‘other times, he was not. But he never lived to be more than fifty. He wasn’t yet fifty, was he, Lieutenant? No, I thought not. In any case, I won’t bore you with the details of each life. He was a sailor once, and a pilot, and a beggar. But it didn’t matter, in the end, because they were all just different fronts, they all had the same goal in the end, that is, to right what had been done wrong.
‘See, there is a way things are meant to happen. They might not be right, by your judgment, they may not have been right by his standard, either. But that was how they were meant to be done, there’s a certain path people must go and Burris was there to herd them back to it, whenever they lost their way or the scales grew unbalanced. I guess the closest thing we have to that is God. Except he wasn’t God, nor was he a servant or a messenger, or what have you. He was just Burris. And that was all there was, at the end of the day.
‘The Universe isn’t as simple as karma or as God or as just good or bad, you know? Good things must happen and bad things must happen in order for it to work as it should.’

‘But I, you said he stopped assholes and let good people go.’
She was begging to understand, reaching to find her husband somewhere in there, but reaching in vain.

‘No, you don’t understand. It was never about letting good people pass. He allowed some to pass, those who were always meant to pass that road that day, and he stopped those who were meant to be stopped. That’s what he saw in them, what their end purpose for the day was, whether they could pass or no. Thinking of them as assholes was...easier, I suppose. Anyway, he no longer thought of them that way by the end. It takes time to make peace with what you are, but in the end, you must.’

to be continued...

Cheers for reading,

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