Ain't Talkin'

Roche left early the next morning. He’d cocked his hat low over his eyes and hung his shades from the lapel of his long jacket. Lucky seemed eager to get along, and the mare fidgeted and tossed her head while Roche belted his saddle around her midsection and fastened the breastplate.

He had one foot up in the stirrup when Alma teetered out of the tent on her pinpoint little feet.

“Going so early?”

“Yeah, sorry Alma but I got work. I’ll be seeing you next time.” Roche swung his leg over the saddle and check his guns. The A-Mat was in a saddle holster slung up in front of his left leg. His revolvers at his sides and the .45 and sawed-off strapped to either thigh. The water skins were full and there was bundled grass for the horse in case it was too sparse further towards the Sierra’s. Roche rolled a smoke with a pinch of tobacco and started to turn the horse.

“Won’t be going without this.” Alma puttered back into the tent and returned with a handled jug of the potato stilled vodka she made somewhere in the hills.

Roche took the jug and when he did the old woman gripped his hand with her own so firmly it shocked him.

“You be careful out there, Roche. And don’t you say I didn’t warn you. You take care, you take real care.” She let go and disappeared back inside her tent without saying another word.

Roche buckled the jug to his saddle after he’d taken a long gulp. He was grateful for the stuff. As he made his way further down the 50 he could have sworn he heard old Alma humming a tune as she picked along behind him, seeing him off in an unseen, thievish way.

The sun was high over the mountains to the west by the time Roche looped around the bottom of the post script to Lake Tahoe. There were some coyotes ravaging something that looked all too human to be of any consolation. Roche simply looked the other way and smoked his cigarette, taking draughts from the vodka jug as he went.

Before the night was out he found he was humming the same tune that Alma had while she followed him a ways to see him off. Some strange old tune that the world had forgotten.

“Sergeant Peppah’s lonely hearts bum ban. . .ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. . .”

A walker gruffly spat a forgotten tune, the sun set to the west of Lake Tahoe’s leftover dustbowl, and somewhere approaching the Sierra’s on the way to New San Fran, a trio of soldiers dragged a poor boy behind a motorbike en route to a door to this worlds second doppleganger.

In the epilogue of all things, not even a cosmic speck of dust noticed that Roche was being followed, and not by old Alma.