I appreciate your thinking on me, marshal, but ain’t no trouble of his what ain’t trouble of mine, too.
~ J.d. Jordan
Seems a lot of men never saw one such as me. A girl what could keep up and fight and ride and curse with the best of them. A girl what ain’t trapped in some dress or some house or some bed. A girl what ain’t waiting on some man to do what she ought to her own damn self.
But wasn’t time for what was. Was time to settle up the future.
And in the silence what followed, I reckon our eyes had some long conversation our mouths could’ve never talked through. Some long, looking talk about things gone and long since said. About cries out in the night and some long ago tangling of limbs. And about them betrayals done time and time again—by both of us—what led to me pointing the Green Man’s rifle at the man what once loved me under the Green Man’s stars.
Maybe I’d lost something. Maybe I’d lost a lot—more, even, than I could suffer—but I still had my own self. And lonesome as I might be, wasn’t no force on Earth or from above what could make me less.
But tell you true, I honestly didn’t think nothing about the Green Man beefing that posse. Was just men and the world’s full of them.
wasn’t no bit of me willing to ride shotgun to my own funeral.
I was the luckiest girl. Don’t you think because I didn’t have no proper man or husband I was anything else. Wasn’t no place I’d rather be than right there. Even now, I pine for that uncomfortable rock. Because he was watching over me and loneliness was some far off thing, echoing off the Rock from other folks. Wasn’t nothing could ruin it for me.
Ain’t no good ever comes of it, if you ain’t steering yourself.
Was like the Green Man said, some you got to put to the bullet. Some to the tongue. Often the latter, with me. But some, you just got to put behind you.
Was still between Martha and Jane, then, I was. Between the girl I was and who I wanted to be.
Was Jane now. All Jane. Come calamity or come calm, was myself and none else.
I tell you, mister, if there’s anything good about being a hot-tempered bitch, it’s knowing right well what buttons to push in others seeing as they’re the same ones what get your own back up.
And if revenge was all I had, then I was goddamned if it wouldn’t be enough.
what I like and what I need’s two different things.
That got me to laughing too. His laughter, like his yelling, got into you until you was right soaked with it. So you couldn’t help yourself. But it felt good. Light. I tell you, I hadn’t felt like that in a long while.
Can’t count on no miracles. Sometimes, you just got to have a plan.
The terrible price of living, ain’t it? To live through others dying?
not knowing what I needed to do or where I needed to go, I knew all the same that I was going in the right direction.
Don’t matter none how bad it gets sometimes. You can always turn this shit around.
Ain’t nothing scarier than someone with nothing.
