Chapter Text
Chapter IV: The Guests
“& no one knows where the night is going,
& no one knows how the wine is flowing,
Oh, love,
I need you, I need you, I need you, I need you,
I need you now.”
–Leonard Cohen, The Guests.
1
Once he’d arrived in Rhodes, Charles took up a place in the hotel and once again rested with ease. It was nice to be so catered to.
His first task of the day was to head to the station and speak to Alden Carruthers, of whom John had told him Trelawny had introduced Arthur to. He approached him with caution, wary he may not even be the man he was looking for.
“Haven’t seen you ‘round these parts for a long while,” he said, moving mail into a compartment behind the barriers.
“Excuse me?” Charles said.
“I know you,” he laughed.
“You do?”
“Of course I do, I don’t forget a face.”
“Are you Alden?” Charles said, putting two hands on the wooden separator.
“Yes.”
“Carruthers?”
“Yes.”
Charles thanked his lucky stars. “How do you know me?”
“Arthur Morgan,” he said, taking a key from his pocket and unlocking a drawer close to his hip. “Came by here a couple of months ago,” Alden told him, “told me to give you this, if I happened to see you that is. I’m guessing you’re Charles, details here a ‘big Indian feller with hopefully long hair’.”
“Yes, I’m Charles.”
“So you’re the lucky feller, Arthur spoke very highly of you.” Alden slid across a letter still enveloped. “I haven’t been snooping or nothing, he told me not to.” He then removed another letter from a box. “And another with your name on it, Charles Smith, yes?”
“Yes. Thank you, Alden.” Charles took the letters and pushed them inside his vest. His clothes were fit for warm weather now, only his white, grey-lined button up and brown vest. “This means a lot to me.”
After placing Arthur’s letter into his saddlebag, Charles mounted Falmouth and rode to Clement’s Point. He hitched his mount to the tree, removed his shoes and rolled his trousers up at the ankles. He went to where the small wooden dock met the river and sat down at the end of it, feet in the water. He opened the letter.
Dear Charles,
I don’t expect you’ll ever find this letter, nor do I expect that you’ll want to find it. I hope John, Abigail and Jack made it out okay. I’m sure you did, not a doubt in my mind about that. You know how to be free, I know that, so do you. But, then I suppose freedom is just another word for having nothing else left to lose*. Despite that, I feel like I’ve lost so much.
I hope you find this letter, either that or it sits with Alden forever and one day when they clear that place out, they’ll find this letter and wonder why no one ever came to collect it.
I don’t know whether I’ll still be there by the time you find this, but I’m planning on staying in that shack outside Shady Belle, amidst all them alligators and turtles that snap: Crawdad Willies. I’ll leave pages behind for you, I swear that to you.
I want you to find me, but whether you do depends on whether you want to.
Sincerely, Tacitus Kilgore
Charles laughed at the final words and folded the letter up neatly and pushed it back into his pocket. He opened the next.
Charles,
Sadie came round and said she saw you at Owanjila Dam. I ain’t mad at you for taking Arthur’s journal. Do what you need to do. If you find him, come back with him. That’s all I wanted to say. I’ve read his last pages, I know where you’ll be by now. If there’s anyone who can find him, it’s you. It could never have been me.
From, Jim Milton
Well, Charles sure hoped Jim Milton wasn’t sending him letters from the grave.
He folded the letter and placed it back inside his vest.
2
Charles arrived at Crawdad Willies in the still early morn. He trekked past Shady Belle, narrowing avoiding a wagon carrying the Lemoyne Raiders. He kept his head low, riding past at a slow pace to avoid any suspicion.
Not to much surprise, the place was abandoned and vacant. Charles admired, however, Arthur’s bravery. A wooden, open shack in the middle of an alligator and murderer infested bayou, the Lemoyne Raiders lurking only just across a tiny bridge? Only a mad man had to be crazy enough to live there.
Falmouth seemed agitated by the presence of many an alligator, but Charles knew he could power through it. He hitched him outside the shack and made his way inside.
It was far more orderly than Millisani Claim had been, just as Arthur would’ve left it in his newfound — or perhaps now not so newfound — politeness. It was this version of Arthur Charles had fallen in love with; the rational, kind, honest Arthur. Perhaps the person he would’ve been if circumstance hadn’t been so cruel to him. Some may argue Charles grew up similarly, but Charles hadn’t spent his everyday from the ages when he would’ve been easily convinced with Dutch Van der Linde. Charles had his own opinions and ethical choices, Arthur worked off the backbone of Dutch’s: he only began to make his own decisions when he saw past the facade Dutch had been cowering behind.
Charles saw a ‘C’ carved into the bed’s wooden rim and crouched down beside it. He lifted the mattress and sifted out a few journal pages.
It feels foolish, but I’ll be heading back into Saint Denis tomorrow. Heard tell of a man like Charles fighting for cash while I was passing by the Gray’s place. Also happened to find Mr Gray dead beside a letter detailing that his family weren’t even real Scots.
Underneath his writing was a sketch of Mr Gray and beside that a drawing of Charles, far more detailed then the first one Charles had seen.
I’ll have to pass by that Sonny fella’s house on my way in. I suppose I could pay him a visit, but that might stir a bit of trouble. It’s an ambitious place to live if you’re like him, right outside them fields. But it’s clever, too. Someone shoots in that area, there’s no secrecy. I don’t want him hurting no one else like he hurt me.
Charles will meet this Sonny feller.