fic, Lost: I've Been Everywhere 1/14 (Sawyer, Jack, ensemble), PG13
Took me a while but I did manage to start with this. Yep, Nano novel here! Forgive me for the rather long header this round, next time it'll be way more slim since I'll have everything established here.
Title: I've Been Everywhere 1/14
Rating: PG13 for now, will reach NC17 overall
Characters/Pairings overall: Sawyer and Jack throughout all of this; mostly everyone else referenced in the prequel of this one or not is going to show up. Eventually Jack/Sawyer; implies past Jack/Sarah and Sawyer/Cassidy, will also include other het pairings which will be noted at their respective chapter.
Characters for this part: Sawyer, Jack, Arzt.
Word counting: 3890 this part, around 50000 overall.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine and all the folk songs used here are not mine.
Summary: Sawyer is a rambling musician during the Dust Bowl, Jack a former L.A. doctor traveling with him.
Thanks to: elliotsmelliot for the great beta job for which I can't be grateful enough and to fosfomifira for the title. I'd still be searching for one otherwise.
A/N: this is a direct sequel to I Ain't Got No Home, where Sawyer was a musician during the Depression; it (almost) directly follows from where that story ended and it presumes it entirely, even if I tried to make this as free from the other story as I could. I hope to post a part every two or three days, Christmas permitting and if I manage to do the editing as I hope. The only direct referenced song this part is Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Feet by Woody Guthrie. All the places referenced here really exist, at least now. But they should have existed then, too. ;)
Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV
Prologue
The road is wide and empty, a once curious mixture of gray and red (but not anymore really; it doesn’t take long to get adjusted to the dust and it’s been years since dust surprised people); there’s gray because while it hasn’t snowed in a while, the January weather hasn’t spared any mercy to the dusty road’s soil. The road’s color is made of multiple shades of that same dull gray that covers the ground up to the horizon line and farther ahead, while piles of dirty red dust mix with it, raising up whenever the wind gets a bit stronger. The air is cold, a chilly cold that goes straight to your bones; at the same time, though, it’s dry and the sky would be of a clear blue, if said gray-red clouds of dust didn’t just cover the most of it, showing only a tiny glimpse of that icy crystal hue.
The road splits in two at a certain point; a battered old sign indicates Granada on the left, Eads on the right.
The silence among the road is broken only by the sound of two people coming towards the sign; no one else is around. Both men walking towards the signal are in their early thirties and they do show all their years on their faces.
The one walking on the left has a guitar over his shoulder; he’s wrapping himself in his thick leather jacket and shivers once in a while because while the jacket keeps him fairly warm, his jeans are ripped in a good number of points and that surely doesn’t help any. His heavy, worn boots raise a cloud of dust with each step he takes. His hand keeps a handerchief over his mouth, as his dirty-blond hair blows in the chilly wind and clear, blue eyes scan the road until they see the sign. When he does, he makes a gesture to the other man to get him to speed up as he accelerates towards the crossroads.
The other man sees it and nods, though he doesn’t speed up that much since his shoes are completely worn out. It looks like they’ll fall apart in a couple more days in the best of cases and he really can’t risk his only pair. He’s shivering all over; while his trousers once belonged to a good suit and probably do a better job than his partner’s do, he only wears an old wool scarf over his neck. Under it, there’s just a white shirt which looks more orange than else and the rumpled jacket of the old suit. Definitely not enough. He also brings quite a heavy backpack on his shoulders along with a black doctor’s bag; his hazel eyes show a relieved expression when he notices the crossroads taking shape in the dusty air. He passes a hand through his short, dark hair and he retreats it covered in gray dust. He shakes his head and joins the other one, who is standing at the crossroads right now, frowning at the sign.
“Sawyer?” he asks when he’s right behind him.
“Yeah?”
“Is this the good road?”
“Not the one I’d have wanted but I guess it’s fine enough. Damnit, maybe we shouldn’t have taken that ride after all.”
“You said it was gonna spare us a three days of walking.”
“Yeah, but he left us far from my usual road. Oh well, looks like we’re goin’ to Granada first.”
“What was the name of that place we’re going to, remind me?”
“Cheyenne Wells, Doc. Ain’t that far from Granada and I’m sure that Shannon gets costumers from there, too. Maybe we find a nice, direct ride from there.”
“Okay. How far is Granada?”
“’Bout six miles. Jack, d’you think your shoes gonna hold until then?”
“They’ll have to. Fuck, I guess there won’t be any shoe-shops in Granada, will they?”
“Negative. That place’s a stinkin’ hole and there wasn’t one even before the dust came. Or so I think. Anyway, I doubt there’ll be one now. But if you hold on until Cheyenne, you’re gonna find a pair for sure.”
Jack nods, not asking for further information; Sawyer is mighty grateful, since if anyone in Cheyenne Wells has shoes to spare that person is Boone and all the shoes he has to spare were former property of people he couldn’t do nothing for in that makeshift hospital of his. He’s sure that Jack has figured it out already, but he still would rather not talk about it and so he just waits for Jack on the road to Granada. When he reaches him, Sawyer starts walking again, eyeing Jack’s shoes with a worried frown. Fuck, he really hopes that Boone can find the guy a pair.
It has been a fairly decent week since he sort of picked Jack up in Springfield, or since they happened to be both headed to nowhere, or whatever the fuck you could call it; he hasn’t traveled with someone for the last seven years and while he never was one to long for company, not really, it has been good up to now.
Sure, in one week he has understood a whole lot of things about Jack, among which that the guy can be a total control freak (especially in money matters; fuck, Sawyer usually spends what he needs to spend and surely never felt the need to keep something apart; well, Jack has put himself in charge of some money reserve that right now amounts to the incredibly high sum of fifteen dollars and thirty-two cents), that he’ll enter his doctoring mode any time someone next to him does so much as scratch a finger, that he has no sense of humor whatsoever and that his lack of bedside manner is even worse than his sense of humor. But Jack has the priceless quality of being one that can mind his own business and he never opens his mouth if not necessary, which Sawyer does indeed appreciate. While he isn’t that talkative, he can be interesting to talk to in the evenings or just when he feels like talking to someone for the sake of it; he can hold his alcohol if he doesn’t overdo it (and that’s another quality Sawyer appreciates), even if it looks like he has made some sort of vow of never overdoing it. Sawyer has never asked him anything about it because it’s not his business, but that’s an attitude he can only approve of.
Also, Jack might have been upper class once, but he never behaves (consciously) like he still is. While sometimes he does look a bit like he’s a fish out of water and other times he acts like one, Sawyer has realized by now that he doesn’t do it on purpose when it happens. He doesn’t have any kind of that ridiculous rich people pride that Sawyer just despises. He never asked for money when they had to pay for a room in any of the inns they ended up in where Sawyer played; and Sawyer figures that if you have rich people’s pride you don’t earn your room for the night patching people up for fifty cents on the road or checking out some family of the inn’s owner for free.
After all, it has been a fairly good week indeed and Sawyer thinks he won’t mind having Jack around longer, also because apart from the company, of which he can’t complain, maybe it’d be good to have someone taking care of his finances. Sure, the fund is shared (though the money Sawyer brings is more than Jack’s, but after all, when he gets paid he asks for ridiculous wages), but that’s not the point. Not really.
He thinks that Granada is actually less far than the six miles that sign said, though he has been there just three or four times so maybe he could be wrong. He shrugs and tries to locate the sun in the sky. Fuck, he misses that pocket watch he had to sell in order to get him, Cassidy and Clementine to Tennessee.
He shakes his head and tries to understand how long it till dusk. The sun looks still fairly up in the sky, so maybe they’ll get to Granada before night. He’d be darn glad if they did, especially since they’re both in no shape to travel in the nighttime. Or better, their clothes aren’t absolutely suited to the task. But six miles isn’t too much, not really; they could make it. He just wishes that Colorado wasn’t that fucking hard to walk through in the winter; if they could have walked also during the nighttime, it would have been a way shorter ride from Springfield to Cheyenne. But they couldn’t unless they both wanted to freeze to death and that isn’t the way Sawyer’s going to bite it, and since the day is short during the winter, there’s no way they’re going farther than that. Maybe tomorrow they’ll get to Cheyenne. Or at least he hopes so. He’s kind of missing the warmth of that fucked up infirmary of Boone’s and he hasn’t gotten laid for a while. Maybe if he has enough money he could get Shannon to share her bed for once. The girl’s way tight with her money, but it’s not like he can exactly blame her. Maybe she and Jack would agree about that. Fuck, he really can’t wait to get there, though getting to Granada before he and the doc freeze over on this godforsaken road would be the priority right now.
--
They do get to Granada just as the sun settles down, it’s not like they can actually see it anyway (they more have to gather it from the light decreasing behind the thick curtain of dust); it’s a bunch of houses with a main square and pretty much nothing else. When they arrive on the square, barely three people walk along the two fairly wide crossroads.
“Woah. You said it was a hole and I thought you were joking,” Jack says looking around and shivering in his suit jacket, “but you were right. This is a hole, indeed.”
“Yeah, but at least is a hole with an inn. Let’s see if they want someone playin’ tonight. Otherwise, I figure our fund’s gonna sustain a blow of at least two dollars.”
“What? Two dollars for a room? That place in Springfield asked for one!”
“Maybe, but as I said, this ain’t a decent city. This is a hole and they’ll get as much money from you as they can. Also, that idiot who ran the place here was a creepy son of a bitch the three times I’ve been here and I figure he ain’t gonna change anytime soon.”
Jack nods and Sawyer takes the first main road and tuns left at the first corner; the inn’s still there, alright. Jack’s eyebrow rises as he reads the plaque outside the inn.
“Who the hell calls his inn The Walking Pig?”
“A freaking former school teacher. Lost the job ‘cause the town was too small and they shut the school down. Dunno what he taught but he’s a pain in the ass most of the time and thinks he knows better than you. I swear I ain’t feelin’ like arguing with him a bit, but I sure don’t wanna freeze.”
Sawyer takes a couple of steps until the door, then pushes it and gets in; the place is half full which ain’t exactly that bad, especially in such a shitty town. He looks around a bit and finally spots the owner behind the counter, pouring beer to a customer and seemingly ranting to the poor bastard.
“Hey, Arzt! I see you’re still open!”
The former teacher, a short, blond man wearing a white apron, gasps and turns towards him; his chubby hands fall on the counter, a very, very annoyed look coming to life on his face.
“You again, Ford?”
“Well, was passin’ through here and thought I could pay you a visit. Why, you’re not happy to see me?”
“Not exactly, if you remember last time.”
“No, I really don’t. So, you need any playin’ for tonight?”
“What, from you? Forget that. If you want a room you’re paying, I’m not always at your orders. Hell, you always come like you’re dictating the conditions, what’s wrong with you? And who the hell is that okie behind you, a friend of yours?”
Sawyer figures he should have mentioned to Jack that the guy wasn’t exactly of the most open mind but Jack just shrugs and looks questioningly at him.
“Yeah, friend of mine, and from Cali, for your interest.”
“And what does your friend do, is he a parasite like you are? One is all I need here.”
“Not really,” Jack says at that point, looking absolutely calm. Sawyer figures the guy has understood that Arzt really doesn’t bite for how much he barks. “I’m a doctor, presently. And I was going to offer you or any friend of yours that might need it some free patching up in exchange for the room, but if you don’t need that we can pay you for it. Your pick.”
Arzt suddenly turns red; with the lack of doctors around (Sawyer is pretty sure that the closest to one in the area is Boone and the kid still doesn’t make no miracles), as soon as the ten people in the inn hear Jack, they all proclaim to be his friends and they stand up looking at Arzt like he’s crazy not to take up the offer. Arzt then relents and says fine, Jack gets the free room as long as he does his job. Not him, though. He’s fine and he doesn’t need any fucking doctor to decide what’s wrong with him or not.
But it looks like it’s Sawyer’s lucky evening, too.
“Hey, you with the guitar!”
Sawyer turns to some guy sitting at a table playing cards.
“Yeah?”
“You can provide music?”
“If your host wills it, no problem. I even take requests.”
“Arzt, the hell are you waiting for, let the guy play! We’re fucking bored here, ain’t we?”
The whole of the inn’s patrons loudly agree with the guy and Arzt has to roll his eyes and hiss between his teeth something that sounds like fine, your room is free. Sawyer nods and then, very calmly, sits on the counter since Arzt doesn’t have anything remotely close to a stage and he knows that Arzt hates it. He takes hold of the guitar and places it on his knees as Jack goes in the corner of the room, giving the first guy in the row a general check-up.
“Okay, requests anyone?”
Arzt’s face turns in pain as the twenty-five people or so in the room shout for requests; it takes a quarter of an hour to settle on Oh, Susannah. Sawyer frankly hates it, but if that’s what people want, no reason he should say no. So he plays it once even though he thinks he doesn’t get it exactly in key, but as he is asked for an encore he figures that music has to be scarce around this town, these days. So he plays it again and then another time; the third round, Jack is standing against the wall looking at him since he has finished his check-ups; Sawyer can almost hear him chuckling since the bastard knows how much he hates this song, but figures that as long as he has a place to sleep tonight he can endure it.
He has played that fucking song six times (though at least he sort of gets tipped a lot, much to the owner’s dismay) and manages to change music for a while with Man Of Constant Sorrow before Arzt calls it a night (or maybe shouts it a night would be more appropriate) and he gets a key shoved in his hand; he promises they’ll be out as soon as the sun raises up and reaches the room with Jack, going up the stairs of the inn. It’s too small for the two beds it has and said beds are also hard. Sawyer is glad there isn’t much light apart from the oil lamp he’s holding up; if there are any insects in the bed, he doesn’t want to know.
“God, does this guy really want two dollars for this?”
“Maybe he’s got better rooms than these, but yeah.”
“Woah. Well, that’s robbing.”
“Welcome to The Walking Pig then.”
They both half laugh at this; then Sawyer puts the guitar under the bed, kicks away his shoes and gets under the covers still dressed. He would have done it anyway, but especially since this is here, he isn’t risking taking even one item of clothing off.
--
As promised, they’re out barely ten minutes after the sun has shyly risen up in the sky; the morning is dark and cloudy, dust everywere; Sawyer gives up on the handerchief when he realizes that it’s getting in his mouth anyway. The weather is always chilly and pretty fucking cold; as soon as he finds a corner between two houses where it’s at least a bit sheltered, he ducks sitting on the ground there. Jack follows him a minute later, walking too slowly for Sawyer’s liking. Fuck those shoes, they’re really falling apart.
“Hell, today I wouldn’t have refused not to get out of bed.”
“Me, neither. But we’d have probably seen how many fleas were on that mattress.”
“Point taken. Okay, you know what now, right?”
Sawyer rolls his eyes and fishes in the inner pocket of his jacket, taking out a good number of coins. Jack nods and takes out a small leather purse from his backpack.
“Did you count it?”
“Nope. Wasn’t time and there wasn’t light.”
“Yeah, guess there wasn’t. Okay, let’s do it now.”
In the end it’s two neat dollars; not bad.
“So, boss, how much is in total?”
“Seventeen dollars and fifty-two cents.”
“A fortune.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“What ‘bout it?”
Jack shrugs.
“I guess that investing them in a couple of trousers for you and some jacket for me wouldn’t be that bad of an idea. Or for the shoes.”
“I doubt you’d get all that stuff at once with some of that money.”
“Yeah, guess we wouldn’t.”
“Well, let’s see if Boone can find us somethin’ before.”
“Your friend there, right?”
“Yeah, just him. Okay, now, let me think. From here to Cheyenne’s about fifty miles or somethin’. There’s someplace we could stop in between, true, but I doubt those are gonna hold up that much if we gotta walk.”
Jack only nods, looking at his feet with a sort of disgusted grimace on his face.
“If I think that these were my best shoes, once...”
“I’ve been wearing mine for years. Those are shit.”
“Yeah, figures they are.”
“Well, let’s stand up and see if we can catch a ride. Hey, next time you visit someone can’t you see if they have any spare shoes to pay you with?”
“I’ve been trying with that since I came in Colorado. No such luck. Fuck, I can’t afford them falling apart just now.”
“Nope, you can’t. Come on, otherwise we ain’t gettin’ nowhere.”
They get out of the alley and Sawyer coughs as soon as the dust fills up his mouth again. Fuck, today’s even worse than usual. They’re out of the city limits in barely ten minutes, what a stinking hole, and Sawyer is sure that this morning is so dead that there’s no chance but walking.
Looks like it’s his couple of lucky days, since suddenly a black pick-up which looks about ready to fall apart for how much it’s loaded leaves the city going in their direction. Jack has already stopped; Sawyer doesn’t lose time and pulls his thumb up.
The truck stops and he runs on the driver’s side; he’d greeted by a man in his early thirties, with a short beard; he wears a red shirt and a salopette, as the other man, more or less the same age, who sits on the passenger side. Only, the other guy’s shirt is green.
“You two need a ride?”
“Well, actually, yeah. Only if you can, ‘course.”
“Depends on where you’re goin’.”
“Cheyenne Wells.”
“Then you can climb up in the back, if you manage to fit. We’re passin’ by there.”
“Oh, thanks... what’s your name?”
“Scott. He’s Steve. We’re goin’ to see my cousin up in Minnesota, looks like he might find us some work, but we need to pass from Wells before anyway.”
“Great. Well, I’m Sawyer, he’s Jack. Thanks again.”
“No problem, just get on the back.”
Sawyer nods at Steve, wait, no, Scott, and motions for Jack to climb on the back of the pick-up where for some kind of miracle there is still some free space among packed suitcases. The truck starts back along the road as soon as the engine revives after a couple of tries; Sawyer looks out at the road. Nothing but gray soil and red dust. That’s no country to live in, he muses before Jack’s cursing reaches his ear. He has an idea he knows what happened.
Jack’s moccasins, once a winter pair out from the best shop in the L.A. area, have fallen into pieces over a suitcase. Jack shakes his head, takes them and throws them out in the road. Sawyer looks at him with sympathy.
“At least you got the heavy socks.”
Jack doesn’t even answer him, but his lips do crack into a smile after all as he reaches into his backpack and takes a blanket out. Sawyer doesn’t make fun of that just now.
“Guess it was about time. At least it was today.”
Sawyer nods and figures there’s only one thing he can do to lighten up the mood.
“Hey, you two in there! Would you like some music?”
“Sure, man, go ahead!” Steve says, or maybe it was Scott. Sawyer nods and takes the guitar off his shoulder, then places it on his lap as his back rests against a pile of three suitcases.
“Okay, doc, this is just so suited to this occasion.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Sawyer thinks for a second or two, then rubs his hands together since he figures that if he tries to play with his fingers freezed it won’t do much good and then he starts. Jack recognizes it after the first three words and rolls his eyes at least ten times in the following minute, but it’s not like Sawyer cares. It is suited, after all.
“Who’s gonna shoe your pretty little feet? Who’s gonna glove your hand? Who’s gonna kiss your red, ruby lips? Who’s gonna be your man?”
“Oh, God. And then you say my sense of humor sucks. You could have least changed it a bit.”
Sawyer ignores Jack and since from the front they like the choice he just keeps on playing.
TBC
Title: I've Been Everywhere 1/14
Rating: PG13 for now, will reach NC17 overall
Characters/Pairings overall: Sawyer and Jack throughout all of this; mostly everyone else referenced in the prequel of this one or not is going to show up. Eventually Jack/Sawyer; implies past Jack/Sarah and Sawyer/Cassidy, will also include other het pairings which will be noted at their respective chapter.
Characters for this part: Sawyer, Jack, Arzt.
Word counting: 3890 this part, around 50000 overall.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine and all the folk songs used here are not mine.
Summary: Sawyer is a rambling musician during the Dust Bowl, Jack a former L.A. doctor traveling with him.
Thanks to: elliotsmelliot for the great beta job for which I can't be grateful enough and to fosfomifira for the title. I'd still be searching for one otherwise.
A/N: this is a direct sequel to I Ain't Got No Home, where Sawyer was a musician during the Depression; it (almost) directly follows from where that story ended and it presumes it entirely, even if I tried to make this as free from the other story as I could. I hope to post a part every two or three days, Christmas permitting and if I manage to do the editing as I hope. The only direct referenced song this part is Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Feet by Woody Guthrie. All the places referenced here really exist, at least now. But they should have existed then, too. ;)
Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV
Prologue
The road is wide and empty, a once curious mixture of gray and red (but not anymore really; it doesn’t take long to get adjusted to the dust and it’s been years since dust surprised people); there’s gray because while it hasn’t snowed in a while, the January weather hasn’t spared any mercy to the dusty road’s soil. The road’s color is made of multiple shades of that same dull gray that covers the ground up to the horizon line and farther ahead, while piles of dirty red dust mix with it, raising up whenever the wind gets a bit stronger. The air is cold, a chilly cold that goes straight to your bones; at the same time, though, it’s dry and the sky would be of a clear blue, if said gray-red clouds of dust didn’t just cover the most of it, showing only a tiny glimpse of that icy crystal hue.
The road splits in two at a certain point; a battered old sign indicates Granada on the left, Eads on the right.
The silence among the road is broken only by the sound of two people coming towards the sign; no one else is around. Both men walking towards the signal are in their early thirties and they do show all their years on their faces.
The one walking on the left has a guitar over his shoulder; he’s wrapping himself in his thick leather jacket and shivers once in a while because while the jacket keeps him fairly warm, his jeans are ripped in a good number of points and that surely doesn’t help any. His heavy, worn boots raise a cloud of dust with each step he takes. His hand keeps a handerchief over his mouth, as his dirty-blond hair blows in the chilly wind and clear, blue eyes scan the road until they see the sign. When he does, he makes a gesture to the other man to get him to speed up as he accelerates towards the crossroads.
The other man sees it and nods, though he doesn’t speed up that much since his shoes are completely worn out. It looks like they’ll fall apart in a couple more days in the best of cases and he really can’t risk his only pair. He’s shivering all over; while his trousers once belonged to a good suit and probably do a better job than his partner’s do, he only wears an old wool scarf over his neck. Under it, there’s just a white shirt which looks more orange than else and the rumpled jacket of the old suit. Definitely not enough. He also brings quite a heavy backpack on his shoulders along with a black doctor’s bag; his hazel eyes show a relieved expression when he notices the crossroads taking shape in the dusty air. He passes a hand through his short, dark hair and he retreats it covered in gray dust. He shakes his head and joins the other one, who is standing at the crossroads right now, frowning at the sign.
“Sawyer?” he asks when he’s right behind him.
“Yeah?”
“Is this the good road?”
“Not the one I’d have wanted but I guess it’s fine enough. Damnit, maybe we shouldn’t have taken that ride after all.”
“You said it was gonna spare us a three days of walking.”
“Yeah, but he left us far from my usual road. Oh well, looks like we’re goin’ to Granada first.”
“What was the name of that place we’re going to, remind me?”
“Cheyenne Wells, Doc. Ain’t that far from Granada and I’m sure that Shannon gets costumers from there, too. Maybe we find a nice, direct ride from there.”
“Okay. How far is Granada?”
“’Bout six miles. Jack, d’you think your shoes gonna hold until then?”
“They’ll have to. Fuck, I guess there won’t be any shoe-shops in Granada, will they?”
“Negative. That place’s a stinkin’ hole and there wasn’t one even before the dust came. Or so I think. Anyway, I doubt there’ll be one now. But if you hold on until Cheyenne, you’re gonna find a pair for sure.”
Jack nods, not asking for further information; Sawyer is mighty grateful, since if anyone in Cheyenne Wells has shoes to spare that person is Boone and all the shoes he has to spare were former property of people he couldn’t do nothing for in that makeshift hospital of his. He’s sure that Jack has figured it out already, but he still would rather not talk about it and so he just waits for Jack on the road to Granada. When he reaches him, Sawyer starts walking again, eyeing Jack’s shoes with a worried frown. Fuck, he really hopes that Boone can find the guy a pair.
It has been a fairly decent week since he sort of picked Jack up in Springfield, or since they happened to be both headed to nowhere, or whatever the fuck you could call it; he hasn’t traveled with someone for the last seven years and while he never was one to long for company, not really, it has been good up to now.
Sure, in one week he has understood a whole lot of things about Jack, among which that the guy can be a total control freak (especially in money matters; fuck, Sawyer usually spends what he needs to spend and surely never felt the need to keep something apart; well, Jack has put himself in charge of some money reserve that right now amounts to the incredibly high sum of fifteen dollars and thirty-two cents), that he’ll enter his doctoring mode any time someone next to him does so much as scratch a finger, that he has no sense of humor whatsoever and that his lack of bedside manner is even worse than his sense of humor. But Jack has the priceless quality of being one that can mind his own business and he never opens his mouth if not necessary, which Sawyer does indeed appreciate. While he isn’t that talkative, he can be interesting to talk to in the evenings or just when he feels like talking to someone for the sake of it; he can hold his alcohol if he doesn’t overdo it (and that’s another quality Sawyer appreciates), even if it looks like he has made some sort of vow of never overdoing it. Sawyer has never asked him anything about it because it’s not his business, but that’s an attitude he can only approve of.
Also, Jack might have been upper class once, but he never behaves (consciously) like he still is. While sometimes he does look a bit like he’s a fish out of water and other times he acts like one, Sawyer has realized by now that he doesn’t do it on purpose when it happens. He doesn’t have any kind of that ridiculous rich people pride that Sawyer just despises. He never asked for money when they had to pay for a room in any of the inns they ended up in where Sawyer played; and Sawyer figures that if you have rich people’s pride you don’t earn your room for the night patching people up for fifty cents on the road or checking out some family of the inn’s owner for free.
After all, it has been a fairly good week indeed and Sawyer thinks he won’t mind having Jack around longer, also because apart from the company, of which he can’t complain, maybe it’d be good to have someone taking care of his finances. Sure, the fund is shared (though the money Sawyer brings is more than Jack’s, but after all, when he gets paid he asks for ridiculous wages), but that’s not the point. Not really.
He thinks that Granada is actually less far than the six miles that sign said, though he has been there just three or four times so maybe he could be wrong. He shrugs and tries to locate the sun in the sky. Fuck, he misses that pocket watch he had to sell in order to get him, Cassidy and Clementine to Tennessee.
He shakes his head and tries to understand how long it till dusk. The sun looks still fairly up in the sky, so maybe they’ll get to Granada before night. He’d be darn glad if they did, especially since they’re both in no shape to travel in the nighttime. Or better, their clothes aren’t absolutely suited to the task. But six miles isn’t too much, not really; they could make it. He just wishes that Colorado wasn’t that fucking hard to walk through in the winter; if they could have walked also during the nighttime, it would have been a way shorter ride from Springfield to Cheyenne. But they couldn’t unless they both wanted to freeze to death and that isn’t the way Sawyer’s going to bite it, and since the day is short during the winter, there’s no way they’re going farther than that. Maybe tomorrow they’ll get to Cheyenne. Or at least he hopes so. He’s kind of missing the warmth of that fucked up infirmary of Boone’s and he hasn’t gotten laid for a while. Maybe if he has enough money he could get Shannon to share her bed for once. The girl’s way tight with her money, but it’s not like he can exactly blame her. Maybe she and Jack would agree about that. Fuck, he really can’t wait to get there, though getting to Granada before he and the doc freeze over on this godforsaken road would be the priority right now.
--
They do get to Granada just as the sun settles down, it’s not like they can actually see it anyway (they more have to gather it from the light decreasing behind the thick curtain of dust); it’s a bunch of houses with a main square and pretty much nothing else. When they arrive on the square, barely three people walk along the two fairly wide crossroads.
“Woah. You said it was a hole and I thought you were joking,” Jack says looking around and shivering in his suit jacket, “but you were right. This is a hole, indeed.”
“Yeah, but at least is a hole with an inn. Let’s see if they want someone playin’ tonight. Otherwise, I figure our fund’s gonna sustain a blow of at least two dollars.”
“What? Two dollars for a room? That place in Springfield asked for one!”
“Maybe, but as I said, this ain’t a decent city. This is a hole and they’ll get as much money from you as they can. Also, that idiot who ran the place here was a creepy son of a bitch the three times I’ve been here and I figure he ain’t gonna change anytime soon.”
Jack nods and Sawyer takes the first main road and tuns left at the first corner; the inn’s still there, alright. Jack’s eyebrow rises as he reads the plaque outside the inn.
“Who the hell calls his inn The Walking Pig?”
“A freaking former school teacher. Lost the job ‘cause the town was too small and they shut the school down. Dunno what he taught but he’s a pain in the ass most of the time and thinks he knows better than you. I swear I ain’t feelin’ like arguing with him a bit, but I sure don’t wanna freeze.”
Sawyer takes a couple of steps until the door, then pushes it and gets in; the place is half full which ain’t exactly that bad, especially in such a shitty town. He looks around a bit and finally spots the owner behind the counter, pouring beer to a customer and seemingly ranting to the poor bastard.
“Hey, Arzt! I see you’re still open!”
The former teacher, a short, blond man wearing a white apron, gasps and turns towards him; his chubby hands fall on the counter, a very, very annoyed look coming to life on his face.
“You again, Ford?”
“Well, was passin’ through here and thought I could pay you a visit. Why, you’re not happy to see me?”
“Not exactly, if you remember last time.”
“No, I really don’t. So, you need any playin’ for tonight?”
“What, from you? Forget that. If you want a room you’re paying, I’m not always at your orders. Hell, you always come like you’re dictating the conditions, what’s wrong with you? And who the hell is that okie behind you, a friend of yours?”
Sawyer figures he should have mentioned to Jack that the guy wasn’t exactly of the most open mind but Jack just shrugs and looks questioningly at him.
“Yeah, friend of mine, and from Cali, for your interest.”
“And what does your friend do, is he a parasite like you are? One is all I need here.”
“Not really,” Jack says at that point, looking absolutely calm. Sawyer figures the guy has understood that Arzt really doesn’t bite for how much he barks. “I’m a doctor, presently. And I was going to offer you or any friend of yours that might need it some free patching up in exchange for the room, but if you don’t need that we can pay you for it. Your pick.”
Arzt suddenly turns red; with the lack of doctors around (Sawyer is pretty sure that the closest to one in the area is Boone and the kid still doesn’t make no miracles), as soon as the ten people in the inn hear Jack, they all proclaim to be his friends and they stand up looking at Arzt like he’s crazy not to take up the offer. Arzt then relents and says fine, Jack gets the free room as long as he does his job. Not him, though. He’s fine and he doesn’t need any fucking doctor to decide what’s wrong with him or not.
But it looks like it’s Sawyer’s lucky evening, too.
“Hey, you with the guitar!”
Sawyer turns to some guy sitting at a table playing cards.
“Yeah?”
“You can provide music?”
“If your host wills it, no problem. I even take requests.”
“Arzt, the hell are you waiting for, let the guy play! We’re fucking bored here, ain’t we?”
The whole of the inn’s patrons loudly agree with the guy and Arzt has to roll his eyes and hiss between his teeth something that sounds like fine, your room is free. Sawyer nods and then, very calmly, sits on the counter since Arzt doesn’t have anything remotely close to a stage and he knows that Arzt hates it. He takes hold of the guitar and places it on his knees as Jack goes in the corner of the room, giving the first guy in the row a general check-up.
“Okay, requests anyone?”
Arzt’s face turns in pain as the twenty-five people or so in the room shout for requests; it takes a quarter of an hour to settle on Oh, Susannah. Sawyer frankly hates it, but if that’s what people want, no reason he should say no. So he plays it once even though he thinks he doesn’t get it exactly in key, but as he is asked for an encore he figures that music has to be scarce around this town, these days. So he plays it again and then another time; the third round, Jack is standing against the wall looking at him since he has finished his check-ups; Sawyer can almost hear him chuckling since the bastard knows how much he hates this song, but figures that as long as he has a place to sleep tonight he can endure it.
He has played that fucking song six times (though at least he sort of gets tipped a lot, much to the owner’s dismay) and manages to change music for a while with Man Of Constant Sorrow before Arzt calls it a night (or maybe shouts it a night would be more appropriate) and he gets a key shoved in his hand; he promises they’ll be out as soon as the sun raises up and reaches the room with Jack, going up the stairs of the inn. It’s too small for the two beds it has and said beds are also hard. Sawyer is glad there isn’t much light apart from the oil lamp he’s holding up; if there are any insects in the bed, he doesn’t want to know.
“God, does this guy really want two dollars for this?”
“Maybe he’s got better rooms than these, but yeah.”
“Woah. Well, that’s robbing.”
“Welcome to The Walking Pig then.”
They both half laugh at this; then Sawyer puts the guitar under the bed, kicks away his shoes and gets under the covers still dressed. He would have done it anyway, but especially since this is here, he isn’t risking taking even one item of clothing off.
--
As promised, they’re out barely ten minutes after the sun has shyly risen up in the sky; the morning is dark and cloudy, dust everywere; Sawyer gives up on the handerchief when he realizes that it’s getting in his mouth anyway. The weather is always chilly and pretty fucking cold; as soon as he finds a corner between two houses where it’s at least a bit sheltered, he ducks sitting on the ground there. Jack follows him a minute later, walking too slowly for Sawyer’s liking. Fuck those shoes, they’re really falling apart.
“Hell, today I wouldn’t have refused not to get out of bed.”
“Me, neither. But we’d have probably seen how many fleas were on that mattress.”
“Point taken. Okay, you know what now, right?”
Sawyer rolls his eyes and fishes in the inner pocket of his jacket, taking out a good number of coins. Jack nods and takes out a small leather purse from his backpack.
“Did you count it?”
“Nope. Wasn’t time and there wasn’t light.”
“Yeah, guess there wasn’t. Okay, let’s do it now.”
In the end it’s two neat dollars; not bad.
“So, boss, how much is in total?”
“Seventeen dollars and fifty-two cents.”
“A fortune.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“What ‘bout it?”
Jack shrugs.
“I guess that investing them in a couple of trousers for you and some jacket for me wouldn’t be that bad of an idea. Or for the shoes.”
“I doubt you’d get all that stuff at once with some of that money.”
“Yeah, guess we wouldn’t.”
“Well, let’s see if Boone can find us somethin’ before.”
“Your friend there, right?”
“Yeah, just him. Okay, now, let me think. From here to Cheyenne’s about fifty miles or somethin’. There’s someplace we could stop in between, true, but I doubt those are gonna hold up that much if we gotta walk.”
Jack only nods, looking at his feet with a sort of disgusted grimace on his face.
“If I think that these were my best shoes, once...”
“I’ve been wearing mine for years. Those are shit.”
“Yeah, figures they are.”
“Well, let’s stand up and see if we can catch a ride. Hey, next time you visit someone can’t you see if they have any spare shoes to pay you with?”
“I’ve been trying with that since I came in Colorado. No such luck. Fuck, I can’t afford them falling apart just now.”
“Nope, you can’t. Come on, otherwise we ain’t gettin’ nowhere.”
They get out of the alley and Sawyer coughs as soon as the dust fills up his mouth again. Fuck, today’s even worse than usual. They’re out of the city limits in barely ten minutes, what a stinking hole, and Sawyer is sure that this morning is so dead that there’s no chance but walking.
Looks like it’s his couple of lucky days, since suddenly a black pick-up which looks about ready to fall apart for how much it’s loaded leaves the city going in their direction. Jack has already stopped; Sawyer doesn’t lose time and pulls his thumb up.
The truck stops and he runs on the driver’s side; he’d greeted by a man in his early thirties, with a short beard; he wears a red shirt and a salopette, as the other man, more or less the same age, who sits on the passenger side. Only, the other guy’s shirt is green.
“You two need a ride?”
“Well, actually, yeah. Only if you can, ‘course.”
“Depends on where you’re goin’.”
“Cheyenne Wells.”
“Then you can climb up in the back, if you manage to fit. We’re passin’ by there.”
“Oh, thanks... what’s your name?”
“Scott. He’s Steve. We’re goin’ to see my cousin up in Minnesota, looks like he might find us some work, but we need to pass from Wells before anyway.”
“Great. Well, I’m Sawyer, he’s Jack. Thanks again.”
“No problem, just get on the back.”
Sawyer nods at Steve, wait, no, Scott, and motions for Jack to climb on the back of the pick-up where for some kind of miracle there is still some free space among packed suitcases. The truck starts back along the road as soon as the engine revives after a couple of tries; Sawyer looks out at the road. Nothing but gray soil and red dust. That’s no country to live in, he muses before Jack’s cursing reaches his ear. He has an idea he knows what happened.
Jack’s moccasins, once a winter pair out from the best shop in the L.A. area, have fallen into pieces over a suitcase. Jack shakes his head, takes them and throws them out in the road. Sawyer looks at him with sympathy.
“At least you got the heavy socks.”
Jack doesn’t even answer him, but his lips do crack into a smile after all as he reaches into his backpack and takes a blanket out. Sawyer doesn’t make fun of that just now.
“Guess it was about time. At least it was today.”
Sawyer nods and figures there’s only one thing he can do to lighten up the mood.
“Hey, you two in there! Would you like some music?”
“Sure, man, go ahead!” Steve says, or maybe it was Scott. Sawyer nods and takes the guitar off his shoulder, then places it on his lap as his back rests against a pile of three suitcases.
“Okay, doc, this is just so suited to this occasion.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Sawyer thinks for a second or two, then rubs his hands together since he figures that if he tries to play with his fingers freezed it won’t do much good and then he starts. Jack recognizes it after the first three words and rolls his eyes at least ten times in the following minute, but it’s not like Sawyer cares. It is suited, after all.
“Who’s gonna shoe your pretty little feet? Who’s gonna glove your hand? Who’s gonna kiss your red, ruby lips? Who’s gonna be your man?”
“Oh, God. And then you say my sense of humor sucks. You could have least changed it a bit.”
Sawyer ignores Jack and since from the front they like the choice he just keeps on playing.
TBC