Tales from the Roadhouse (Supernatural fanfiction) Chapter 1
Run by Ellen and her young daughter, Jo, the Roadhouse has always been a place for Hunters to get a beer, shoot some pool, and see old friends. There, amongst their own kind, they tell the stories that they can’t tell anywhere else.
This series of fics takes place before the events of Supernatural. It uses Harvelle’s Roadhouse as a framing device for one-shots within the Supernatural world. Each new chapter will feature a different original character. If the timeline makes sense, I might throw in references to canon characters, but for the most part the only ones you’ll recognize are Ellen and Jo.
Warning: PG-13 language and violence, mutilation, child abuse
Next chapter
----------
It had been a long time since the walls of Harvelle’s Roadhouse were smooth. Dents, scratches, cracks, and even bullet holes marked every inch of wood. They were mementos from all the fights, accidents, and daily living that had taken place there over the years. On a hot, windy Nebraska day in 1998, Jo was busy putting new marks on the walls.
Deliberately, almost lazily, she stood at the bar and flicked her knife into the wall near the door. There it stuck until Jo sauntered over and retrieved it, leaving a new slit in the center of the cluster she had already made.
It had been two years since Ellen Harvelle had chased John Winchester out her doors and, though the Harvelles didn’t know it yet, it would be eight more years until his sons strolled in through them. In the meantime, there were plenty of other hunters who frequented the Roadhouse. Jo was accustomed to the background noise of clacking pool balls, clinking glass, sloshing booze, and gruff conversation that nearly always permeated the bar. It was home. Jo belonged there. After all, she was a Harvelle. Even if not many Hunters knew of her yet, most of them still remembered her father. And all of them knew her mother.
Ellen Harvelle stood behind the bar, sweaty wisps of hair clinging to her face. Some would have said that she looked tired, or distracted, or unthreateningly matronly. But Jo and the Roadhouse regulars knew better. There wasn’t a thing that went on in Ellen’s bar that she didn’t know about, and she was equipped to handle almost anything that was likely to happen.
She also didn’t miss Jo putting new holes in her wall, but with a full house she had other things to worry about than scolding her daughter.
Hunters had been entering and leaving the bar all day, and as they passed in or out Jo tried to make them jump by thumping her blade into the doorjamb by their heads. Most ignored her, some rolled their eyes, others gave her nods of recognition for her good aim, and one old codger turned and told her, “Real Hunters don’t need to show off, kid.” None of their reactions stopped her from continuing her game. It was either this or doing her homework.
She finally got a satisfactory reaction from a young man who ducked in out of the heat around midday. When the knife whizzed by his face, he jumped back with a started yelp. Jo was pleased with herself until she recognized him and saw what had happened to his face.
“Holy shit, Cam,” she said, “What happened to you?”
Ellen stopped her work long enough to shout over, “You watch your language, Jo.” Then she noticed what Jo had already seen, and added, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Cameron.”
Cameron Isles was one of the youngest Hunters to frequent the Roadhouse. He claimed to be twenty-one, and Ellen sold him drinks even though she didn’t believe him. Now he stood half inside the doorway, his tawny hair lit by the sun and his boyish face in shadow. His sheepish grin was lopsided due to a clumsily-placed bandage that covered his entire left eye. As he stepped inside, the interior lights let Jo get a better look at him. The bandage looked dirty and wet.
“Think you could patch me up, ladies?” he drawled.
Ellen was busy at the bar, so she slid a first aid kit to Jo with a nod. Jo took the kit and led Cameron to a secluded corner. She hoped that being out of earshot of curious onlookers would make him more likely to tell his story.
She didn’t need to worry about that. Cameron was clearly itching to tell. He almost seemed pleased with himself when Jo gingerly removed the bandage to reveal an empty socket where his eye had been.
“It’s gone?” Jo whispered, her hand going to her mouth, “What the hell did this?”
As Jo cleaned the wound as best she could and taped a fresh bandage to Cameron’s face, he answered her question.
-----
I was working this job over in Wyoming, (said Cameron). Truth is, I thought it was a werewolf. I’ve always wanted to hunt a werewolf. A lot of the Hunters around here won’t even give you the time of day unless you’ve got the basics under your belt - ghost, shifter, demon, vampire, werewolf… I didn’t even have to kill it; I just wanted to be able to say that I’d tussled with one.
Well, it wasn’t a werewolf after all. I thought I was following a pretty good lead: young couple found dead in their home, sans hearts. Got werewolf written all over it, right? But no, I broke into the morgue and had a look at the bodies, and… Hey, don’t give me that look. I’ve tried bluffing my way in with fake IDs, and breaking in just works better for me, okay? I guess I’m just a bad liar, or I look too young. They always ask to call my supervisor, and I can’t find anyone who’ll work phones for me.
Anyway, I broke in and saw the autopsy reports. Until the coroner cracked them, there wasn’t a mark on the bodies. Their hearts were gone, sure, but not torn out. Something took their hearts right out of their chests without putting a single other thing out of place.
That shot my werewolf theory, but it was clearly a job, so I did some more digging. Turns out that couple had just moved into the house. The last person to live there had been a college kid renting one of the bedrooms. I tracked him down at his parents’ house. He’d moved back in with them after… well, they called it “the accident.” But I talked to the kid, and it wasn’t any accident. He had been at school for music. He was gonna be a concert pianist. He showed me some tapes of him playing, too, and he was damn good as far as I could tell. But when I met him, both his hands were gone at the wrists. Just gone. Poor bastard.
His parents wanted me out of there, but he wanted to talk. I think he could tell that I’d believe his story. There’s a lot to be said for that, for having people around who’ll believe you when you tell them something crazy. It must be awful to be a civvie and have something like that happen to you. At least us Hunters can tell each other, you know? Who was he gonna tell, if I didn’t come along?
So he took me to his room. Told his parents that he just wanted to show me those tapes of his playing, from before. But as soon as we were away from them, he told me. Told me how he had his friends had moved into that house when they all started college. How they had heard these noises, like shouting or crying. He said they could hear a voice like a little girl’s, saying over and over again, “Pride is a sin.”
He said that his friends started moving out until it was just two of them left - him and another music major, a girl, a singer. The fewer people there were in the house, the worse it got. It was like the voices were zeroing in on the ones who were left, focusing on them. They could barely sleep, and they were about to leave too when it happened. One night he heard screaming, but it was different than before. It was a real voice. So he jumped out of bed, ran to his friend’s room, and found her… well, in a bad way. Her tongue was gone, and she was screaming and choking on blood. He got her to the hospital, and she lived, but she was never gonna sing again. She went back home to New York, which is why I didn’t know about her.
So by this time, the piano-player boy was pretty much sure that he didn’t want to stay in the house anymore. He went back in one more time to get his things, though, and that’s when it got him. Maybe it sensed that it was about to lose its prey, I dunno. But when he went back inside to pack up, he went upstairs and suddenly he could see his own breath. He didn’t know it, but he’d hit a cold spot. And sure enough, when he went into his old bedroom, that little girl whose voice he’d been hearing was waiting for him.
He said she was pretty, but really skinny. And her hair was blonde, but it was really short, like it had just started growing back after being shaved. And he said that he knew he should have been scared, but she was just so pitiful that he felt like he should talk to her.
She came over to him just as sweet as could be, and took his hands in hers. Then he said that she looked up at him and told him, “And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee.”
He knew he was in trouble then, but it was too late. The girl disappeared and she took with her his hands. In just a split second, he was left with nothing but bleeding stumps.
He couldn’t stop saying how stupid he was to have gone back inside, to have let her touch him. He knew he should have just left that house had never come back. And he got so worked up then that he started to cry and howl, and his parents came and kicked me out, and that was that.
At that point it was pretty obvious that I was dealing with a ghost, which meant I had to do some research. Damn, but I hate research. That’s why I hardly ever go after ghosts. I prefer creatures that you can take down with a bullet. You’ve seen me shoot, right? Best shot out of anyone in this bar, even the old-timers have to admit that, even the ones who say I’m too young for this job. I’ll bet I’d be damn good at hunting werewolves. I could make a name for myself that way, sniping them from up high. You don’t need to do much research to hunt a werewolf. You just track it, pick your spot, and don’t miss.
Anyway, research. Took me all night, but I found it. Decades ago, that same house was home to a widower and his daughter. The dad was a real religious man, and not the good kind. He wore his daughter down, little by little. No one knew what he was doing to her at first. She’d come to school bruised up, but she was a sporty kid and everyone figured she was getting those bruises from soccer, not from her dad. Then one day she came to school with her head shaved. Now, they had a picture of this girl in the paper from before her dad went crazy on her, and let me tell you that she had the most beautiful head of hair you ever saw on a child. Seems when her teachers asked her why she had cut her hair so short, she told them that her daddy had done it to keep her from being prideful.
A little while after that, she stopped going to school altogether. Her daddy locked her in the basement and then drank himself into a stupor. When the police came knocking at his door a week later, he was still drinking, and the girl had died of dehydration down there all alone.
Well, the dad went to jail, and the girl was buried at the local graveyard, and no one lived in that house until a bunch of college kids who were too young to remember her needed a place to stay.
Of course, if I were smart, I would have gone straight to the graveyard and burned her bones. But I guess I wanted to prove to myself that I could face her head-on. I didn’t want to go on a hunt and never clap eyes on the thing I was hunting. So I went into that house thinking that it had taken weeks for the ghost to attack those college students, and days for it to attack that married couple. I figured it wouldn’t try to hurt me if I just stepped in for a few hours.
Dumbest thing I ever did do.
Quick as could be, the door locked behind me and the whole place got icy cold. I knew I was in for it, but I went ahead anyway and looked for her. I guess I figured if I could put some rock salt in her, it would distract her long enough for me to make a break for it.
I found her in the kitchen. She looked just like her picture, only skinny and bald like the pianist kid had said. She didn’t look angry or anything. She was just sad.
You know, in her own way, I think she was trying to help. She wasn’t malicious or nothing. She didn’t want to hurt people. But she had been raised all her life to think that pride would get you damned to Hell, and the only way to get rid of pride was to get rid of the things you were proud of. That young couple had just eloped; the thing they were proudest of was their love for each other. That singer was proud of her voice, and that pianist was proud of his playing. And as that little girl walked toward me, her hands held out like she was greeting me, I tried to think of what I was proud of. What she would try to take from me.
And you know what I thought of? I thought of your mother, and what she said to me last time I was in here. Do you remember? She said, “Cameron, you might be a lousy Hunter, but you sure can shoot. You’ve got the best eyes of anyone in here. Too bad you don’t have the brains to go with them.”
In the time I spent thinking it, she was on me. She put her hands right over my two eyes, and I just panicked. I had a sawed-off full of salt rounds in my belt, and in a flash I swung it up and fired. I couldn’t see with her hands over my eyes, but I guess I hit her in her left shoulder because she spun that way just as she disappeared. And the way she spun, her left hand came off of my right eye, but her right hand stayed where it was. A second later I felt the pain and the blood pouring down, and I knew what she’d done.
I got out of there just as fast as I could. The door was open. I guess she figured that one eye was enough to keep me from sinning, so she let me go. Like I said, I don’t think she really wanted to hurt anybody.
Her bones were easy enough to find, and easy enough to burn. Would have been the simplest job in the world if I hadn’t gone and wasted time in that house. Now look at me. I mean… just look…
-----
For the first time since he had arrived, Cameron looked downright sorry for himself.
“Oh, Cam,” sighed Jo, “I’m so sorry.” The bandage she had put on him looked better than the old one, but it wouldn’t fix anything. He was still short an eye.
But Cameron wiped the frown off his face in a second, and beamed at Jo as best he could. “Aw, don’t worry about me,” he said, “This is probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Do you know what an eyepatch will do for my reputation around here? People won’t look at me as just a kid who’s in it for a laugh if I can say that I lost an eye on the job. Just promise you won’t tell anyone else the whole story? I don’t want the others to know what I dummy I was.”
“I dunno, Cam,” said Jo. But she kept an eye on him for the rest of the night, and his prediction seemed to be coming true. The old-timers gave him more respect than they ever had before. Getting wounded on the job seemed to be a rite of passage for them, and Cameron had passed it. Jo began to think that maybe Cam would be all right. After all, he wasn’t the only Hunter who was missing something. In fact, she counted two other Hunters at the Roadhouse that afternoon who didn’t have the full complement of fingers.
But later that night, when they were closing up the bar, Ellen shook her head ruefully. “That dumb kid,” she said under her breath, “He won’t last a week, and he’s too stubborn to realize that he ought to give it up while he’s still alive.”
This startled Jo, because her mother was rarely wrong, and because Jo rather liked Cameron. “He might be okay,” Jo said weakly.
“He might have been okay,” Ellen corrected her, “If he had brains, or instincts, or discipline, or luck. But the truth is the only thing he had going for him was that he was a crack shot. Now I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. He’ll go out on another hunt acting like he’s got two good eyes, he’ll do something stupid, and we won’t ever see him back in here again.”
And Ellen was right, but they didn’t stop to mourn. There were more beers to serve, and more friends to worry about. They couldn’t get attached to everyone who walked through their doors.
This series of fics takes place before the events of Supernatural. It uses Harvelle’s Roadhouse as a framing device for one-shots within the Supernatural world. Each new chapter will feature a different original character. If the timeline makes sense, I might throw in references to canon characters, but for the most part the only ones you’ll recognize are Ellen and Jo.
Warning: PG-13 language and violence, mutilation, child abuse
Next chapter
----------
It had been a long time since the walls of Harvelle’s Roadhouse were smooth. Dents, scratches, cracks, and even bullet holes marked every inch of wood. They were mementos from all the fights, accidents, and daily living that had taken place there over the years. On a hot, windy Nebraska day in 1998, Jo was busy putting new marks on the walls.
Deliberately, almost lazily, she stood at the bar and flicked her knife into the wall near the door. There it stuck until Jo sauntered over and retrieved it, leaving a new slit in the center of the cluster she had already made.
It had been two years since Ellen Harvelle had chased John Winchester out her doors and, though the Harvelles didn’t know it yet, it would be eight more years until his sons strolled in through them. In the meantime, there were plenty of other hunters who frequented the Roadhouse. Jo was accustomed to the background noise of clacking pool balls, clinking glass, sloshing booze, and gruff conversation that nearly always permeated the bar. It was home. Jo belonged there. After all, she was a Harvelle. Even if not many Hunters knew of her yet, most of them still remembered her father. And all of them knew her mother.
Ellen Harvelle stood behind the bar, sweaty wisps of hair clinging to her face. Some would have said that she looked tired, or distracted, or unthreateningly matronly. But Jo and the Roadhouse regulars knew better. There wasn’t a thing that went on in Ellen’s bar that she didn’t know about, and she was equipped to handle almost anything that was likely to happen.
She also didn’t miss Jo putting new holes in her wall, but with a full house she had other things to worry about than scolding her daughter.
Hunters had been entering and leaving the bar all day, and as they passed in or out Jo tried to make them jump by thumping her blade into the doorjamb by their heads. Most ignored her, some rolled their eyes, others gave her nods of recognition for her good aim, and one old codger turned and told her, “Real Hunters don’t need to show off, kid.” None of their reactions stopped her from continuing her game. It was either this or doing her homework.
She finally got a satisfactory reaction from a young man who ducked in out of the heat around midday. When the knife whizzed by his face, he jumped back with a started yelp. Jo was pleased with herself until she recognized him and saw what had happened to his face.
“Holy shit, Cam,” she said, “What happened to you?”
Ellen stopped her work long enough to shout over, “You watch your language, Jo.” Then she noticed what Jo had already seen, and added, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Cameron.”
Cameron Isles was one of the youngest Hunters to frequent the Roadhouse. He claimed to be twenty-one, and Ellen sold him drinks even though she didn’t believe him. Now he stood half inside the doorway, his tawny hair lit by the sun and his boyish face in shadow. His sheepish grin was lopsided due to a clumsily-placed bandage that covered his entire left eye. As he stepped inside, the interior lights let Jo get a better look at him. The bandage looked dirty and wet.
“Think you could patch me up, ladies?” he drawled.
Ellen was busy at the bar, so she slid a first aid kit to Jo with a nod. Jo took the kit and led Cameron to a secluded corner. She hoped that being out of earshot of curious onlookers would make him more likely to tell his story.
She didn’t need to worry about that. Cameron was clearly itching to tell. He almost seemed pleased with himself when Jo gingerly removed the bandage to reveal an empty socket where his eye had been.
“It’s gone?” Jo whispered, her hand going to her mouth, “What the hell did this?”
As Jo cleaned the wound as best she could and taped a fresh bandage to Cameron’s face, he answered her question.
-----
I was working this job over in Wyoming, (said Cameron). Truth is, I thought it was a werewolf. I’ve always wanted to hunt a werewolf. A lot of the Hunters around here won’t even give you the time of day unless you’ve got the basics under your belt - ghost, shifter, demon, vampire, werewolf… I didn’t even have to kill it; I just wanted to be able to say that I’d tussled with one.
Well, it wasn’t a werewolf after all. I thought I was following a pretty good lead: young couple found dead in their home, sans hearts. Got werewolf written all over it, right? But no, I broke into the morgue and had a look at the bodies, and… Hey, don’t give me that look. I’ve tried bluffing my way in with fake IDs, and breaking in just works better for me, okay? I guess I’m just a bad liar, or I look too young. They always ask to call my supervisor, and I can’t find anyone who’ll work phones for me.
Anyway, I broke in and saw the autopsy reports. Until the coroner cracked them, there wasn’t a mark on the bodies. Their hearts were gone, sure, but not torn out. Something took their hearts right out of their chests without putting a single other thing out of place.
That shot my werewolf theory, but it was clearly a job, so I did some more digging. Turns out that couple had just moved into the house. The last person to live there had been a college kid renting one of the bedrooms. I tracked him down at his parents’ house. He’d moved back in with them after… well, they called it “the accident.” But I talked to the kid, and it wasn’t any accident. He had been at school for music. He was gonna be a concert pianist. He showed me some tapes of him playing, too, and he was damn good as far as I could tell. But when I met him, both his hands were gone at the wrists. Just gone. Poor bastard.
His parents wanted me out of there, but he wanted to talk. I think he could tell that I’d believe his story. There’s a lot to be said for that, for having people around who’ll believe you when you tell them something crazy. It must be awful to be a civvie and have something like that happen to you. At least us Hunters can tell each other, you know? Who was he gonna tell, if I didn’t come along?
So he took me to his room. Told his parents that he just wanted to show me those tapes of his playing, from before. But as soon as we were away from them, he told me. Told me how he had his friends had moved into that house when they all started college. How they had heard these noises, like shouting or crying. He said they could hear a voice like a little girl’s, saying over and over again, “Pride is a sin.”
He said that his friends started moving out until it was just two of them left - him and another music major, a girl, a singer. The fewer people there were in the house, the worse it got. It was like the voices were zeroing in on the ones who were left, focusing on them. They could barely sleep, and they were about to leave too when it happened. One night he heard screaming, but it was different than before. It was a real voice. So he jumped out of bed, ran to his friend’s room, and found her… well, in a bad way. Her tongue was gone, and she was screaming and choking on blood. He got her to the hospital, and she lived, but she was never gonna sing again. She went back home to New York, which is why I didn’t know about her.
So by this time, the piano-player boy was pretty much sure that he didn’t want to stay in the house anymore. He went back in one more time to get his things, though, and that’s when it got him. Maybe it sensed that it was about to lose its prey, I dunno. But when he went back inside to pack up, he went upstairs and suddenly he could see his own breath. He didn’t know it, but he’d hit a cold spot. And sure enough, when he went into his old bedroom, that little girl whose voice he’d been hearing was waiting for him.
He said she was pretty, but really skinny. And her hair was blonde, but it was really short, like it had just started growing back after being shaved. And he said that he knew he should have been scared, but she was just so pitiful that he felt like he should talk to her.
She came over to him just as sweet as could be, and took his hands in hers. Then he said that she looked up at him and told him, “And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee.”
He knew he was in trouble then, but it was too late. The girl disappeared and she took with her his hands. In just a split second, he was left with nothing but bleeding stumps.
He couldn’t stop saying how stupid he was to have gone back inside, to have let her touch him. He knew he should have just left that house had never come back. And he got so worked up then that he started to cry and howl, and his parents came and kicked me out, and that was that.
At that point it was pretty obvious that I was dealing with a ghost, which meant I had to do some research. Damn, but I hate research. That’s why I hardly ever go after ghosts. I prefer creatures that you can take down with a bullet. You’ve seen me shoot, right? Best shot out of anyone in this bar, even the old-timers have to admit that, even the ones who say I’m too young for this job. I’ll bet I’d be damn good at hunting werewolves. I could make a name for myself that way, sniping them from up high. You don’t need to do much research to hunt a werewolf. You just track it, pick your spot, and don’t miss.
Anyway, research. Took me all night, but I found it. Decades ago, that same house was home to a widower and his daughter. The dad was a real religious man, and not the good kind. He wore his daughter down, little by little. No one knew what he was doing to her at first. She’d come to school bruised up, but she was a sporty kid and everyone figured she was getting those bruises from soccer, not from her dad. Then one day she came to school with her head shaved. Now, they had a picture of this girl in the paper from before her dad went crazy on her, and let me tell you that she had the most beautiful head of hair you ever saw on a child. Seems when her teachers asked her why she had cut her hair so short, she told them that her daddy had done it to keep her from being prideful.
A little while after that, she stopped going to school altogether. Her daddy locked her in the basement and then drank himself into a stupor. When the police came knocking at his door a week later, he was still drinking, and the girl had died of dehydration down there all alone.
Well, the dad went to jail, and the girl was buried at the local graveyard, and no one lived in that house until a bunch of college kids who were too young to remember her needed a place to stay.
Of course, if I were smart, I would have gone straight to the graveyard and burned her bones. But I guess I wanted to prove to myself that I could face her head-on. I didn’t want to go on a hunt and never clap eyes on the thing I was hunting. So I went into that house thinking that it had taken weeks for the ghost to attack those college students, and days for it to attack that married couple. I figured it wouldn’t try to hurt me if I just stepped in for a few hours.
Dumbest thing I ever did do.
Quick as could be, the door locked behind me and the whole place got icy cold. I knew I was in for it, but I went ahead anyway and looked for her. I guess I figured if I could put some rock salt in her, it would distract her long enough for me to make a break for it.
I found her in the kitchen. She looked just like her picture, only skinny and bald like the pianist kid had said. She didn’t look angry or anything. She was just sad.
You know, in her own way, I think she was trying to help. She wasn’t malicious or nothing. She didn’t want to hurt people. But she had been raised all her life to think that pride would get you damned to Hell, and the only way to get rid of pride was to get rid of the things you were proud of. That young couple had just eloped; the thing they were proudest of was their love for each other. That singer was proud of her voice, and that pianist was proud of his playing. And as that little girl walked toward me, her hands held out like she was greeting me, I tried to think of what I was proud of. What she would try to take from me.
And you know what I thought of? I thought of your mother, and what she said to me last time I was in here. Do you remember? She said, “Cameron, you might be a lousy Hunter, but you sure can shoot. You’ve got the best eyes of anyone in here. Too bad you don’t have the brains to go with them.”
In the time I spent thinking it, she was on me. She put her hands right over my two eyes, and I just panicked. I had a sawed-off full of salt rounds in my belt, and in a flash I swung it up and fired. I couldn’t see with her hands over my eyes, but I guess I hit her in her left shoulder because she spun that way just as she disappeared. And the way she spun, her left hand came off of my right eye, but her right hand stayed where it was. A second later I felt the pain and the blood pouring down, and I knew what she’d done.
I got out of there just as fast as I could. The door was open. I guess she figured that one eye was enough to keep me from sinning, so she let me go. Like I said, I don’t think she really wanted to hurt anybody.
Her bones were easy enough to find, and easy enough to burn. Would have been the simplest job in the world if I hadn’t gone and wasted time in that house. Now look at me. I mean… just look…
-----
For the first time since he had arrived, Cameron looked downright sorry for himself.
“Oh, Cam,” sighed Jo, “I’m so sorry.” The bandage she had put on him looked better than the old one, but it wouldn’t fix anything. He was still short an eye.
But Cameron wiped the frown off his face in a second, and beamed at Jo as best he could. “Aw, don’t worry about me,” he said, “This is probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Do you know what an eyepatch will do for my reputation around here? People won’t look at me as just a kid who’s in it for a laugh if I can say that I lost an eye on the job. Just promise you won’t tell anyone else the whole story? I don’t want the others to know what I dummy I was.”
“I dunno, Cam,” said Jo. But she kept an eye on him for the rest of the night, and his prediction seemed to be coming true. The old-timers gave him more respect than they ever had before. Getting wounded on the job seemed to be a rite of passage for them, and Cameron had passed it. Jo began to think that maybe Cam would be all right. After all, he wasn’t the only Hunter who was missing something. In fact, she counted two other Hunters at the Roadhouse that afternoon who didn’t have the full complement of fingers.
But later that night, when they were closing up the bar, Ellen shook her head ruefully. “That dumb kid,” she said under her breath, “He won’t last a week, and he’s too stubborn to realize that he ought to give it up while he’s still alive.”
This startled Jo, because her mother was rarely wrong, and because Jo rather liked Cameron. “He might be okay,” Jo said weakly.
“He might have been okay,” Ellen corrected her, “If he had brains, or instincts, or discipline, or luck. But the truth is the only thing he had going for him was that he was a crack shot. Now I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. He’ll go out on another hunt acting like he’s got two good eyes, he’ll do something stupid, and we won’t ever see him back in here again.”
And Ellen was right, but they didn’t stop to mourn. There were more beers to serve, and more friends to worry about. They couldn’t get attached to everyone who walked through their doors.