Chapter 15 #2
The hooves again. Jackson coming down the street. The camera making its slow pan across the scene—storefronts, extras, boardwalk—sliding toward us in that smooth, inevitable way.
Jackson pulled up Betty right in front of us, the mare happy now that her bit was fixed.
The camera spun toward him, framing us right behind it.
The moment it pointed at us, Sylvie locked up like an engine in winter.
Every muscle. Every joint. Staring directly, unblinkingly, with the full force of her eyes, straight into the lens.
“Cut!” someone yelled.
“The woman in the navy dress,” the director called.
Sylvie’s hand rose slowly. Me?
“Yes. You. The one staring directly into the camera and RUINING MY SHOT!”
“I… I’m so sorry. When it moved toward me, I just… Everything went blank, and I—”
Toby rushed over, his blue pants swishing together with his hurried steps. His face had returned to that shade of tomato red. Or perhaps it was always that color, though I doubted it.
It was us. It was definitely us.
“Townswoman Number Fifteen! What did I say? What. Did. I. SAY!? Don’t look at the camera!”
Sylvie held up her hands. “I’m so sorry. I won’t, I promise. I just panicked—”
Toby turned back to us and hurried away, hands thrown up in the air in exasperation, like we’d stolen years from his life, or at the very least, added years to his estimated retirement date.
On the reset, I turned to Sylvie, put both hands on her shoulders, and squared her toward me.
“Okay,” I said. “This is our shot. Our one shot at getting ourselves immortalized in film. We can’t screw it up again!
Don’t look at the camera. You aren’t Sylvie.
You’re a townswoman. A schoolteacher. You’re thinking about Darla and how to help her with her cursive.
That damned Darla can never get her Rs right.
And your husband. Is he cheating? Maybe you think he’s been spending too much time at the saloon.
Wondering if he’s been sneaking off with that harlot Mary everyone whispers about.
You understand? You’re not Sylvie. No cameras.
You’re Evelyn Pewster, schoolmarm. Scorned prairie wife. Got it?”
She blinked back at me. “Evelyn Pewster. Schoolmarm.”
I nodded along with her. “And you’re here with Buck because she just saved you from a would-be bandit this morning on your way to town. She was dashing. Incredible. Shot the balls off three men who woulda had their way with you.”
Doris pulled a face. “Eew.”
I spun toward her. “Buck doesn’t mess around. And she wasn’t gonna let those filthy animals get their mitts on Evelyn Pewster.”
“Wow,” Doris whispered. “Buck is really something.”
I cocked a hip, guns pushed forward. “She sure is. Now, everyone in character. Let’s nail this scene.”
“Quiet on set!” Toby called. “And… ACTION!”
Jackson came flying toward us again, Betty tearing down the dirt street. The camera panned. This time Sylvie kept her eyes off the lens—I could see the effort it took, the deliberate redirecting of her gaze toward the scene.
Jackson reined up. Pulled his gun. Called out.
Colt Stirling sauntered out of the saloon. We watched them like we would have in real life, all the other townspeople staring at the two men in a tense exchange. Their acting talent on full display as they unleashed cold, raw fury on each other so that I nearly forgot I was on a movie set.
Colt’s hand dropped to his holster.
Jackson’s followed.
A beat of pure stillness.
BANG!
The first shot didn’t sound like a movie blank. To my ears, it sounded like a heavy-caliber crack echoing through a jungle canopy.
BANG! BANG!
The sharp screams I heard weren’t the extras playing their parts. They were memories long forgotten and now rushing back to the surface again. Before I even realized my boots were moving, the world went into a tunnel.
“Get down!” The words ripped out of me without thought.
I didn’t decide to move... I just moved, wheeling toward the widows, both arms out, and I shoved.
Hard.
Sylvie hit the wall of the general store. Doris went sideways into Sylvie. Alice, who was on my left and caught the force of it at a bad angle, stumbled—one heel catching the edge of the boardwalk—and pitched forward, tumbling off the step and into the dirt street.
I launched myself off the boardwalk after her without a thought.
I came down on top of her, both arms around her. I rolled to take the impact and ended with Alice beneath me and my body between her and the street and whatever was coming, my cheek pressed to the dirt, every nerve I had standing at full attention.
“Stay down! Don’t move!” I ground out, my body a shield above her.
Around us, the other extras screamed and scattered exactly as they were supposed to. I barely heard anything.
Just the ringing…
The familiar, awful ringing that lived in a part of my brain I kept locked and didn’t visit.
My entire world narrowed to Alice’s body under mine. And the absolute certainty that nothing was getting through me to her.
“CUT!”
The ringing faded. The set came back. Crew members were moving fast toward us, and Toby was already closing the distance with the expression of a man who was going to string me up the way I’d imagined Buck had strung up many bad men.
I looked down at Alice, blinking as I regained my senses, trying to discern exactly why I was lying on top of her in the middle of a dirt street.
“Marge,” Alice said slowly.
“Yeah?”
“You’re on top of me.”
“Yeah.”
“In the street.”
“Yeah.”
“Get. Off.”
I rolled sideways and sat up in the dirt, kneeling beside her. She rolled onto her stomach and pushed herself up onto her elbows, her burgundy dress streaked with dust, her hair—for possibly the first time in the years I’d known her—genuinely askew.
Toby arrived at a full jog and stopped above us, breathing hard, red eyes bulging. “Townswoman Number Fourteen! What… was… that?”
I opened my mouth.
And for one honest, unguarded second—with the dirt still in my teeth and that ringing still fading from the back of my skull—I didn’t know which version of Marge had pinned Alice to the ground.
Was it my Buckshot character? Buck was a protector. Buck’s people were her people, and when those shots had cracked out, Buck had simply done what Buck did.
Or was it the ghost of a girl in a field hospital when she was barely twenty?
The one with the ingrained, bone-deep instinct of a woman who had learned ten thousand miles from home that when the shooting started, you got your people down.
You got your body between them and whatever was coming. You did not stop to ask questions.
It was still in there. After all this time. Apparently just waiting.
I blinked, the ringing in my ears fading.
Toby planted his hands on his hips, his glare boring through me like he had a laser beam strapped to his head.
I forced a loud, boisterous laugh that sounded hollow.
“Character work!” I yelled back at Toby, dusting off my chaps with aggressive force. “Buckshot doesn’t duck, kid! I told you! She’s a protector. She sees a threat to the ladies of the town, and she becomes a human shield. It’s called method acting. Look it up!”
“You don’t have a character.” Toby pinched his nose. “There is no Buck.”
I held up both hands. “But hear me out. Because I think what just happened was actually genius, and I want you to consider it seriously before you say anything.” I pulled both Colts, voice rising so everyone could hear.
“Okay. So. Picture this. Visions, people.” I spread my hands wide, a Colt in each of them.
“I launch myself on this here townswoman.” I gestured down at Alice, who still sat in the dirt at my feet “I draw my guns, I look up, and I yell”—I pointed both revolvers down the street at Jackson Harlow and hollered at the top of my lungs—“‘Die, you lily-livered, mangy, dog-breathed son of a—’”
“Marge,” Alice said from the dirt.
“And then BANG! I shoot Colt! Major plot twist! The townswoman did it! The audience will never see it coming! They’re all waiting for Jackson to make the kill shot, but the whole time it’s been me!
It’s a whole thing! I’m the twist! Buckshot…
the down-on-her-luck bounty hunter who slipped in to save the day.
You’re gonna win every award!” I slipped my guns back into the holsters. “You’re welcome.”
Complete silence.
Jackson Harlow, forty feet away, watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read and both thumbs hooked in his belt. Colt Stirling, now standing beside him, just shook his head.
Toby stared at me.
Then at the Colts.
Then at Alice sitting in the dirt beneath them.
Then back at me.
“Scream,” he said.
I blinked. “Sorry?”
“That is your part.” His voice had gone very quiet and even in a way that sounded calm but felt the exact opposite of it.
“That is your only part. You scream. You duck. That is the entirety of your contribution to this scene. Scream. Duck.” He pointed to Alice.
“Help her up. Get back on the boardwalk. And if anything—anything—other than screaming and ducking happens on the next take, all four of you are finished. Do you understand me?”
I tipped my Stetson at him. “Understood.”
He turned and walked away, whispering things under his breath I figured I was better off not hearing.
I reached down for Alice.
She took my hand and I pulled her to her feet, and for a moment we were just standing there in the dirt street, close enough that I could see the dust on her cheek and that her brooch had come half unpinned from the collision with the ground.
Those green eyes stared at me. The ones so full of life—so full of fight. And I didn’t know how or where or why it started, but I felt it then. That strange sensation in my throat. An unwanted, uninvited tightness.
“You okay?” I asked. “I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
She looked at me, and suddenly, the irritation in her gaze softened, as if she saw something behind my eyes. Like somehow, she understood why I’d done what I’d done. Maybe better than I did.
“Thank you,” she said. Low. Just the two of us.
I looked away first.