We saw you headin' back with a shovel, Miss Katherine

[To plant the seeds of justice in our bones...]




She rode out of town with little rush, and no great manner of circumstance. There were a few wandering eyes from the streets, the boardwalks, the neighboring shops and storefronts, but their glances shied away when her eyes came too near. No one bothered her. No one acknowledged her.

Which was just fine by her.

She urged Beaut into an easy canter, heading down the broad way past the dirt lane that led off to the Walker's opulent estate...









They wouldn't be getting a visit from Katherine Barlow.

(Not today.)

It didn't stop her knuckles from turning white against rugged brown leather as she rode on, though.


Eventually, she pulled up on the reins, making one last stop before she left town.

(She knew she'd never be back.)

Her heels echoed softly off the hardwood and high walls.

Water seemed to stick to her like tar, and instead of feeling cleaner, she only felt dirtier.

There was the sensation of burning in the muscle of her shoulders, the skin of her brow, through bone and rib in her chest.

She knelt, and bowed, and did not speak for another twenty minutes.





It wasn't a custom she grew up with, but she'd seen it done. Knew what it was for. It seemed only right.







Beaut's hooves kicked up a light trail of dust as she headed down the southbound road, toward Refugio.


A single candle was left flickering behind her, in a dusty old church.

(It was not for the sheriff's soul.)

.

The sky is almost olive with angry clouds.

"Is something wrong?"

( Read more... )


.

It's a bit foggy out by the lake this early in the morning. Texas in July doesn't get mornings that are too terribly chilly, but as the warming air hits the cold lake water, a fine layer of mist blankets the glassy surface, and curls into the grassy shore.

Katherine is sitting in the dewy grass, her back against an old oak tree. It is the very spot she had pointed out to Doc a few days previous. She wasn't sure how it would look if Doc met her that morning at her house, or even if she came again to the Hawthorn's front porch. She hadn't wanted him to come alone to the schoolhouse, either. So she had invited him to meet her there, by the lake, in public but at the same time... not.

The noise of crickets and bullfrogs is in the air, and the book of Poe Doc had lent to her those few weeks past is in her lap. She's scribbling in the back, on that blank page every book has, though Doc's handsome cursive is already covering most of it.

When he arrives, that's how he'll find Katherine: comfortable against the trunk of that tree--her tree--book balanced on her knees as she reads.

.

As Katherine steps through the door, she is surprised and pleased to see that they've exited right into her schoolhouse. Since it's the day before the town picnic, school is canceled--the room is empty.

When she'd entered Milliways she had been coming out the front door of her house, so she expected that's where she would exit. But this is good; it will be much easier to explain if someone sees she and Doc coming from the schoolhouse instead.

"Ah. Welcome to our little schoolhouse, Doc," Katherine smiles, though there's a hint of embarrassment behind it.

The wooden slatted walls are yellowed and dirty, paint peeling in places. A long blackboard on the wall opposite the front door is filled with Katherine's prim chalked cursive, and a long desk sits just in front of it with a beat up wooden chair tucked behind it. A small table stands in one corner, covered with flowers and peaches and warm little things, and seven desks span the length of the room in rows. Each desk can seat two. The bookshelves sit against one wall, between two smudged windows. There are two windows on the opposite wall as well, and two more windows frame the door. A wood-burning stove sits in one corner, and in another is a special desk and chair, intended for a teacher's assistant. Picture frames, lanterns and shelves line the walls in an attempt to make the beat-up little room look more inviting.

But the beat-up little room still looks just that: beat-up. There are holes in the roof and dust coats the floorboards--bowls and basins are everywhere, to catch rainwater when the roof leaks.

Katherine grimaces and gestures around the room. "...Such as it is."

.

In fact, she had lived most of her life in a neighboring town a few counties over. She grew up there. Went to school there. Buried her parents there. But Green Lake had call for a school teacher, and still a tender youth in her early twenties she decided to answer that call.

She'd found a quaint little home on Woodbury Avenue, about half a block south of Louis Smith's tailor shop. It was small, but just enough for a young single woman. She had been sold the minute she walked into the kitchen and saw the pristine lake, lined with flowering peach trees, outside her kitchen window.

She'd spent much of the previous day unpacking boxes and shuffling around furniture. She had help from Mrs. Grayson's two teenage boys, Dennis and Jonathan, for a good portion of the day, but she honestly preferred doing much of the organizing and unpacking herself. She was a slight woman, but not weak by anyone's standards. Besides, it wasn't until after the boys had left, in the cool evening hours when she felt need to light her oil lamp, that she felt comfortable kneeling in front of her bookshelf and unpacking her precious paperbacks. She proudly displayed her finely bound publications of Thoreau, Longfellow, Poe and Tennyson, Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen, Dumas and Melville. But tucked behind them, in a dim little corner, stood quite the collection of nickel books on characters such as Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Doc Holliday.

Today, however, her cleaning and organizing efforts were focussed more on the pitiful little schoolhouse located on the edge of town. It looked like little more than a shed, a shamble of a place, but it would have to do. Already there were at least half a dozen young ones running about, chattering excitedly and trying to help Miss Katherine get things cleaned up and put away. Johnny Walker had already asked her to marry him not once, but twice, and she kindly had to decline and ask him to dust the windowsills instead. Kate Winslow was beside herself that she shared the same name with the new schoolteacher, and Jenny Louis was eager to demonstrate her skill at memorizing her multiplication tables.

Miss Katherine was all smiles as her new students busied themselves with unpacking boxes full of books and pencils and paper and chalk, excited to see each new item as they came upon it and found the perfect place to stow it. There was a squat bookshelf on the east side of the room, large enough for maybe fifty books or so, and Katherine had decided to start a small library of good literature for the children to read and take home with them if they chose. Timothy Lisbon had skipped down the lane alongside Katherine as she made, not one, but two trips to her own small library to cart books into the schoolhouse. He would carry a small stack of books back to the schoolhouse, and wait for Katherine to arrive, arms brimming with her own healthy stack, and help her load them into the small shelving unit.

On her last trip to the schoolhouse she carried a much larger armful of books than she had before. They climbed up her chest, all the way past her chin, so that she could only sneak glances around the tower of publications to see where she was headed. She carefully scaled the steps to the schoolhouse, grateful that the door had been left open as the children cleaned, and carefully sought out Timothy's help.

However, the room she was in was not what she had expected...

.