Epilogue: Dear Oliver

Photo by Jan Huber on Unsplash

Dated: January 10th, 1901

In a bunkhouse on a ranch out West, dawn had just barely begun to break when Filly Maddison awoke.

She sat up slowly in the top bunk of the rightmost bed, eyes tracing over the first rays of the morning sun building in the windows and how they reflected off of silverware and empty bowls left at the table below.

The sight of it all was still surreal, and she couldn’t help but find herself waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting to wake up back in the woods, or back on a train.

As the minutes dragged with no sign that she was still dreaming, she carefully drew out her notebook and pencil, lips pursing as she tried to find her words. In the end, she began it the only way she could think to:

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Dear Oliver,

In a hideout back home, I once wished for a storm. One strong enough to wash it all away and make things new again.

It’s been just over a year since I lost you all, but I’ll admit I barely remember any of the time since it happened. The memories all blur together, just months and months of watching the seasons change from the back of boxcars and tucked away in trainyards.

I did what you told me. I took that train until it reached the end of the line, and when it did, I hopped on another. When I had the chance, I did it again. And again.

There were law and soldiers a few times, but you were right. They didn’t find me.

I didn’t know what to do from there. One train turned into two and then five and then ten. A week turned into a month, and a month turned into an entire year.

They say time is supposed to heal all wounds, but I remember you and our people better than anything that happened in the past year without you.

---

Filly paused, closing her eyes and fighting to keep her composure. It wouldn’t do for anyone to walk in on her crying, and she didn’t know how to begin to explain herself if they did. After a breath, she resumed:

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You know better than anyone that my relationship with the gang was never a clean or simple one. Thinking about some of the things that happened in the early days still makes my stomach drop.

…Seeing it all in hindsight I still never know what to think about it.

I can’t pretend like some of it doesn’t make me angry. And sick. The more distance I get from it the more I realize how much Ray and Pike robbed me of a normal life. Even for as much love as I grew to have for Bad Omen in its latter forms, it still stings remembering how I first became a part of it.

It still stings to remember that I started at best as an indentured servant. Trapped and indebted amnesiac, young and scared and stupid. Put to work. A gun and a set of lockpicks put in my hands and promises made that if I just did what they told me to, one day I’d be free. All just lies.

I latched on to the way Pike called me his daughter. To the role he tried to present himself as filling. I guess it was easier to think that that made it all okay. Sure, it wasn’t my choice to be there, wasn’t my choice to do the things I was doing… but at least he loved me, right? At least he got rid of the debt after Ray died, right?

I still remember the look on your face when you had to break it to me that Pike had abandoned me. The way the anger in your eyes said you’d be the one looking out for me from now on, and that things were gonna be different.

I was scared, but I trusted you. Trusted that you were gonna make things different now that you were the leader.

And you did.

When I spoke, you listened. When I needed anything — when anyone needed anything — you provided it and never asked for anything in return. You gave me more responsibilities, and rank. Let me choose, and I chose to stay.

Pike and Ray brought me in, but you made Bad Omen my home. You changed the nightmare into my family.

You showed me the vision, the mantra. We give all we are to each other. Every dime and every drop of blood for our people. We stick together, and we stay alive.

I knew the things we did weren’t “good” by lawful definitions, but it was how we provided for each other, how we survived. And the way you saw the world opened my eyes to all the good that could come of us, even if it wasn’t the way lawmen wanted us to be. Even if my guilt tore me up sometimes.

We hunted down and drove the other highwaymen from the rolling hills and grasslands we called our home. Made the roads safe for wagons and trade, even if we asked for a small tax in return. We provided for our own people, set our noses to the grindstone and fought tooth and nail for each other. Took our money back from the state and used it to keep each other fed, watered, and armed.

There were times it got muddy. Violent. Terrifying. Times where I questioned the plan or had my views shaken. Times where I made decisions I regret and mucked it all up with people I might never get back.

Things got hard, especially towards the end. But from the moment you stepped up, you were my brother and nothing could change that.

The night you made me your underboss, I could hardly believe my ears. Could hardly believe how far this had all come, how much everything had changed.

I was terrified, but you had faith in me.

…we tried our best, didn’t we? Tried so hard to do right by our vision. Tried so hard.

I could never take back what I did for my family, but part of me always longed for a chance to do it all over again, to have a shot at a life different from the one I led in Dakota. I know not everyone in Bad Omen understood that, and I’m not sure you did fully either.

You knew it was important to me though, and that’s all you needed to understand.

In a hideout back home, face speckled with rain as I watched the first beams of sunlight breaching through the clouds, I wished for a storm powerful enough to wash it all away.

But change like that has an asking price, and it was never one I could’ve paid in Bad Omen’s lifetime. You knew that too.

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Filly looked again at her surroundings, taking it all in and drumming her fingers lightly against the page.

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I’ve made it to a place called Monroe. Can’t really say what possessed me to finally step back off that train, but… I guess my heart just told me it was time to stop, and I did. I can only hope I’ve made it far enough away that nobody here will know me.

Still, every now and then I’m not so sure. Sometimes a marshal’s eyes will linger on me a little too long. Roll my name over their tongue with a little too much interest.

If I was smart, I think I would’ve picked a different name. All the same, I don’t know if I could bear to leave this one behind, much less found a new life on a lie like that.

I’d be lying if I said it’s been easy. Starting over. Doing anything substantial without all of you. That’s the strangest part of it all— remembering how much life is left for me to live. How many things I’ll get to see and do, but… not with all of you.

That’s the terrible thing about loss, I think: You never grieve just once. Each of your names and fates are engraved into my mind, my memories an open casket in a funeral that never ends.

It choruses with the voices of my fallen friends. They sing and tease like we’re back on that shine wagon so long ago, poking fun at the kid too small and innocent to carry her shoulders with such weight. “Little soldier,” they snicker, “what happened to the rest of your platoon?”

Alice Bellerose, hung by the noose. A grave she had dug, and yet one she wasn’t ready to fill.
Catherine Reed and Ronnie Rowe, fled to safer ground and peaceful years. For their safety and mine, I’ve never tried to contact them.
Percy Wave, lost to his memories and the snow. His remains lost to the mountains.
Corvus Andrews, chasing his white whale. Dead or alive, I may never know.
Phoenix, still in a prison somewhere and will be for many years to come.
Kelly McCall, Brian Sawyer, Buck Martin, all lost in the final stand we would ever have on familiar grounds.
Frederick Higgins and Jacob Yefet, their lives taken by the never-ending hunt for our heads that drove us further and further from home.

Oliver McCall. My leader. My brother. The man who paid the final price to set me free. Died on his feet, defending me one last time.

Lost, I murmur back to the restless song. All of them, lost to the war.

You and me, Ollie, we never saw a battlefield or heard a drummer boy, but we were soldiers all the same. We fought our war and bled our share for our people.

I don’t know where people like us go when we die. I don’t know where they buried you, or any of the ones we lost.

I don’t know if we earned our peace, in life or in death. I don’t know if the world owes us gentleness for the hells we endured for each other, considering what hell we brought in our wake.

But last night I slept in a real bed for the first time since our home burned. I was offered food and shelter by folks I barely know, and if I don’t fuck it all up they might even let me stick around and work for them. Good, honest work. The kind of work people had faith in me to do someday.

I don’t know if I’m owed it. Maybe not. But after all this time… I think the storm is finally over. The price paid. The clouds are parting on a new day, a world washed clean.

I’ll never forget you, or anyone else in Bad Omen. I’ll never forget everything you did for me, and the home you made for me when I had no one else. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for the chance you’ve given me. At another life. A good life.

I’ll carry you all with me. Live for you. Count my blessings like breaths and aspire to breathe easily from here on in.

If there is an afterlife, I hope it looks like a campfire pitched at the house. I hope it smells like fresh cooked food and cheap spirits, and rings with the notes of a guitar strumming a familiar tune— and voices and laughter clamoring to tell their stories.

I don’t know how long I’ll be. How many more stories I’ll have to tell by the time I go. But I hope you’ll all be waiting to welcome me home when it’s my time.

Rest easy, Oliver McCall. You did good.
Save a seat for me by the fire, okay?
--Filly