From January through March I participated in a daily writing challenge – each day the people participating were given a new prompt and asked to produce a new piece. This is one of the selections from that project. The title is the prompt.

I know, deep in the old bones, that I am alone now. The rest of the herd knows too, and steer clear – at least the ones with good sense. Some of the younger ones approach, tentatively. Not curious, no, maybe more morbidly fascinated, testing their horns, snorting and challenging. I, who once commanded, now tottering on knees that no longer listen to me (never mind other buffalo), backing away. 

It’s time I guess, it’s the way. 

Time to turn from the herd and move to the edges, where the lions wait, the jackals bide time, and the hyenas scheme. You never think it’s your time and then you find your time is actually someone else’s time – agency is no longer yours.

So I wander past the river, up the hill, and lie down. When I was young I knew no sadder sight than the buffalo who could not leave.

From January through March I participated in a daily writing challenge – each day the people participating were given a new prompt and asked to produce a new piece. This is one of the selections from that project. The title is the prompt.

January 19th, 1894

Dearest Reverend Wilmington,

I thank you kindly for your last letter, and it warms my heart to hear of things back home. I am pleased to hear the family, and especially my dear sister Ms. Madeline, are getting on getting on in these dark times.

I can offer no excuses for the tardiness in my response to you beyond the truth. And that is, in the months since your letter, while having nothing but time as I sit between these four damp walls covered in vermin, I have struggled mightily to answer your question of “why did I do it?” But being that time is limited, I am writing now.

Was it for the money?

No. While I had suspected for some time that he was a cheat and a liar, I knew neither the scale of his crimes nor the location of his treasures, despite what the sheriff so assuredly stated in that courtroom.

Was it that I hated that man?

It is true I had my pieces of rancor for him, but no more than any man has for a compatriot he loves deeply. No bond of strength is forged without some bitterness. Nevertheless, he and I grew up together in the Plano brush, and though he came from a different family, he was a friend closer to me than my own blood. I miss him fiercely still.

Was it the drink?

I think not. We drank no more that night than many a night, and I swear as he hit the floor, the Jack Daniels was closer to the neck of the bottle than most evenings.

Was it for what he said about, and what he done to, Ms. Madeline?

I wish it were so, for that would, one hundred times over, absolve a man of what I did. But the truth is, I already knew about their sin. He had crowed about it, one hundred times over, on one hundred other nights, and to my eternal shame, never once before did I rise up.

No, when I ask myself “why did I do it,” I am doubly cursed. For I cannot trust the suspect, who wants nothing more than absolution for his crime. Nor can I trust the interrogator, who wants nothing more than to absolve the suspect.

At best, the answer I have found, which I acknowledge to be wholly unsatisfactory, is that that man needed killing. And, may God have mercy on my soul, given I feel no contrition in my heart, I suspect He chose me that evening to do the doing.

Rest assured though, when a fortnight and three days from now we meet upon the gallows, I shall ask Him the same question you have put to me.

Your brother in Christ,

Jeremiah