The 1850’s were passing and the air smelled burnt. The pigeons were traveling south from the other side of the road, where Lengstern, a small town in Nebraska, was. On the other side, Robert Allen, a mid-fifties old man who nobody knew he was from, was wondering if something happened to his little town.
-“Robert, did you dry the cow yesterday while milking her?” said Robert’s mom.
Drying cows was Robert’s specialty, to the point that some old men, usually drunk, told the little kid to stay away from the cowboy’s life, to practice tebeing a locksmith or, even better, to go to school to have the opportunity to go to the big cities to make 10 times more money that any cowboy could do. Despite all the recommendations that the old men of Lengstern gave him, Robert decided to practice every day to become the best cowboy of the town. He never expected what was going to happen.
“Every morning is different” said Mickey, Robert’s friend. They knew each other since they were born and have always went some naughty things that neither of them repented doing. The little gang consisted of four 12-year-old kids, Robert, Mickey, Rex and Broncho. They used to be together in every problem, in every gift, all their toys were for the four and they made butter every afternoon together. They sometimes made naughty, very naughty things around the farm. Besides everything, they were happy. Oh, yes, they were, together they would look at the sky every morning to see the shapes of the clouds, they would climb the mounts together and collect lizzards of every color and shape. They would always laugh together because of the same old joke, and they had so many experiences together, that they considered each other brothers.
“Why do you say that” responded Broncho.
“Because we have never seen the same exact shape in two different clouds, my dad told me that the clouds are made of steam and that they are shaped by the wind, well, the wind of every morning is not the same.
After that beautiful autumn day, the four kids went to the farm of Old Billy, they used to go every day to the farm to steal two or three hens and cook them in the deep of the forest, where nobody would ever find them. Old Billy knew this, but he never said anything because of the relation that he had with Robert’s mother. But because nobody stopped the little gang, as they became older and older, they started doing naughtier things, like changing the food in the horses, kicking the pigs, or drying every cow on purpose.
Everybody knew that they had to close their pens when those kids passed by. Everybody told them as criminals, but nobody did anything because the little gang gained a little respect, if the cowboys said something, maybe the four would take retaliation. The town citizens sometimes met at Johnny’s, one citizen that hated the little gang, but they would always arrive at the same conclusion: Be more careful with your belongings, because some animals are stealing everything they find. They refused to say outloud that the, now teenagers, did.
One day, Robert was alone smoking a cigarette outside his house. His mother went to sell milk to the city, but she should have come back hours ago. He was walking around the town looking for her, she should have stopped and talked to one of the hundreds of friends she had, or maybe she felt in the way to the city and is waiting for somebody in the town to come by. Because his mother didn’t come yet, Robert was hungry, very hungry. So he decided to steal a chicken from Old Bill’s farm as he usually did, but he found something weird, he found a path from outside Old Bill’s ranch to Old Bill’s house with similar pot to the ones he had and milk all over the place. He decided to go inside to see what had happened, and he found the worst thing he could have imagined, Old Bill almost naked on top of his mother, who was crying and begging for help, but nobody heard her because Bill gagged her. Robert didn’t think at all, he grabbed Bill and started hitting him without stopping, Robert didn’t care about the blood he saw in his right fist, he ked hitting and hitting him until Bill couldn’t move. His mother escaped, she ran to the forest ignoring what his son did, Robert killed old Bill.
When he noticed what he did, he went to his house, grabbed all his belongings and fled the town. He was crying, missing all his mornings watching the clouds or the jokes he used to laugh when he was a kid. None of them were right there, the day when he escaped town. After three days someone found the body of Bill because of the odor that the corpse emitted. As soon as the whole town noticed this, they blamed Robert because they have not seen him around. They called Robert’s mother, who told the whole story, but nobody believed her. Everybody saw this case with the eyes of what have happened in the past 2 years, all the disappeared animals, all the sick animals, all the destroyed pens. They asked Mickey, Rex and Broncho where Robert was, they didn’t know. The town sought him everywhere, even in other towns, but nobody ever found him.
Robert escaped to Florings, a town 200 miles north of Nebraska, in South Dakota. Although it is far away, only one road is needed to go to that city. Robert practiced for some years the art of locksmith, and he was the best in Florings. Nobody ever asked where he was from, nobody ever talked to him, Robert didn’t have any friends.
“Down the road, all the way to Nebraska, there is a big fire” said some guy in front of Robert, who immediately asked the guy what town was it, he said Lenstern, Nebraska. Robert remembered all his childhood and adolescence in his beautiful town in three seconds
“how can a simple fire create this smell 200 miles away?” asked Robert.
“Is not a simple fire, the whole town is gone”.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario