Watt O'Hugh Underground_Being the Second Part of the Strange and Astounding Memoirs of Watt O'Hugh the Third by Steven S. Drachman

Author:Steven S. Drachman [Drachman, Steven S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chickadee Prince Books
Published: 2014-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

Sunday, April 20, was Hester’s birthday, so I rode across town to Farley’s ranch, bought myself a little cow, dragged that cow back to our house. Hester took the cow out back to slaughter – Hester had very strict ideas about the humane slaughter of animals – then returned to the house, her apron covered with blood, but a lovely steak in her hands, which I grilled, and which we ate under the stars on our second floor balcony, as monkeys swung from vines that hung from trees whose names I didn’t know, and birds I didn’t recognize squawked and chirped overhead.

The steak was good, and so was the French wine that I chose to accompany it, and I was getting nice and warm in my gut. At about 11 o’clock in the evening, we climbed into our little carriage, smacked our stallion and rode into the center of the little village that the diamond mine had built, and from the terrace of the smoky café at the very western edge of town, we listened to Christine Nilsson, the famous and almost supernaturally beautiful Swedish soprano, who sang the aria from Mignon in the town square in a rain forest by a diamond mine beside the Amazon river. Were I not already in love with the deadling Lucy Billings, and also in love with the very-alive Hester Smith, I might well have fallen in love with the beautiful and golden-throated Christine Nilsson right off-the-reel.

Hester nibbled at my ear when no one was watching.

I sighed.

“If one were to choose a final stop for one’s life,” I said, “this would have to be top of the list.”

“I should give up my mission?” she asked. “When I am so close?”

“I’ve lived through enough horrible for ten men,” I said. “For ten ninety-year-old men. That’s how much horrible I’ve lived through.” I pointed to Hester. “And you too, darlin’. You and I shared the very same long day of horrible back in 1863, if I recall correctly, and your life before that … well, you’ve got the soul of an angel, Hester, and if there were a God in heaven, He’d be looking out for his angels, you know, He’d be serving you blessings on a golden plate. Up till now, you haven’t really deserved the life you’ve been served. Up till now. And now you deserve to live happily here till the end of your life.”

As for me, I told her, I wanted to die happy and warm in the Amazon jungle, with wine in my belly, and Hester in my arms. Was it not possible that were I to survive my Sidonian mission, I could return to her warm embrace and retire from the almost-dying business once-and-for-all?

“Hester,” I said. “Please do not go.”

She just smiled.

“I’m here tonight,” she said. “And you are too. We both have things left to do with our lives.”

I wondered why she must go, and Hester said that she had sworn an oath to gather her brothers and sisters and to march to a homeland kingdom abandoned for millennia.

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