It is a heavy responsibility to arrive at a turning point in history, and to record the truth surrounding world shaping events; to keep them in their proper context as they recede into memory. That is my sacred duty, and my impetus for recording the stories that follow.
My sources are dubious, but their words reflect the feelings of those at the heart of these events. There is value in that, I believe.
The Tennessee Valley is no stranger to bandits or to warlords. However, in recent months rumors have been pouring in from Fire Brigade operators. They suggest that a single individual has been gathering the loyalty of several small militias, a collection of renegade soldiers, and a posse of freed slaves. Together, they have come to be called the Nash Highwaymen; named after their leader, an enigmatic figure named James Wallace Nash.
These events have unleashed a swell of questions and concerns from the various communities that call New Memphis home.
I, Jared Marsh, chronicler for the New Memphis branch of the Historical Society, have volunteered to embed myself within the Nash Highwaymen. I do this to better understand James Wallace Nash, and to discover what motivates the people who have joined his cause.
I am aware of the danger, but I believe this above all else; truth breeds understanding and understanding breeds peace.
My effort to track down Nash and his Highwaymen began with a probe into the identity of the man himself. Who was he? Where did he come from? Was he a flesh-and-blood man, or was he a fabrication intended to embody an ideal?
The first step to finding Nash seemed obvious, to find someone who knew him before he was infamous. To that end I dispersed a wide net of probes. I sent letters to every branch of Hist-Soc and every library in New Memphis, Acadiana, and the Commonwealth. Every answer was the same, “He was never one of us.”
I was left to question everything I had assumed. Had he made up the name? Could someone else have made him up entirely? Could he have come from the West, beyond the wasteland?
I had nothing to proceed upon, and I was growing concerned that I would never find the beginning of the thread that would lead to Nash. Then, at a most opportune time, came a letter. I found it slipped under the foot of my door after a restful night’s sleep in a town called Three Stumps. It was a small, tattered piece of scrap, like a shred from the back of an operator's manual. It said only one thing: JWN wore a white coat once. Look to the peaks.
I knew that a white duster jacket was the uniform worn by the Rangers of the Franklin Protectorate; a rebel movement that split from the Commonwealth. They had been known to force unwanted governance and harsh taxation on towns and villages throughout North Cumberland. They ranged from Boone Forest to the shores of the Yellowwoods, and they had a reputation for taking harvest riches and leaving fatherless children.
The letter was anonymous, untraceable, and totally without supporting evidence. It was precisely the sort of lead a historian should ignore. Still, it was all I had. Desperate, I traveled to the blue grass of Cumberland, far to the North of my safe New Memphis office and crossed the ever-shifting borders of the Franklin Protectorate.
It was here that I finally grabbed hold of the thread that would lead me to the Highwaymen. Rather, I suppose, the thread grabbed me.
I was riding horseback along the narrow trails that lead through the misty mountains, overlooking the great river as it sliced the continent. I found myself dumbfounded by it and allowed my awe to dull my vigilance. Most people know by reputation how vast the river is, but to see it with one’s own eyes redefines the expectations of the mind, and gives one a greater clarity concerning their place among the great forces of the earth. It was humbling beyond words, and for a man devoted to the miraculous power of words, that says everything.
When my contemplation subsided, I turned to leave only to find myself staring into the wrong end of a hunting rifle. The man on the other end was middle aged with a long sea-salt beard and a hole on one side where his cheek should have been. He spit tobacco out of the hole without opening his lips.
He told me he’d been following me for some time, and asked what I was looking for. I tried to negotiate my freedom by offering him one of the bottles of whiskey I brought along to use as bribes. He took it, and even went so far as to search my saddle bags for more. He found the three remaining bottles and a twist of tobacco that was intended for my own use. He took it all, as casually as he would a gift. When he was done, he repeated his question past a lump of my tobacco.
That time I answered him honestly, which did not entice a friendly reply. He raised his weapon to his eye and demanded that I ride with him to a place called Fort Patton.
I learned later that he mistook me for a bounty hunter, but at the time I believed I had been apprehended by a slaver. I had no reason beyond my own phobias for assuming so, but he gave me little cause to doubt my suspicions until we arrived at Fort Patton.
The next morning, we passed through the warming fog that blanketed the mountain peaks and made our arrival. Fort Patton was impressive only in the sense that it seemed like a natural extension of the landscape. The buildings within, and the ten-foot-tall post walls surrounding them, were obviously made with local lumber. The high shady cover of the trees suggested the posts had been felled elsewhere and brought here. The result was a town built to blend into its environment until the two became almost indistinguishable.
Upon arrival, my captor cut my bonds and said something to me that I believe is worth recording verbatim, “I know the price on his head is a fortune for any working man, but if you deliver Nash to them other than those he deserted, God will see that justice is meted out on you too. If Nash left a trail, it runs through here. Iffen you find him, tell a Ranger. It don’t pay, but it’s what’s right. You a man who cares what’s right?”
I muttered something he took as affirmative. He smiled at me, but kept hold of my reins. I waited until he eventually clarified, “Get off. I’m keeping the horse. The Rangers need it more.”
I made for the saloon on foot, hoping to spend my money before the old bandit stole that too. Within, I was confronted by a motley crew without a man of refinement or a woman of good repute to be found among them. I could tell from their gazes, they had marked me as distinct from their number, and took no liking to me.
I bought drinks for entire tables, in the hope of generating goodwill, but I succeeded only in my goal of spending my money before it could be burgled. Those few who were polite or drunk enough to give a stranger their time were occluded in an instant by any mention of Nash or his Highwaymen.
I repeated that procedure at the general store the following morning. Then again at both places repeatedly over the course of several days. In all that time I never managed to uncover anything more than baseless rumors. One man in the saloon said Nash was a giant who came down off the mountain to rule over mortal men. He claimed he “feasted on coal and farted cinders,” much to the amusement of his fellow sots.
On my fourth night in the Saloon, I realized two important truths: First, I recognized every face in the bar and not one had brought me any closer to Nash. Second, I was quickly going broke.
That same evening, there appeared a face I didn’t recognize. An absolutely stunning creature with a spider tattooed over her eye. She had buzzed hair, short enough to let her scalp tan. She covered a strong frame in an armored jacket, and she walked with a long stride that was terrifying in its silence.
Two men followed her, but she didn’t need them. It was as if her silent stride spread out into a hush that filled the saloon. It may have only been my impression, but I was certain that a fainted drunk stopped snoring the moment she reached the bar top.
“Tawney,” the barkeeper named her, breaking the sacred oath of silence we had all involuntarily taken. She shot him a glance, and he swallowed with the vigor of a man confronted with having offended royalty. Without breaking her gaze, he reached for a bottle. He poured two clear shots and sat down a shaker of salt. She broke her gaze with a smile, and replied, “Axe?”
“How many bikes to tend?”
The iron angel answered, “Four. Now, where is he?”
He tilted his head toward me, and at once my safe spectator status melted away. She downed her drinks before she turned her gaze on me and grinned. My nerves buzzed so loudly that I could’ve pissed myself and gone numb to the sensation.
She sat down across from me, and somehow, over the ringing in my ears, I heard the words, “You’ve been asking a lot of questions.”
My jaw fell open, probably as if to answer, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I gulped a dry gulp that put the barkeeper to shame. The spider tattoo on her eye came alive as she laughed at me.
“You can breathe,” she permitted before elaborating, “Nash sent me. I suppose you could say he’s flattered, but just so you know, that isn’t hard to do.”
“You know Nash?”
“Since the beginning.”
“You’re a Highwayman, then?”
“I’m Tawney Case. I’m one of Nash’s lieutenants. He sent me here to settle your questions.”
I gawked for too long, considering how much I longed to sketch her face, and she snapped, “So did you bring a pen or something?”
“Yeah. Yes,” I sputtered as I plunged my quaking hands into my bag grasping until I felt a pen and pad. I produced them and looked back at her.
Thinking me a fool again, she asked, “Aren’t you supposed to ask a question or something?”
“Right. Yes. How did you fall in with Nash and the Highwaymen? You said you’ve been there from the beginning. What does that mean?”
“It means I was there eleven years ago the first time we called ourselves Highwaymen.”
I leaned forward and begged her, “Start at the beginning, your beginning, and tell me everything.”
She shifted in her seat, and for the first time she regarded me with something other than amusement. She contemplated for a while, looking me over as if she wasn’t sure I was worthy. Then eventually she began, “My first memories are of running. I was always soaked; always cold. My feet always seemed to be in water and at night the water got so cold you could feel your bones quaking. Those lasted years, while our caravans ran from the Seven-year storm. The place where I was born is still underwater. The witches say it might stay down there forever. Drowner’s plague followed that; took my mother. I don’t remember how old I was, but I wasn't old enough to remember her voice. I still see a face sometimes, but I probably made it up.”
She caught herself and hesitated for a moment. I gave her time to compose but she just looked at me as if she were pondering a dilemma. She wanted me to divert the question, move the story along. I considered it, but this might be the closest I would ever get to Nash. So, I asked, insisting, “What happened to your family after she died?”
“Nothing good.”
“You don’t have to tell me, but this is probably the only chance you’ll have to make sure your story gets told your way.”
She looked me dead in the eyes, her dilemma worsened by my plea. I tried to meet her gaze unafraid. I had no interest in exploiting her, and I hoped she could tell.
She said quietly, “My father took his grief out on us for the short time he stayed. As soon as we reached a dry city, he joined the Rangers and left us with one night's board. I still remember his voice. I can hear him saying, “‘Good riddance’ any time I want. How unfair is that?”
She never showed the first sign of tears, but she raked her nails across the grain of the wood as she rasped, “Anyway, the Innkeeper, Miss Cordoba, caught on when she came to kick us out. She took pity on us and agreed to let us sleep in the basement as long as my older sister, Lara, worked her hands bloody.”
She peered down thoughtfully, her ears turning red. She spoke again as my hand drifted to begin my sketch of her, “For five years that's how we lived. After the first few months Miss Cordoba put me to work, too. To this day the smell of laundry soap puts me on edge. My brother, Cody, took a different approach to usefulness. Without any of us knowing, he would sneak out of the inn and see the traveling performers. He started bringing them things, flowers and sketches. I guess they liked him. They captured his heart, and to be honest his passion was infectious.”
I was encouraged that I’d gotten her to open up. Afraid to let her close herself off again, I quickly asked what happened next.
“Eventually Cody convinced me to go with him,” she said.
“Why did he decide to do that?”
She smiled and shook her head. Her eyes darted down to her hands. She replied, “It’s embarrassing.”
“If that’s true, I’ll leave it out of the story, but just so it all makes sense to me, please, will you tell me?”
She responded to that plea by sizing me up a second time. It was as though she was reevaluating her first impression.
She looked around behind her before she worked up her nerve, “He found me singing one day while I was working through my big list of chores. He decided I belonged up there. He said that people should hear me.”
“Did you go with him?” I had asked the question thoughtlessly, and the way her gaze fell to the floor told me it had been a mistake.
Finally she looked up and said, “The more I see, the less I believe anybody belongs anywhere. Words like ‘supposed to’, ‘belong’ and ‘fate’ don’t apply to anything as big as life. Those are words that suggest order, but life has no order. It’s just chaos from start to finish. So, I think you belong where you decide you do. Or you don’t belong anywhere at all. It amounts to the same thing.”
I must not have come across like the detached historian I was trying to be because she cocked her head at my expression and said, “What’s with the face?”
“I guess I wasn’t expecting philosophy from, well, from someone in your line of work. That, and I’m still trying to imagine you as a singer.”
“Being able to sing doesn’t make me a singer any more than a few observations make a philosophy, but I do find it can be helpful to ponder things; to consider what they really are, and what we make them in our minds. Nash and I learned that lesson together, I suppose.”
“So he is a real person? You never know about these infamous bandits. A lot of them are just legends.”
She laughed at that, a brightness coming to her eyes that made me envy her. She smiled as she answered, “He’s real all right, and just a man. Poke his ribs; he giggles and everything. Not that I think I’ll ever convince him of that again when he learns people have started calling him a legend.”
“I’d started to wonder. No matter who I asked, it was like he didn’t exist before the Highwaymen. How exactly did you meet?”
She leaned back in the chair and waved a waitress over. “Bring a bottle of something good. We’re going to be here for a while,” she ordered.
She shifted her gaze back to me as I set pen to notebook. She started her story by saying, “One night I sprung out of a leather suitcase and scared the shit out of him.”
I couldn’t bring myself to write that down. Instead, I had to ask, “What?”
“It tells better from the beginning, I guess.” she said, grinning.
I shook my head and said, “I imagine it does. So, tell me, how do you go from living with your sister and singing with your brother in a traveling show, to riding down trains with a spider on your eye?”
The bottle arrived and she sipped directly from it. She hummed happily, and continued, “My sister started going to the Saloon at night. She claimed it was more work, but if it was it didn’t pay. Pretty soon she found a rich man who wanted to take her away. The way she put it, he had no interest in a pair of extra mouths to feed. She said I was strong, and that I’d be ok. I asked why I had to be strong while she got to run away. She left without answering. Fuck me for asking, I guess.”
As I planned a word of encouragement for the twice-abandoned little girl she probably still carried inside, she grabbed a glass and poured a drink for me, “I know you’re a bit stiff, but don’t make me drink alone. It’s rude. Anyway, that bitch bailed on us. For a while I managed to keep up with her chores, but it turned out not to matter. Cody got angry and took it out on everybody. He stole booze mostly, or money to buy more. He would black out drunk at the Inn; get in fights. Miss Cordoba put us out not long after that. She actually offered to let me stay, but I couldn’t leave Cody, too; not after Lara. He might have… whatever. Out of options, we tagged along with the stage company on their tour. That was my idea; less a plan than an excuse to run away, but I was just a kid. Cody kept drinking, but he wrote plays when he did. The things he wrote made it seem like he was ok. The love he put into it was breathtaking, but I didn’t notice that it was coming out in his writing because he was bursting inside, with nobody to listen.”
She sat forward and lowered her voice, “I resented him for costing me another home. I kind of shut down on him after that, you know what I mean? He did fine. He could sing and compose those feelings out. He made the crowd love what he gave them, but he couldn’t keep us from getting robbed by bandits every time we left a city.”
She downed another drink and pointed to mine. Her eyes held a sharpness that told me she was serious. I drank and she started again, “We were going to starve. Then one day a man brought me the biggest stack of money I’d ever seen. He came out of nowhere, and he told me to swap out the money and give it back to him when I could. The only rule was every bill had to be changed. He offered to pay me, so I did it. I’d swap bills in an old leather case until the job was done. Then I’d leave it out overnight and he’d swap it for another stack.
She threw her hands up in mock satisfaction, “The show was a sudden success, or so they thought. I bought tickets with a lot of the money he paid me. I noticed that every town we went through kept getting better. People had a sudden surge in anonymous donations to thank. I never asked questions. I didn’t want to risk knocking down the house of cards I built.”
She leaned back again, throwing one leg over the other, “I managed to keep that house standing until I was seventeen. Then a pair of white coats showed up at a show party. They accused our troop of having robbed their payroll trucks. They said they had note numbers; enough proof to hang us all. That day a man held a gun to Cody’s head. I was responsible.” She choked up, “When someone threatens to take the only thing that loves you, it wakes something up inside. That thing has defined me since. If being a Highwayman means taking what you need, I became one right then.”
She took a deep breath; her smile having faded. Her face was steely and stern for someone so young. It left her with a quality both refined and primal.
“After that night's performance I stole a gun. I took it from the saddlebag of a man who rode with us. I don’t remember his name now, although I probably should have returned his gun. I hope he never needed it.”
She stopped the story and laughed; her enchanting smile partly restored. “I hid in the old tawny leather case we used for exchanges, and he showed up like he always did. I scared him more than I meant to. I never intended to fall asleep, but when I woke up with a gun in my hand and a man pulling me out of a suitcase, well, it turned into every bit the shit show you’re imagining. I yanked the trigger, but the safety was on. Then, like a kid who had seen too many plays, I pointed it right at his face. I was trembling like a virgin seeing her first cock, but I said, stern as steel, “You’ll turn yourself in to the Rangers, tomorrow. Nobody is going to hurt my brother.”
She held her head in both hands and moaned, “Ugh, so cliche. Forgive me for ever saying it.”
I asked, “What did he do?”
“He gave me the name Tawney Case. He just called me that, like we were buddies and that was the only name he knew for me. I thought I'd have to make him help me. Nobody had ever just helped me. Not once since my mother died, but that’s the first thing he did. He listened to me. He listened to that stupid kid shivering so hard she never would’ve been able to shoot anything. Then he told me he thought he had an idea to help my brother, and to set us both up for good.”
“Sounds like quite the idea.”
“Well, it brought you here. I wouldn’t say it was bad.”
“The Highwaymen?”
“I mean we hadn’t named it, but yeah. Me, Nash, and a few other misfits who wanted to escape various tyrants and abusers.”
“I don’t get it. How did that help your brother?”
“Nash and I robbed those two Rangers and the next payroll shipment in front of the entire town. We tied them naked to the horse stables with a note that read, “Courtesy of the Highwaymen.” They never bothered Cody again.”
“Who came up with the name?”
“Nash would say he did, but it was me. It came from some ancient folk song I heard once. “I was a Highwayman. Along the coach roads, I did ride.” You know it?”
“Wow.”
She eyed me curiously, “What?”
“You really are a great singer.”
She smiled and put her hand near mine, I leaned her way when my drink met her lips, “If you’re not going to drink it, I am, and I’m not great, I’m competent. Good try flirting.”
“I-I… Well, I-“
“Right, yeah. Look You’re cute enough to fuck, for sure, but not tonight. My to-do list is still pretty long. Stand up.”
“Stand up? I don’t understand?”
“Oh, Sweety. Really?”
“What?”
“You’re going to give me that to mail anonymously, and then you’re coming with me. I can’t have people thinking it's fine to just track us down.”
“I- I m- Wait, just wait!” I stood up, trembling.
I looked to my fellows in the town for help, “I still have three hundred New Memphis pounds,” I declared, “I’ll give it all to anyone who gets me out of here unharmed.” They all looked. Tawney never took her angel-eyes off me, but they seemed different; fearsome in an awful way.
Her hand slipped to the handle of her revolver. “That’s a big wad. Any takers?”
A few of the men stood, and my heart leapt with joy. Then one of them answered, “No, ma’am. Not here.”
They were afraid, all of them. I nearly wet my jeans again. I begged, “You don’t have to do this. I can forget. No! I’ll do better. I can write whatever you want.”
“Don’t beg. It’s pathetic. It’s ruining the fuckable scholar thing you had going on.”
I started weeping, and I groveled at her feet. She explained like a tired teacher talking down a child, “I mean, what did you think was going to happen? I told you so much. I spilled my guts. I sang for you! Nobody with a wit in their head would expect to walk away after that. Now, move your ass. I don’t want to mess up the floor. I like this bar, and Axe works hard enough.” She stood slowly, throwing back her drink and mine. “Outside.”
I looked around one final time, looking for any shred of hope, but I found none. I’d been cornered by a predator, and most humiliating of all she’d let me see her coming. The room spun and I emptied the contents of my stomach on the floor.
“Dude,” she expressed, “I just said not to make a mess.”
Those were the last words I heard before my knees buckled and a shroud of black took me away. I fainted on the floor, collapsing in my own expulsion.
I woke in a deserted field, face up in the grass, staring at a passing nebula and an angel with a spider tattoo. She scowled at me and put the barrel of her pistol on the bridge of my nose. “You’re a fucking mess, Jared Marsh of 23 block C, Blackwood building, Riverside, New Memphis.”
She threw my identification and my personal effects at my face, proclaiming, “If you make trouble for any of us, or if I read about my singing in some bullshit rag, and I do mean ever, I’ll come to 23 block C, fuck you maybe, and then blow your head off for being a nosey little shit with doe eyes and a tell-me-secrets face. Understood?”
She stood up, dropping the gun away from my head, and picked up a picture. She asked in a tone that suggested she had not just laid out the conditions of my murder, “Did you fucking draw me?”
I sputtered, “I’m really sorry.”
She grinned, “No. I like it. I’m keeping it. Bye, Jared.”
She strode away again in silence leaving me to croak a feeble, “Goodbye.”
Her silent stride brought her to her bike, and she left me there to live, and to wonder anew what it meant to be a Highwayman. I returned to New Memphis with more questions than answers.
I confess, I was dreadfully afraid to die. Yet I must profess this also, I am more afraid to die with my curiosity unsatisfied than in the pursuit of that satisfaction. Despite her warnings, my search for truth continues.