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galadrieljones · 5 years ago

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The Lily Farm - Chapter 35

AO3 | Masterpost

Rating: M (Mature) - sexual content, violence, and adult themes

Summary: To help her process Sean’s death, Mary Beth asks Arthur to take her on a hunting trip, somewhere far away. He agrees, and on their journey to the north, they find quietude and take comfort in their easy bond. They’ve been friends for a while now, but life, like the wilderness, is full of uncertainty and complications, and as they embark on their desperate search for meaning together, they endure many trials, some small, some big—all of which bring them closer to one another, and to their future.

Chapter 35: Get the hell out of Lemoyne.

“So what’s the story?” said Mary Beth. She set down her basket and her book. She glanced around as if she thought someone might be listening. “You doing the poker game or what?”

“No,” said Arthur. His manner was stoic as usual. He picked up his hat, checked the lining. It probably needed to be replaced. He set the hat on his head. “Let’s get on with the day Mary Beth.”

She walked up to him. She took off his hat. She examined the lining. “I can mend this for you.”

“If you want.”

Then she took a deep breath. She looked up at him and how he seemed angry at something. “So you ain’t gonna tell me?” she said.

“Tell you what.”

“What you and Hosea was talking about.”

“It ain’t nothing you need to worry about, Mary Beth.”

“Then why was I in the conversation?”

“Because,” said Arthur. He removed his hat from her hands. He placed it back on his head and went back over to the window. “Hosea wants us play-acting again, as the Kilgores. And I’m saying no.”

Mary Beth felt surprised. She stood up taller, clasped her hands in front of her real proper. “Why?”

“I ain’t taking you on no river boat,” he said. “We ain’t doing these cons no more.”

“What do you mean no more?” she said.

“You know what I mean.”

“You mean because we’re married now. And because I’m having your baby.”

Arthur closed his eyes, caught in a loop of his own destruction. She had employed a certain tone of dissatisfaction in her voice, and he knew it. “Mary Beth.”

“Don’t Mary Beth me,” she said. Outside, somewhere real close, a bird was chirping. It sounded in distress, but it could have just been excited. “I know you got a lot of chivalry inside you, baby, and this is always coming from that good place that I love, but ain't we even gonna talk about it?”

“This is Hosea’s plan, not mine. There ain’t nothing to talk about.”

“Hosea wouldn’t just drop us into the lion’s den unprotected, Arthur. You know that.”

“It is still a risk I’m not inclined to take.”

“What risk would you be inclined to take?” she said. “Bringing me on a hunting trip, up to the Roanoke Valley? Where we almost died a hundred times?”

“Please.”

“Or maybe you could hide me in a cave again, saving my soul from the unpleasance of murder, and then I could get almost-killed by some other of Dutch’s mortal enemies.”

“What are you getting at, Mary Beth?"

She rolled her eyes. “If danger is gonna find me, it’s gonna find me, Arthur. I ain’t your damsel in distress.”

“I know that.”

“Yeah, but you wanna treat me like one.” She shoved him a little, in the chest, like she was trying to prove a point, trying to keep from saying something she’d regret. He took a step back. “This is just a con, Arthur. A simple con, and we have done it before.”

“A simple con?” he said. “We are cheatin cards on a river boat full of armed guards, Mary Beth. And drunken fools with more money than they can count on the line. Ain’t nothing simple about this con.”

“You are cheatin cards. I’m just hanging around, pretending I’m somebody’s daughter.”

“Bronte invited me only on the condition that you come along. That don’t seem suspicious at all? That don’t freak you out?”

“Not really," she said. "Is it so weird? He’s rich. It’s his entire dumbass goal in life to surround himself with pretty nonsense. You cheat the cards, and apparently that’s all I gotta be.”

“You ain’t no rich bastard’s pretty nonsense, Mary Beth. You’re my wife.”

“Oh, so that’s it now? Because if I’d’ve known you was just gonna turn me into your wife, maybe I would not have married you at all.”

This set off a bad feeling in the room. He changed his posture and scratched at the scruff on his chin, squeezed his eyes shut. It pissed him off. “That is a goddam ridiculous sentiment, Mary Beth. And you know it. You know I don't feel that way.”

"Yeah, I know it,” she said. “That’s the whole reason why I said it. So you can hear what you sound like, all that pride you got going on.”

Arthur became stern. “You wanna talk about pride? This ain't about nothing but you wanting to prove yourself when you know you ain't never had to. Let me protect you when the occasion calls.”

“I do,” she said, getting shrill against her own better judgment. “All the damn time.”

“Then what is the matter this time?”

“Because you won’t even bring me into the conversation!” she said. “Because you’re acting like what I want don’t matter. You’re making the decision without me. You never done that before.”

The bird outside had gone quiet. The room was warm. She could see him starting to get frustrated. “I understand that. But you are pregnant, Mary Beth.”

“So what? So I can’t reason?”

“No,” he said. “No. That ain’t what I mean.”

“It don’t change anything, Arthur. It’s just making you anxious, so you can’t see straight.”

“What, exactly, ain’t I seeing straight?”

“Tell me why I can’t go on the goddam riverboat with you, Arthur. Tell me. What’s gonna happen?”

He took a breath, getting flustered. “It’s on a riverboat,” he said. “In a river. We get in a pinch, you gonna swim to shore?”

“I’m a fine swimmer, I’ll have you know, Arthur Morgan. And being pregnant don’t make me a invalid.”

“I never said that it did. Even still.”

“I ain’t even that pregnant,” she said, huffing. “Can’t nobody tell unless you’re you or me. When my momma was way more pregnant than this, she was working calves and tilling the fields.”

“Sure. But I bet she wasn’t conning rich psychotic men on river boats, making them look one direction, while your daddy, a wanted man with a $5,000 bounty on his head, played them dirty in the other. I wanted to get you out of here. I wanted to put things right. Don't that mean anything?”

“It does, but we didn’t choose this life,” said Mary Beth. “And things ain’t proving so easy. We got a long way to go if we’re gonna get out of here, live honest. Helping the gang is helping the gang, Arthur. It ain’t me skulking around, simply mending your hats, sitting pretty in a window while you make all the decisions, on your own, just because you’re scared of what might happen if god forbid I am let in on the action."

"You are the one who offered to mend my hat, Mary Beth. I've never once taken that sort of work from you unless it's been offered to me."

"Quit changing the subject."

He almost started laughing. "Jesus Christ."

"This is a con, not a murder spree," she said. "And I know the difference between when I need to be protected and when I don't. And anyway, try to remember that my parents, they lived honestly by the law their whole lives, and they still both died in terrible circumstances. Living honest didn’t save them none.”

Arthur shut right up then, and he looked away. He wasn’t softening any, but she could tell he was conceding this one. “I’m sorry. I know what happened to them weren’t fair.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Just admit you’re scared.”

He looked up. He looked right at her. “I got no problem with that,” he said, almost eagerly. “I am goddam mighty scared of losing you.”

“So you wanna just keep me in a locked room forever?”

“No,” he said. “No. I don’t. That is not—just listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’re my wife, Mary Beth,” he said. “My wife. I love you. I married you. In front of god and—and a whole bunch of other people I care about. Of course that changes things. Of course it changes my willingness to take you into the lion’s den, and yes, it is compounded by the fact you’re pregnant. You shouldn't have to do these things."

"But I do."

He shook his head. "I’m sorry if I have at all overreacted in this room with you today, but I ain’t sorry for saying no to Hosea. We ain’t doing the riverboat job, and that is the end of this conversation.”

“No it ain’t.”

“Yes, it is.”

Outside, you could hear the reverie of the late morning kicking in. Pearson put the lunch on. Abigail was yapping at Jack, for he had done something regrettable. Mary Beth was staring at Arthur in a quiet rage. She had not forgotten that she loved him so, but she needed to say or do something because otherwise she was gonna go fuckin crazy. So she screamed in his face, and then she left, storming off through Shady Belle.

He lit a cigarette. He shook his head. He could hear her boots on the stairs, and then down on the first floor, and then he could hear the front door flying open and slamming shut. He smoked. He heard Sadie ask what was wrong, and he could hear Mary Beth brush her off as politely as she knew how in the moment. He felt tilted, and like the blood was still hot in his head but he couldn’t defend himself anymore, so he went out to the balcony and shouted her name. “Mary Beth. Where you going?”

But she said nothing in return. Javier and Lenny had to get out the way fast when she got over to the horses. They were eating their lunch out of heavy bowls and looked up at Arthur in confusion when she would not respond to their hellos. Mary Beth was not the silent, skulking type. That was Arthur. Anyway, she got on her pretty spotted Apaloosa, and with no further warning or concern, she giddy-upped and rode away.

“Shit,” said Arthur. He tossed the cigarette. He went downstairs and walked through the yard, shouting after her some more, but she was already out of his view.

“Arthur, what the hell is going on?” said Abigail. She had been feeding a pig ear to the dog by the chickens.

“Nothing,” he said, mounting Sarah, patting the old girl behind the ears. “I’ll be back.”

“You better not be fucking this up with Mary Beth!”

“You worry about you,” he said. “You let me worry about her.”

“Fine.” She tossed the pig ear into the swamp reeds and Cain went after it fiercely. She called after Arthur as he went, “But I mean it!”

He rode out through the trees and the bubbly mud and followed her trail onto the road. She was in the distance. He could see her, gaining speed, heading north.

He shouted to her, but there was no way she could hear him. So he picked up the reins. Sarah was a good deal faster than Watson, and Mary Beth wasn’t bad but he was by far the better rider. With a little ingenuity per his navigation of the terrain, he caught up to her in a second.

“Mary Beth, stop,” he said, galloping up beside her.

“Stop following me, Arthur. I don’t wanna talk to you right now.”

“Fine, but you can’t just ride off like that. It ain’t safe.”

She gave him quite a mean look after that, and she kicked up some speed and made a long sound of exasperation. “Arthur Morgan, if you come back at me one more time with that line about it ain’t being safe, I swear to god.”

“Stop the goddam horse.”

“No.”

They rode on a little further, the mud getting red as clay beneath the hooves of their steeds as the rounded toward Rhodes. “Where the hell you going anyway?” he said.

“None of your business.”

Arthur sighed. “I ain’t turning back without you.”

She said nothing.

But then, all of a sudden, there were voices on all sides of the road—gunshots flying out, all around and out of nowhere. Arthur ducked on instinct and watched Mary Beth do the same. It was Lemoyne Raiders, and they were like cockroaches, always showing up, and they always seemed to recognize him in these parts as he had done them dirty one too many times.

“Goddammit.”

“What the hell?” said Mary Beth.

But he just swore again and shouted for her to ride. “Ride,” he said.

“What?”

“Don’t stop. Not till you hit the town. And when you do, stay there.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Take care of this.”

Immediately though, he could see the switch behind her eyes as they descended. “Arthur, no. I ain't leaving you.”

“I got it, Mary Beth," he said. "Ride and don’t you goddam look back.”

She nodded, finally, looking scared. She pulled ahead, and he yanked back on the reins and stopped his horse on a dime, rearing in chaos, drawing their fire.

Almost immediately, Sarah was shot out from underneath him. They both went down in slow motion. Arthur drew his repeater from the saddle and took cover behind a huge rock outcropping off the side of the grassy road. His ears were ringing. He lit a stick of dynamite, pitched it into a cluster of the enemy at the top of a low hill. The sound shook the whole goddam afternoon. A couple of the stragglers ran in, holding their injured extremities but still shooting, and after a modest exchange of gunfire and swear words, they were put down as well, and then Arthur was breathing hard, unscathed but exhausted, with his back pressed to the rock, trying to catch his breath with his eyes closed.

The first thing he did when he gained his bearings was get up and make sure he did not see Mary Beth. She had not been that far out ahead of him when the shooting got bad, but he was pretty sure she’d got out of there. Then he went to Sarah. She was done for. He knew it, and his heart was sinking as he saw her and her pretty champagne coat, the life slipping out of her so painfully. Shook, but without delay, Arthur put her to rest with the sharp end of his hunting knife. He half-wept as he did it, then pulled himself together enough to lean against her heavy body. He swore loudly, pounded his fist to the earth. Then he put his head in his hands for a minute before finally locating his composure and getting to his feet.

He looked around. It was a hot day. The sun blazed down and made him sweat through his shirt, and he had Sarah’s blood on his hands up to his elbows. The dead Raiders smoked up there on the hilltop and the rest of them were lying there with their loose jackets rustling in the low breeze. A man and a woman rode through on their wagon, and they seemed scandalized by the scene, but the moment they saw that it was Raiders, they reassessed and rode on without incident. Arthur began trudging in the direction of the town to find Mary Beth.

But he was surprised then. Two survivors from the onslaught came at him from behind with alarming speed. One of them tackled him into the dirt, giving him a mouthful of mud, hollering, and he began to hammer Arthur in the face continuously with his fists.

“You ain’t welcome here no more,” he said. Again, and again. “You goddam piece of shit. Get the hell out of Lemoyne.”

Arthur got ahold of his wrists somehow and head-butted him into submission. He put him down with his fists, but when he turned around, the other man was standing there with his sawed-off out, pointed at Arthur, right between the eyes.

Arthur stumbled, went backward trying to get away, dizzied and defeated. He saw his whole life flash by in a single instant filled with pain, suffering, redemption, and love, prepared to meet his maker, as he so often was. He closed his eyes, heard a loud shot ring out, and for a moment imagined that he was dead and floating away to find his mother.

But it wasn’t lead in his skull, and he wasn’t dead. He opened his eyes, alive and unsure, as he did not know what he would find there. The man who’d had the gun out was dead, shot in the face, and Mary Beth was standing over him with a shotgun she must have picked up off the road somewhere. She looked feral and like she had just been possessed by the wrath of god.

Arthur had his hands up, was lying on his back still. “Mary Beth,” he said, real quiet. “Baby.”

She blinked rapidly, and then when she realized he was talking to her, she tossed the gun far away from her body like it was red hot. She looked down at her hands, and then she looked at Arthur. “Oh my god,” she said.

He got up right away. He grabbed her and held her tightly to his chest. “It’s over,” he said. “It’s all right.”

“Shit,” she said, looking down at the dead man she had put there in the dirt. “Arthur, he was gonna kill you.”

“You saved my life,” he said, jacked up on adrenaline and a lot of sudden pain in his face from that beating. “You truly did this time. You did nothing wrong.”

“I ain’t never killed no one before.”

“Are you okay?” he said. They both looked down, and he had his hand placed across her abdomen. “Mary Beth, are you okay?"

She paused, took a deep breath, as they calmed and remembered what was important. Then she nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I'm fine.”

He took her into his embrace. They exhaled. Then, sweating in the hot sun, amidst so much randomness and destruction, they just stood there for a while.

That night, while in their bed, Arthur and Mary Beth did not talk anymore about the river boat. They were gonna wait until the morning when the air was clear, and to get the whole plan from Hosea first, as was presently decided. Mary Beth sat in her nightgown with her knees pulled up to her chest, staring out the window at the moon as she was supposed to be reading. Arthur had begun to sketch Sarah, in remembrance, but he had become distracted by Mary Beth’s anxiety and preoccupation.

“What’s going on?” he said, closing his journal. He set it aside, put his hand on her knee. “You need to talk more?”

“No,” she said. She took a deep breath. “No. Or, not about…that. I just can’t stop thinking about Sarah. It’s my fault, Arthur.”

He sighed. “No, no it isn’t.”

“If I hadn’t run off, you wouldn’t’ve gone after me, and Sarah wouldn’t’ve got shot.”

“You only ran off because I chased you off. This is nobody’s fault. It was a bad break for a good girl. I’m sad, but I reckon her life is better now, in horse heaven, or wherever the best ones go.”

Mary Beth smiled to herself, in a small way, at his little funny, romantic sentiment. She looked at him. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

She settled back beside him, and she took her book off the nightstand. He opened his journal and steadied his pencil to the page. “What are you reading tonight,” he said.

“Mary Shelley,” she said. “Frankenstein.”

He chuckled. “Yikes.”

“Pretty much,” she said, book open, leaning on him.

#red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #arthur morgan #mary beth gaskill #rdr2 fanfic #arthur x mary beth #arthur morgan x mary beth gaskill #abigail roberts #the lily farm

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