Somewhere, In The Middle Of Nowhere

1

On the last night of 1835, deep in the sleepy Arkansas town of Frontier Springs, Mary Julia Callahan gave birth to her first and only child. He came into the world as East John Callahan, named after John Vernon Callahan, his father. His mother would tell him, as he grew, that the first year of his life had been filled with good fortune—a sign, she believed, that they were destined for better days. But that illusion shattered shortly after East's fifth birthday when his father took a position at a bank in St. Rosewood and died, refusing to hand over a single cent during a robbery. East was left behind, raised by the burdened hands of his grieving mother and Great Aunt Julia.

More often than not, East found his mother locked in her bedroom, her face buried in his father's old pillow, muffling her sobs until the sounds faded into restless exhaustion. Whenever he'd creep close, hoping to comfort her, Great Aunt Julia would shoo him off to the garden, insisting he leave her to her mourning.

Things only began to change when a gentleman from town came calling. Slowly, his mother abandoned her daily ritual of tea and salted crackers for breakfast and water for supper. Life started to breathe back into their home.

By the time East was fifteen, his own life had taken a turn. He met Anna-May Haverford on a damp Sunday morning, her face streaked with mud, her dress caked in dirt. She'd walked into the church behind her father and brothers, barely recognizable beneath the grime. She was twelve then, but in East's young heart, it didn't matter. He hadn't believed in love at first sight until that day, but something in him shifted when he saw her, a new kind of yearning awakening that hadn't been there before.

He never missed a day of church again after that. Each Sunday, he'd clean himself up more thoroughly, wash his face, comb his hair, and don his nicest clothes, without Great Aunt Julia having to nag. Church wasn't about worship anymore—it was about seeing her.

By his nineteenth birthday, East had found a job, of sorts, working for the town blacksmith. But "working" was a stretch—he was mostly the blacksmith's errand boy, running from one end of town to the other at his beck and call. It didn't matter, though. At the end of each day, he'd trudge home, sweat-drenched and soot-smeared, catching Anna-May's eye along the way. He liked the way she looked at him, like she saw someone strong, someone capable. Little did she know, the black streak across his cheek was from cleaning the blacksmith's chimney, not from any hard labor with hammer and steel.

Those days lingered in East's memory like the scent of old tobacco. He remembered their first kiss on New Year's Eve, when the clock struck midnight and marked the beginning of his twentieth year. He remembered the pride swelling in his chest when, just an hour later, he had asked her father for her hand in marriage.

But no matter how sweet those moments, they were always stained by what followed: Mr. Haverford's refusal, and the news that Anna-May was to marry a cattleman from West Virginia. If East let himself dwell too long on those days—on the girl he could never have, on his mother's fading life—he'd have gone gray a decade before he finally did.

Seven months after his Great Aunt Julia passed, East packed what little he owned and left Frontier Springs behind. Texas called to him, and he answered, becoming a ranger in a small, forgotten town called Prairie Creek. For years, letters arrived from his mother, but after a while, he stopped opening them. Eventually, they stopped coming altogether.

Now, in 1884, East was 49. His bones ached, his joints protested every morning when he rose. The youth he'd clung to had long since abandoned him. He sat on the porch of the Stenciled Dancer Saloon, squinting at the slow bustle of Prairie Creek, wondering if he was still protecting this town or simply watching it fade into the dust. Was there anything left for him here? He didn't know anymore. All he knew was how his days started and ended: waking up, getting dressed, sitting down on this porch, and watching the world pass him by.