Yours alone to enjoy

Johnny Whitmore had the priest dead to rights, framed up nicely in the iron sights of his model 1873 Winchester rifle. The ache in Whitmore’s body from lying prone for two hours in wait was almost unbearable. He was getting old - A few years ago he wouldn’t have even thought twice about setting up an ambush like this.

“You’d better be worth it, padre” Johnny muttered into the walnut stock. His elevated position gave him a sweeping view of Penshaw Valley. Catching up and passing Father Karl had taken all day and the setting sun was turning the trails and rivers orange. Any other day, Johnny Whitmore would have taken a minute to drink it all in. What was that his mother had said about him on her deathbed? A poet’s soul.

His index finger curled around the trigger. Father Karl slowed the wagon he was driving, the two horses shuffling and clanking to a stop, pulling at the traces and eager to stop for the day. Father Karl reached behind him to gather his camp pack.

Whitmore had fired his rifle forty-nine times in the past year and hadn’t missed once.

He pulled the trigger and made it fifty. He didn’t even bother watching the priest drop, it was only a hundred yards. Johnny didn’t miss.

The wagon horses bucked and whinnied as the shot rang out across the valley, but Whitmore didn’t notice: He was already moving, throwing off the dun-coloured blanket that hid and blended his form into the hillside. His horse, Calgary, was grazing over the crest near a copse of trees and hidden from view. Whistling for his mount he cycled the lever action on the Winchester. Calgary had played this game a hundred times and when he had heard the shot he was already moving towards his rider.

In a well practiced motion and despite the pains in his body, Whitmore got his foot in the stirrup as Calgary slowed and got his other leg over the saddle. Horse and rider took off from there, pounding down the hillside towards the wagon.

As Whitmore drew closer he could see the priest where he had left him, crumpled on the ground. Calgary came up short and Johnny dismounted. The pulling horses snorted and snickered in the traces as this stranger approached their master.

Whitmore advanced, a half step, then another. He didn't get to be this old by taking chances. Father Karl’s body didn’t move apart from his travelling clothes rustling in the breeze of dusk. The dying sun turned the scene red, and casted deep black shadows.

“Father!” Whitmore hollered, looking for a twitch. Nothing.

***

Maggie Whitmore shook her head - if she could have reached through the laptop camera and strangled her boss she would have.

“You can’t do this to me Chad!”

Chad laughed, his pay grade allowing him to indulge his head of delinquent accounts.

“Mag, it’s a bank. It’s out of business. You go through their inventory and catalogue what they have and make your report. It’s basically a vacation for you!”

Maggie rolled her eyes, “I have people for this Chad. Why me?”

His tone sharpened just a hair, “Maggie, the whole town is insolvent. I think the place had one stop sign? It’s being wiped off the map and incorporated into a larger region and that bank represents a portfolio of holdings that Chapman & Stern wants. I work for them, you work for me.”

Sighing, she caved. “Fine Chad, but I am expensing the hell out of this trip.”

The humour returned to Chad’s face, “Ok, Mag. Whatever you need. Just keep this quiet. With the economy today...we don’t need the press getting hold of any ‘Death of a small town’ nonsense.”

“When do I leave?”

“On the weekend, it’s in Penshaw Valley. I’ll get my assistant to set you up.”

***

Johnny got his foot into Father Karl’s side and rolled the body over, only to end up staring into the steel blue eyes and blood flecked face of the priest, his mouth twisted up in a mad grimace.

“Never could finish a job, Johnny…” he spat out.

“Sorry padre, the Sheriff said dead or alive, and sounds to me like what you are haulin’ out of town is worth more than bringing you back.

A gurgling chuckle came from the priest’s mouth. His hand, clutching a rough sewn, black notebook, wavered in the air as much as he could manage.

“Money is the root of all evil my son. Don’t let…” his voice faded with the light in his eyes and then rallied one more time. “Don’t let it happen to you.” And Father Karl died.

Whitmore kneeled down, checked the body’s pulse to confirm the kill. He said a silent prayer to anyone who might be listening and then eyed the blood stained notebook still clutched in the priest’s hand. It took some work to pull it out.

“That’s an enigmatic eulogy there, padre,” he muttered as he flipped through the pages. He paused and glanced up at the wagon, a heavy oiled leather tarp covering the goods.

Whitmore flipped up the side and glanced underneath. Sheriff hadn’t been lying. Johnny let out a slow whistle.

“Well, well, Father. I thank you and my family thanks you.”

***

Maggie fumed. She had spent three days in Penshaw Valley, in a small town called Karlsville. Chad hadn’t exaggerated, it really did only have one stop sign. Maybe a few dozen run down houses, a bank, a general store that was also a gas station and it was on the road to nowhere. The bank had rented out one of the recently abandoned houses for Maggie’s use as she tallied up what worth the town had left.

The bank had started to foreclose on the citizens, the citizens started withdrawing their money, the bank fell apart, people moved out abandoning their homes and debt. It was happening all the time these days.

“Mister Bradley?” Maggie called from the bank’s back office. Mister Bradley, a portly banker wearing the cheapest suit sold in America, glanced up from his own files.

“Yes, Miss Whitmore?” he squeaked back. His voice hadn’t been used a lot in the last few days, mostly deserted as the town was.

“Says here that the bank was incorporated over a hundred years ago, by the founders Blair, Paulson-”

“1890, that’s right, same year as the town, actually.”

Maggie was not used to being interrupted by anyone, ever. “...Yes. I can read. Blair, Paulson & Whitmore?”

“That’s right! Oh, I see what you mean. Quite the coincidence! John Sullivan Whitmore. Was he a relation?”

“Not that I am aware of, but my family had a lot of branches. Says here that Whitmore died without any documentation to distribute his estate. In fact he said for the bank to hold onto it in ‘Perpetuity.’”

Bradley shrugged, “He was very proud of the bank and the town that he helped found.”

“Great, thank you. It also said his effects are in a series of safety deposit boxes on site and are not to be opened.”

“Correct.”

“Open them.”

“What?” Bradley blinked. “But the inventory is right there and the instructions were not to open anything.”

“Mister Bradley, I am tired and I want to go home. Not to the flophouse you mortgaged out, but my real home where there are real people and real buildings. I work for the company that now owns everything from here to the horizon. Open the boxes.”

As Bradley shuffled off to find the keys, Maggie glanced back down at the yellowed paper she had been scanning in her file. Something didn’t make sense. This Johnny Whitmore, whoever he was, had been hiding something and hadn’t wanted anyone to get to it.

***

On his deathbed, Johnny remembered the day he had buried the priest out in the valley proper. He remembered the boxes of money in the cart, stacked worn bills of American dollars, hidden under crates of clothes and sacramental wine.

Father Karl had hit several towns before he had come to the valley. Years of filtering the collection plate to his pocket, donations from the well-to-do. When a town got wise, Karl hit the road, his wagon getting heavier with every take.

He finally had crossed a Sheriff who didn’t mind sending one of the Lord’s own straight back to Heaven...or wherever the priest was bound. His notebook had outlined his crimes, and his godly justification for it.

Whitmore had laughed when he read from the notebook. The old priest was saving the world you see. Taking cursed money from pockets of the damned so that we could live without sin. Well, Johnny had taken that sinful money and had ridden that cart straight back to his ranch to see his wife and kids. He never rode back into town to collect that reward after all. Sheriff would have asked too many questions.

But it wasn’t just a new horse, a new wagon, new clothes for his wife and a tutor for his kids. He met up with other men - rich men who didn’t know what to do with their money. With their help, he turned the ranch into a trading post, then one day the railway came through. That turned Whitmore’s Trading into a bonafide town centre. He named it Karlsville, mostly as a private joke but maybe, for just a little bit of penance.

He coughed up more blood and spat it out in the bowl next to his pillow. He was near death now, but nobody was here to help clean up after him.

The missus had caught him cheating. Said that money had changed him. She left, took the kids. What did he care? He was new money, didn’t need a nag like that.

The town never really flourished. The groundwater took up cyanide from the local mines, poisoning the wells. The bank he helped start floundered and stalled. Houses were built and then were quickly abandoned - a lot of pain came through that town, and it stuck to the walls like paint.

As his own health had started to fall apart, Johnny had taken that blood stained leather journal out of his safety deposit box and read it through one more time.

For those that take his money, it is yours alone to enjoy.

Dying in the dark and silence of his room, Johnny realized what the priest had been trying to do. He had taken twenty thousand dollars from that priest's cart long ago, now he ordered twenty thousand of his own back into the bank. Trying to put right what he had made wrong. Trying to lift the curse. He wrote it all down in the black notebook, until his hands finally dropped the pen and pain wracked his body.

Johnny Whitmore died, his final notes unread.

***

It took a few days for Maggie, back at her house rental, to get through that old black notebook of Johnny’s. The house was so quiet, like the walls were holding their breath. She couldn’t stand it, and missed the dull roar of the traffic back in her penthouse.

She read Whitmore’s words. Read them like he was right there with her. She had underlined the passage over and over. It haunted her, gnawed her insides.

...yours alone to enjoy.

She called up Chad, she didn’t care about the hour.

“What do you mean?” he asked groggily.

“Everything we took from the bank. Has it gone through yet?”

“Maggie, jeeze. Yeah, of course it’s gone.”

“The money. Everything in the accounts?”

“Well, yeah Maggie. It’s probably found its way to the market by now. Subprime loans, mortgages that sort of thing. Heck, the money has probably grown already. What’s wrong?”

Maggie kept staring at the notebook.

“Nothing. It’s fine. Goodnight.”

Maggie kept the bedside lamp on that night. The only light shining on the abandoned street.