J.D. Jordan

“wasn’t no bit of me willing to ride shotgun to my own funeral.”

“Maybe I’d lost something. Maybe I’d lost a lot—more, even, than I could suffer—but I still had my own self. And lonesome as I might be, wasn’t no force on Earth or from above what could make me less.”

“Was still between Martha and Jane, then, I was. Between the girl I was and who I wanted to be.”

“I appreciate your thinking on me, marshal, but ain’t no trouble of his what ain’t trouble of mine, too.”

“And in the silence what followed, I reckon our eyes had some long conversation our mouths could’ve never talked through. Some long, looking talk about things gone and long since said. About cries out in the night and some long ago tangling of limbs. And about them betrayals done time and time again—by both of us—what led to me pointing the Green Man’s rifle at the man what once loved me under the Green Man’s stars.”

“I was the luckiest girl. Don’t you think because I didn’t have no proper man or husband I was anything else. Wasn’t no place I’d rather be than right there. Even now, I pine for that uncomfortable rock. Because he was watching over me and loneliness was some far off thing, echoing off the Rock from other folks. Wasn’t nothing could ruin it for me.”

“I tell you, mister, if there’s anything good about being a hot-tempered bitch, it’s knowing right well what buttons to push in others seeing as they’re the same ones what get your own back up.”

“Was Jane now. All Jane. Come calamity or come calm, was myself and none else.”

“But wasn’t time for what was. Was time to settle up the future.”

“But tell you true, I honestly didn’t think nothing about the Green Man beefing that posse. Was just men and the world’s full of them.”

“Was like the Green Man said, some you got to put to the bullet. Some to the tongue. Often the latter, with me. But some, you just got to put behind you.”

“Seems a lot of men never saw one such as me. A girl what could keep up and fight and ride and curse with the best of them. A girl what ain’t trapped in some dress or some house or some bed. A girl what ain’t waiting on some man to do what she ought to her own damn self.”

“Ain’t no good ever comes of it, if you ain’t steering yourself.”