![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
listen arthur morgan is a hufflepuff
This was mostly just going to be me compiling characterization notes for myself. Somewhere along the way it turned into ~2300 of gen fic about Charles joining the gang. It's unbeta'ed and I haven't written anything since 2017, so please excuse the creaky joints. I'm happy to have finally finished something though. The conversation between Lenny and Dutch is mostly lifted from their actual camp conversation. If any of the race stuff is badly done, please let me know and I will fix it.
The first time Charles visited the campsite, he saw Javier draw a knife on Micah.
"Call me that again!" Javier challenged as Micah stepped away with his palms up.
So much for Dutch's vision of freedom and equality. There wasn't even any regret on Micah's face, just the scowling malice that Charles would grow used to over time. He almost told Dutch thanks but no thanks. There were enough men like Micah out there without having to share camp with them. But still Charles stayed. He was tired of being on his own, and whatever was cooking in the stew pot smelled better than anything he'd eaten in days.
"Micah's harmless," Dutch said, putting a hand on Charles's shoulder. "He's a good earner for the group, a good man to have at your side when things get a little bloody."
Men like Micah are never harmless, and that he enjoyed the favor of their leader set off warning bells in Charles's head. Charles watched Micah scurry away and spit invectives at Javier, who apparently felt similarly.
"You have more men like him here?" he asked.
Dutch laughed. "We are all just vagabonds chasing the dream that is America."
It was not a comforting answer, but still, when Dutch asked him if he was hungry, Charles said yes.
+
Charles watched Tilly and Lenny, taking his cues from them. He quickly learned to add Bill Williamson and the Callander boys to his list of people in camp to avoid. He also avoided Uncle, sure, but mostly because he didn't seem to believe in baths. Mostly, Lenny and Tilly wandered the campsite as they pleased, unconcerned and happy as clams.
One night, sitting around the campfire, he overheard Lenny and Dutch debating Evelyn Miller again. Evelyn Miller, again. Charles had paged through The American Inferno at Dutch's enthusiastic behest once. It was too melodramatic for him, but he could see why Dutch liked it.
Lenny's voice carried over from by Dutch's tent. "Yes, Miller's very... ornamental, as my uncle would say."
"Now, your uncle," Dutch replied. "What was he?"
"He was a slave. Most educated man in his county, but a slave."
"Miller writes about men like him!"
Lenny was persistent. "Miller's a slave too - a slave to pretty words and empty phrases. But he don't understand."
"You are too harsh a critic," Dutch said, and smacked his book down on the table with force.
Charles paused his whittling and glanced over his shoulder. Black men have been killed by white men for less. Charles wondered if this was it, the end of his short-lived stay with the van der Linde gang, because if Dutch had come down on the boy, Charles would have been forced to do... something. Anything. There were just some things Charles was too old to tolerate anymore. Dutch had allowed Javier to threaten Micah with a knife, but would he allow Lenny to blithely stomp on his pride? A man like Dutch, he was all pride, utopian grandstanding aside.
"Look... you're a great man, Mr. Dutch," Lenny shrugged. "But you ain't great 'cause of Evelyn Miller."
Charles tensed.
Dutch laughed. Perhaps for lack of a proper retort, he said, "Keep quiet, Hosea, or he'll eat you alive!"
The old man's voice grumbled from somewhere in the shadows. "I hope so. Once I'm dead, he can be the one cleaning up your goddamn messes."
"If you find more by that Mark Twain, though," Lenny said, "I wouldn't mind taking a gander once you're done with it." Then he shuffled over to the campfire without excusing himself, and told Sean to move over and share the whiskey.
Charles turned his attention back to whittling and the night continued without disturbance until Arthur rode back into camp smelling of offal and dried boar blood, satchel weighed down by a bag of jewelry and forty dollars in cash. The camp whooped and hollered their appreciation, and Javier, easily moved by ambience, grabbed his guitar and began to strum. Jenny immediately requested her favorite song. The girls, Charles knew, never turned down a singalong.
In his hand, the shape of the doe began to reveal itself through the wood.
+
Charles's first impressions of Micah were largely correct, except for the assumption that he was Dutch's right hand man, the gun that Dutch aimed at the world, the guard dog he set loose upon their enemies. That was Arthur.
It took a while for Charles to correct this assumption. Micah was inordinately proud of himself for having Dutch's ear, and all too happy to remind anyone in camp he thought might have forgotten. ("I know," Lenny said to Charles after one such encounter, "but Hosea, he was there before Micah, and he ain't gonna let him harm nobody.") Plus, Arthur was hardly ever at camp. He was almost as bad as Trelawney. It was never really clear to Charles which of Arthur's long absences were furtive errands from Dutch, and which were just Arthur taking a notion. In fact, Charles initially thought Arthur a distractible man. One time, Dutch sent Charles to bring him home because he had been wandering too long. When Charles finally caught up with him south of the Grizzlies, Arthur was drawing birds in his journal and surprised by the natural passage of time. He was wearing a hat that Charles had never seen him wear before.
"Whose hat is that?" Charles asked as he helped Arthur tear down his camp.
Arthur grinned. "Mine now."
The scales fell from Charles's eyes, as it were, when the law caught up with them over by Cumberland Falls. The Callander boys galloped into camp, both of them on Davey's horse and Mac with a bloody nose. They overturned the stew pot in their haste, but before Pearson could complain, Davey announced half in panic and half in bloodlust that the sheriff and his boys were coming. Something about a barroom brawl. Something about cheating at cards. Something about hey, wasn't aiming at the feller but my brother's a lousy shot, you know how it is. Their voices trampled over one another, always trying to speak over each other.
"You led them here?" Arthur demanded. "Fucking idiots - you know better!"
"Didn't lead them nowhere," Mac said, pouting and inaccurate. "Davey's horse is just slow."
"Get the hell off that horse and grab your guns!" Arthur barked, and when Arthur gave directions, you listened.
The camp exploded into activity. Abigail called for Jack. The reverend called on God. Tilly reached into her chest and tossed a pistol at Mary Beth, asking, "Or do you want a bigger one?" Charles tried to decide on his own weaponry - bullets or blades? He shouldn't have had those beers earlier. He was moving too slow, getting too comfortable tonight. He was getting too complacent, and now people might die because Mac and Davey couldn't even cheat at poker properly.
"Hey," Arthur called to Charles, striding towards him with a rifle in one hand and a shotgun in the other. "You any good with a rifle?"
"I'm okay," Charles said, and Arthur shoved the rifle at him.
"Cover me."
Eventually the smoke cleared, but the air still smelled of gunpowder. The red faded from Charles's vision, but his ears were still ringing and his heart just pounding away. He looked up from the rifle scope. Arthur pushed himself shakily to his feet and wiped his knife on the leg of his jeans, leaving red streaks. The man Charles's bullet had missed - one of only a few - made a final gurgling sound and went still at Arthur's feet.
Charles scrambled off the outcropping he was perched on and made his way to Arthur. They all did, converging like planets drawn by gravity.
"We didn't get them all," Micah grumbled. "Saw one slinking off through the trees."
"Let's go see how he likes being chased down," Mac cackled, already cocking his gun.
Dutch scoffed. He holstered with guns with deliberate care, then grabbed Mac by the neck, and shoved him back against the nearest tree.
"You have done enough, son," Dutch hissed, and Mac Callander, a man over six foot tall, visibly shrunk into himself. "Arthur."
"Yup," Arthur replied, shoving his hat back on. Before he disappeared into the trees, he looked at Charles and cocked his head. Come on.
It wasn't too hard to find the last remaining member of the posse. The man was bleeding from a shot to the leg, and all they had to do was follow the blood and broken underbrush. They found him trying to make his way towards the stream, and he squawked when he saw them.
"Keep a look out for me, will ya?" Arthur said to Charles, and handed him his shotgun before casually making his way over to his quarry, this poor bastard who had come to do his family harm.
Charles could see, then, why Dutch had chosen Arthur. He could see exactly why.
+
An itinerant life was a familiar one to Charles. What was unfamiliar was the family of it all. Abigail had even designated him one of Jack's official minders when she had chores to do. It was a privilege bestowed only to a few, Tilly explained, because most the other gang members couldn't be trusted. Against her better judgment, Abigail once left Jack with Sean when she had to do the washing, and when she picked him up that afternoon, her little Jack knew every word to Ring Dang Doo.
"Honestly, I think the boy's too young to know what he's singing," Tilly said, "but oh the hiding she gave Sean that night! Ha! You should've heard her, Mr. Smith." And her peal of laughter sounded like bells. "I don't think the Lord himself has had an avenging angel quite as fierce!"
"Mothers are very protective of their young," Charles said, a smile tugging at his mouth.
He and Tilly sat on the southern bank of Owanjila as Jack splashed around in the shallows. The book she was reading - the dime store romance Mary Beth was reading last week - lay forgotten on her lap. It was a beautiful morning, and it offered Charles the rare opportunity to pretend he wasn't an outlaw. Pretend he wasn't on the run with an increasing bounty on their heads, pretend their fearless leader was still as infallible as he claimed. Pretend all kinds of things. Charles had been an only child, but sitting with Tilly now, Charles thought to himself he would've liked a sister.
"Mothers have to be protective," Tilly insisted, then her voice turned low. "And it's not like Mr. Marston does much... Oh, Mr. Smith, don't tell him I said that! I know gossip's a sin, but Abigail works so hard. We all worry about Jack."
He lowered his voice to match hers. "Me too."
John Marston seemed a tolerable enough man until you saw him with Abigail, when all his anger, defensiveness, and downright meanness came out worse. He shirked responsibility. He tried to kiss Karen when Abigail wasn't looking. Karen slapped him and told John exactly what he was. Charles asked Arthur about the whole mess once, but he just grumbled and changed the subject. There was some deep rift that ran between the two that Charles had yet to figure out. The men Charles used to run with had fathers like John. Jack was young, but so was John. Charles wondered if there was still time for them to fix this, if they wanted to.
"What about you, Miss Tilly?" Charles asked. "You want a family one day?"
Tilly's eyes turned soft. "Wouldn't that be nice? Just some things I... I gotta do first."
The silence settled between them. The unspoken words: first, I must get out of this life. Charles wasn't sure he could afford to have such dreams anymore, but he was glad Tilly still nurtured the hope of something better. She couldn't even say the words out loud, so loyal were they all to Dutch van der Linde and his honeyed words.
"Uncle Arthur's back!" Jack said, and looked back at Tilly. "Do you think he has more chocolate?"
"I don't know, sweetie. Why don't you ask him?"
Arthur did, in fact, have chocolate on him. Jack tore open the wrapper and started eating it right then and there. Tilly had gone back to reading her book, but Charles watched as Arthur awkwardly patted Jack's head and continue on his rounds. Arthur had rounds, as it turned out. He may be often gone, but when he returned, he exuded exhaustion and fondness in equal measure. After dropping off the usual souvenirs at Pearson's table, he circumambulated the camp, checking in on everyone. Charles could hear the faint dialogue from here. Just small talk, small exchanges of no consequence beyond a good morning and how are you keeping, or maybe a "Hmm, stinks of coward around here" depending on whether or not your name was Micah. With each greeting Arthur seemed to come back to himself from whatever fugue he had nurtured out in the wilderness. Arthur made one last stop at the poker table where Hosea was catching up on yesterday's newspaper. He took out something from his satchel and gave it to the old man, who nodded and patted his arm. Finally, after one last look around to make sure he hadn't missed anyone, Arthur shuffled back to his cot and went straight to bed.
"Where does he go?" Charles wondered aloud.
Tilly looked up from her book. "He tells us stories about it sometimes, but Jenny reckons half of it's hogwash. Maybe you should find out for real and tell us."
He huffed a laugh. "Like some spy?"
"Oh, he's harmless, really," Tilly smiled, like she's talking about a big old pussycat. "He looks out for us, I know that much."
More than some do, Charles thought, but he said, instead, "Good."
And there wasn't much more to say about it than that.
The first time Charles visited the campsite, he saw Javier draw a knife on Micah.
"Call me that again!" Javier challenged as Micah stepped away with his palms up.
So much for Dutch's vision of freedom and equality. There wasn't even any regret on Micah's face, just the scowling malice that Charles would grow used to over time. He almost told Dutch thanks but no thanks. There were enough men like Micah out there without having to share camp with them. But still Charles stayed. He was tired of being on his own, and whatever was cooking in the stew pot smelled better than anything he'd eaten in days.
"Micah's harmless," Dutch said, putting a hand on Charles's shoulder. "He's a good earner for the group, a good man to have at your side when things get a little bloody."
Men like Micah are never harmless, and that he enjoyed the favor of their leader set off warning bells in Charles's head. Charles watched Micah scurry away and spit invectives at Javier, who apparently felt similarly.
"You have more men like him here?" he asked.
Dutch laughed. "We are all just vagabonds chasing the dream that is America."
It was not a comforting answer, but still, when Dutch asked him if he was hungry, Charles said yes.
+
Charles watched Tilly and Lenny, taking his cues from them. He quickly learned to add Bill Williamson and the Callander boys to his list of people in camp to avoid. He also avoided Uncle, sure, but mostly because he didn't seem to believe in baths. Mostly, Lenny and Tilly wandered the campsite as they pleased, unconcerned and happy as clams.
One night, sitting around the campfire, he overheard Lenny and Dutch debating Evelyn Miller again. Evelyn Miller, again. Charles had paged through The American Inferno at Dutch's enthusiastic behest once. It was too melodramatic for him, but he could see why Dutch liked it.
Lenny's voice carried over from by Dutch's tent. "Yes, Miller's very... ornamental, as my uncle would say."
"Now, your uncle," Dutch replied. "What was he?"
"He was a slave. Most educated man in his county, but a slave."
"Miller writes about men like him!"
Lenny was persistent. "Miller's a slave too - a slave to pretty words and empty phrases. But he don't understand."
"You are too harsh a critic," Dutch said, and smacked his book down on the table with force.
Charles paused his whittling and glanced over his shoulder. Black men have been killed by white men for less. Charles wondered if this was it, the end of his short-lived stay with the van der Linde gang, because if Dutch had come down on the boy, Charles would have been forced to do... something. Anything. There were just some things Charles was too old to tolerate anymore. Dutch had allowed Javier to threaten Micah with a knife, but would he allow Lenny to blithely stomp on his pride? A man like Dutch, he was all pride, utopian grandstanding aside.
"Look... you're a great man, Mr. Dutch," Lenny shrugged. "But you ain't great 'cause of Evelyn Miller."
Charles tensed.
Dutch laughed. Perhaps for lack of a proper retort, he said, "Keep quiet, Hosea, or he'll eat you alive!"
The old man's voice grumbled from somewhere in the shadows. "I hope so. Once I'm dead, he can be the one cleaning up your goddamn messes."
"If you find more by that Mark Twain, though," Lenny said, "I wouldn't mind taking a gander once you're done with it." Then he shuffled over to the campfire without excusing himself, and told Sean to move over and share the whiskey.
Charles turned his attention back to whittling and the night continued without disturbance until Arthur rode back into camp smelling of offal and dried boar blood, satchel weighed down by a bag of jewelry and forty dollars in cash. The camp whooped and hollered their appreciation, and Javier, easily moved by ambience, grabbed his guitar and began to strum. Jenny immediately requested her favorite song. The girls, Charles knew, never turned down a singalong.
In his hand, the shape of the doe began to reveal itself through the wood.
+
Charles's first impressions of Micah were largely correct, except for the assumption that he was Dutch's right hand man, the gun that Dutch aimed at the world, the guard dog he set loose upon their enemies. That was Arthur.
It took a while for Charles to correct this assumption. Micah was inordinately proud of himself for having Dutch's ear, and all too happy to remind anyone in camp he thought might have forgotten. ("I know," Lenny said to Charles after one such encounter, "but Hosea, he was there before Micah, and he ain't gonna let him harm nobody.") Plus, Arthur was hardly ever at camp. He was almost as bad as Trelawney. It was never really clear to Charles which of Arthur's long absences were furtive errands from Dutch, and which were just Arthur taking a notion. In fact, Charles initially thought Arthur a distractible man. One time, Dutch sent Charles to bring him home because he had been wandering too long. When Charles finally caught up with him south of the Grizzlies, Arthur was drawing birds in his journal and surprised by the natural passage of time. He was wearing a hat that Charles had never seen him wear before.
"Whose hat is that?" Charles asked as he helped Arthur tear down his camp.
Arthur grinned. "Mine now."
The scales fell from Charles's eyes, as it were, when the law caught up with them over by Cumberland Falls. The Callander boys galloped into camp, both of them on Davey's horse and Mac with a bloody nose. They overturned the stew pot in their haste, but before Pearson could complain, Davey announced half in panic and half in bloodlust that the sheriff and his boys were coming. Something about a barroom brawl. Something about cheating at cards. Something about hey, wasn't aiming at the feller but my brother's a lousy shot, you know how it is. Their voices trampled over one another, always trying to speak over each other.
"You led them here?" Arthur demanded. "Fucking idiots - you know better!"
"Didn't lead them nowhere," Mac said, pouting and inaccurate. "Davey's horse is just slow."
"Get the hell off that horse and grab your guns!" Arthur barked, and when Arthur gave directions, you listened.
The camp exploded into activity. Abigail called for Jack. The reverend called on God. Tilly reached into her chest and tossed a pistol at Mary Beth, asking, "Or do you want a bigger one?" Charles tried to decide on his own weaponry - bullets or blades? He shouldn't have had those beers earlier. He was moving too slow, getting too comfortable tonight. He was getting too complacent, and now people might die because Mac and Davey couldn't even cheat at poker properly.
"Hey," Arthur called to Charles, striding towards him with a rifle in one hand and a shotgun in the other. "You any good with a rifle?"
"I'm okay," Charles said, and Arthur shoved the rifle at him.
"Cover me."
Eventually the smoke cleared, but the air still smelled of gunpowder. The red faded from Charles's vision, but his ears were still ringing and his heart just pounding away. He looked up from the rifle scope. Arthur pushed himself shakily to his feet and wiped his knife on the leg of his jeans, leaving red streaks. The man Charles's bullet had missed - one of only a few - made a final gurgling sound and went still at Arthur's feet.
Charles scrambled off the outcropping he was perched on and made his way to Arthur. They all did, converging like planets drawn by gravity.
"We didn't get them all," Micah grumbled. "Saw one slinking off through the trees."
"Let's go see how he likes being chased down," Mac cackled, already cocking his gun.
Dutch scoffed. He holstered with guns with deliberate care, then grabbed Mac by the neck, and shoved him back against the nearest tree.
"You have done enough, son," Dutch hissed, and Mac Callander, a man over six foot tall, visibly shrunk into himself. "Arthur."
"Yup," Arthur replied, shoving his hat back on. Before he disappeared into the trees, he looked at Charles and cocked his head. Come on.
It wasn't too hard to find the last remaining member of the posse. The man was bleeding from a shot to the leg, and all they had to do was follow the blood and broken underbrush. They found him trying to make his way towards the stream, and he squawked when he saw them.
"Keep a look out for me, will ya?" Arthur said to Charles, and handed him his shotgun before casually making his way over to his quarry, this poor bastard who had come to do his family harm.
Charles could see, then, why Dutch had chosen Arthur. He could see exactly why.
+
An itinerant life was a familiar one to Charles. What was unfamiliar was the family of it all. Abigail had even designated him one of Jack's official minders when she had chores to do. It was a privilege bestowed only to a few, Tilly explained, because most the other gang members couldn't be trusted. Against her better judgment, Abigail once left Jack with Sean when she had to do the washing, and when she picked him up that afternoon, her little Jack knew every word to Ring Dang Doo.
"Honestly, I think the boy's too young to know what he's singing," Tilly said, "but oh the hiding she gave Sean that night! Ha! You should've heard her, Mr. Smith." And her peal of laughter sounded like bells. "I don't think the Lord himself has had an avenging angel quite as fierce!"
"Mothers are very protective of their young," Charles said, a smile tugging at his mouth.
He and Tilly sat on the southern bank of Owanjila as Jack splashed around in the shallows. The book she was reading - the dime store romance Mary Beth was reading last week - lay forgotten on her lap. It was a beautiful morning, and it offered Charles the rare opportunity to pretend he wasn't an outlaw. Pretend he wasn't on the run with an increasing bounty on their heads, pretend their fearless leader was still as infallible as he claimed. Pretend all kinds of things. Charles had been an only child, but sitting with Tilly now, Charles thought to himself he would've liked a sister.
"Mothers have to be protective," Tilly insisted, then her voice turned low. "And it's not like Mr. Marston does much... Oh, Mr. Smith, don't tell him I said that! I know gossip's a sin, but Abigail works so hard. We all worry about Jack."
He lowered his voice to match hers. "Me too."
John Marston seemed a tolerable enough man until you saw him with Abigail, when all his anger, defensiveness, and downright meanness came out worse. He shirked responsibility. He tried to kiss Karen when Abigail wasn't looking. Karen slapped him and told John exactly what he was. Charles asked Arthur about the whole mess once, but he just grumbled and changed the subject. There was some deep rift that ran between the two that Charles had yet to figure out. The men Charles used to run with had fathers like John. Jack was young, but so was John. Charles wondered if there was still time for them to fix this, if they wanted to.
"What about you, Miss Tilly?" Charles asked. "You want a family one day?"
Tilly's eyes turned soft. "Wouldn't that be nice? Just some things I... I gotta do first."
The silence settled between them. The unspoken words: first, I must get out of this life. Charles wasn't sure he could afford to have such dreams anymore, but he was glad Tilly still nurtured the hope of something better. She couldn't even say the words out loud, so loyal were they all to Dutch van der Linde and his honeyed words.
"Uncle Arthur's back!" Jack said, and looked back at Tilly. "Do you think he has more chocolate?"
"I don't know, sweetie. Why don't you ask him?"
Arthur did, in fact, have chocolate on him. Jack tore open the wrapper and started eating it right then and there. Tilly had gone back to reading her book, but Charles watched as Arthur awkwardly patted Jack's head and continue on his rounds. Arthur had rounds, as it turned out. He may be often gone, but when he returned, he exuded exhaustion and fondness in equal measure. After dropping off the usual souvenirs at Pearson's table, he circumambulated the camp, checking in on everyone. Charles could hear the faint dialogue from here. Just small talk, small exchanges of no consequence beyond a good morning and how are you keeping, or maybe a "Hmm, stinks of coward around here" depending on whether or not your name was Micah. With each greeting Arthur seemed to come back to himself from whatever fugue he had nurtured out in the wilderness. Arthur made one last stop at the poker table where Hosea was catching up on yesterday's newspaper. He took out something from his satchel and gave it to the old man, who nodded and patted his arm. Finally, after one last look around to make sure he hadn't missed anyone, Arthur shuffled back to his cot and went straight to bed.
"Where does he go?" Charles wondered aloud.
Tilly looked up from her book. "He tells us stories about it sometimes, but Jenny reckons half of it's hogwash. Maybe you should find out for real and tell us."
He huffed a laugh. "Like some spy?"
"Oh, he's harmless, really," Tilly smiled, like she's talking about a big old pussycat. "He looks out for us, I know that much."
More than some do, Charles thought, but he said, instead, "Good."
And there wasn't much more to say about it than that.