FROM THE SHROUD

Victorian-era chairs are merciless. He found this out as the cowboy shoved him into one. No room to slouch, it demanded perfect posture. So the Avenging Savior, shrouded hellion in the tattered gray cloak, propped up his slender frame, erect, undaunted. Fingers gripped the wooden claw armrests. Try though he might, they would not splinter. It was true. The enemy the city called hero had stymied his blessing from Heaven. Powerless, captured, he waited for his interrogators to begin the dance. 

"Good day to you, sir," an old man said, dreamily, as he stared at an endless forest of dangling pocket watches. Savior heard the voice, but through the narrow slit of his shrouded hood he saw nothing more than en ear, white hair sticking straight back, the glint of spectacles. "I am Edwin Seer, and this is my clock shop. You were the one causing the tremor I take it?"

"The wages of sin is death," Savior snarled. He knew the voice to use when enshrouded so, practice makes perfect. Perfection is closeness to God. Deep, guttural.

Seer smiled with sincerity. He glanced over to the young cowboy, who leaned on the wall, arms crossed, clothes ragged, filthy, but not a mark upon his brown skin save for the dagger gaze he offered to this Savior.

"Directly from the Scriptures. Wonderful. My dreams about you are accurate. You have chosen the most appropriate passage. Yes indeed. For months now you have hunted bad men as prey, and taken their lives. Today you chose to prey upon Chance, a sheriff in the Free Block, a friend, and a member of this very Guild of Honor. Tell me, were you negligent of his position?"

"Men loved darkness rather than light," the Savior stated. The armrests creaked.

Seer looked to Chance, but the cowboy focused on the vigilante. "You consider him evil? Or is this a matter of--"

"This n--"

Chance cocked one hammer on his best friend, the shotgun. "Ah done had about enough o' you, boy. Spaceman figgered how t' block off all that energy you ate up an' made you so strong, even the Sun. You just a man again. Best start puttin' that brain t' better use 'fore I empty it out."

"Chance, please." Seer lifted a gentle hand. The hammer returned to its resting place. "Mister Savior, despite your judgmental tongue, I am pleased to have heard your voice, not your rhetoric. As you can plainly see, Chance is unaffected by the blows you gave him during your fracas with him, the Spaceman, and Steam's Vassal. Our dear brother recovers from all matter of affliction, even death. He is exceptionally blessed."

The armrests cracked. "They had their day in the Sun. They made their point. I should not take a man down over color. What if the Spaceman is black behind that cold metal helmet? Fine. I conceded his point. Why am I here?" He tensed. Though heavy curtains were closed, pinpricks of His majestic light filtered through, gracing the forearm. Savior felt the Sun entering him the way a man feels liquor in his veins after a hard day's work. Effulgent. Rejuvenation. Grace. Five minutes, perhaps ten, and he could take on the cowboy, the Undying Man, so said the Press.

"Hmm, then I choose to believe we are dealing with a man willing to set aside aggression in favor of discourse. You admit kidnapping and assaulting our brother to be wrong. He has committed no crime. In fact, Chance is a local hero, I daresay, a legend. You and he serve the same side."

"Whoah now, Edwin!" Chance hopped off the wall. "Let's not get carried away. I'm the law 'cuz Commissioner Dunwich ain't give no choice, but I do the work. This boy here, hunched up on church steeples by night, ripping arms off, smashing jaws, fillin' hospitals with bodies while quotin' from the Good Book ain't nothin' like me. Left them girls in a burnin' home, 'cuz they was Negroes! I had t'get 'em out!"

"He and I are opposites," the Savior growled through clenched teeth. "Make your point, or ship me off to Limestone Yard, if you think the Devil's prison might contain me. I am Wrath, empowered by the Lord on the very day the blue fire blessed me with indomitable power through pain. I am ordained by Heaven. I cannot be stopped."

"So then," Seer removed his spectacles with the magnifier for watch tuning and cleaned them with a piece of silk cloth, "you may find belonging to the Guild of Honor to be less than satisfactory, I assume?" He placed the spectacles on the tip of his nose and looked down from his high stool to the Avenging Savior.

Chance jerked. "Him! With us? We don't kill. Heck, we spend a lot o' time readin' an' arguin' over literature. He ain't tryin' t'learn!"

The Savior heaved, shifted in the strictness of the chair. The infamous shroud fell back some, revealing a sackcloth mask blighted by a road map of stitchwork. Bad stitchwork. The cloak opened some. A large silver cross hung from a brilliant chain, became visible. Behind jagged eyeholes, brown eyes instilled with penetrating hatred loomed.

"An Irish accent?" Seer offered this with the airiness of one spouting trivial wisdom during tea time. "I spent my youth in the Isles, as a Millerite trying to enlighten minds to the spiritual, to the Great Day of Armageddon. Though to be fair, our dates may have been a tad miscalculated." He smiled wryly.

Another shift in the chair. Slackened shoulders. "You heard?"

"Yes, despite your attempts to conceal it. Fear not. Here we respect those who wish their true nature to be concealed. Our word is our bond. We strive to relate." He pointed up to the front of the shop.

The Savior raised his head. Beyond the pendulum swing of infinite watches, between two grandfather clocks, a plaque stood out in copper above the door. 

                                                       Condemnant quo non intellegunt

"Are you saying if they understood me, they would not get in my way?"

"On the contrary, Mister Savior. I am saying we want to understand you. We want you to better understand yourself. Also, your translation of the Latin certifies the priesthood is teaching you well." He smiled, friendly. A cat with glowing blue eyes startled him as it jumped atop the workbench full of trinkets. "Oh, Mister Fiddlesworth, where on Earth have you been?"

Savior leaped from the chair. "How...!"

"Please, son. Sit down." Seer got up, with the orange cat, its fluffy body shifting from thin to fat, stroking its head. "I've seen your struggle, what happened to your father, how it hurt like the Dickens. Understanding. That is the nature of this discussion. Please."

The Avenging Savior sank into the chair. He knew no fear. Men begged to him for mercy but found none. He was Wrath. He was a godsend.

His knees were trembling.

FROM THE SEER

Cross dangling from ground cracked as a pane of glass the Rail is but a paper boat under his flaming heel violence tragic violence souls are TORN ASUNDER Edwin wake thyself

"The day calls for Parthian lamb, I think."

Ever since the Blue SIlence, that indomitable day which made the Railroad City's living things distinct from anything Darwin might envision, Edwin Bedford Seer dreamed outside of Time This peculiar form of Talent, as they termed it, lacked the fundamental voluntary usage of say, firing cathartic beams from one's hands or superior physical strength. Foreshadowing, as he termed it, ebbed and flowed like the ghost of a prehistoric ocean under the quixotic power of a shattered moon.

This morning the Sun had yet to pierce the veil and he had risen, coffee in the pot. The five pounds of lamb from Garrison's butcher shop. 

"...hundred milliliters white wine, olive oil, coriander, salt, and pepper, of course..." Flesh massaged with seasoning. Into the oven it went. He knew. God. The Blue. Fate. Advice from the Unseen. Souls afar would need sustenance. Food, and sensibility.

An hour later the world trembled. Citizens outside clamored for help. Windows shattered. Seer by this time had his focus in the lamb's succulent prune sauce.  However, neighbors whose sole occupation lay in gossip stole in and out of his shop to relay the latest.

"Looks like your Blue freaks are at it again!"

"Oh? Can you have them come over here and help me? Cutting four onions has my old eyes like waterfalls."

"Stockwell's got the big guns out! Steam's Vassal is stomping up Olde Street! Seer, You need to see this!"

But Edwin had to cook up the onions with the two tablespoons of wine vinegar, a tablespoon each of savory and of asafoetida. Precision work!

"Ah! The olive oil again! One. Two. Three. Four tablespoons." Salt and black pepper. Of course.

"Avengin' Savior versus the Spaceman! Ooh, I gotta get the camera you gave me!"

"I am sure it will be spectacular," Seer droned.

"What a battle, Eddie!" Flag Epsom, his closest friend, a leg and an arm built from the newest steam-powered chicanery, bounded in for a sip and a swear. "Never seen the like! The Shrouded One or whatever the bloody hell he's called punched the armor as it jumped him! Knocked off five inches of plating, put cocky Stockwell up into the air! Poof! Shite, Eddie, I think he might crash down on us like a daft meteor!"

He trembled. The visions were incredible in their revelations. Yet even they left out details. "Please, Lord, let no one be dead." He thought out a prayer.

Flag leaned on the table. "They'll pull through, Eddie. Chance, poor lad, got the hard part. Seems the churchified slangwhanger's seen fit to call one of ours the pawn o' Scratch on account of his skin. Pffht!" Flag departed as Chance, Avenging Savior in tow, ambulated up the road.

And it had been a full hour and a half since Seer stunned the Shrouded One back into the headmistress of a chair. Silence between cowboy and vigilante. Edwin, for his part, knew the soul needed tending in more ways than stares and shock.

"Parthian lamb, anyone? With a salad?" He got up and set the plates, not waiting on a yes or a no. They would be fed, his wonderful friend and kin who kept this burg safe, and this disturbed man who was in need of mending, and not just his attire.

Seer put food in their faces. Chance's eyes turned from the Savior slowly. The stomach growled.

Savior stared at it like a trap waiting to be sprung. Then, he lunged. The plate to his lap. Mask pulled up just above the thin lips. Meat stabbed at. Large chunks inhaled, chewed twice, swallowed.

Chance laid a cloth napkin over his knee before the plate. He asked for utensils. Another napkin tucked into the collar. He sliced lamb in calm, even strokes, every movement bringing him a step closer to himself, away from the earlier terror.

Three men partook of history. And as men do, their silence represented a conversation all its own.

"The Chronicle says you discern the future," Savior mumbled, wiping sauce from the chin with his soiled, torn, bloodied sleeve. "And the past as well?" He looked into Seer's eyes, less now a rabid tiger and more a human being.

"I do."

"You believe him, you'll be the first," Chance laughed. A hard laugh. talking to this hatemonger remained a deep thorn in his side in need of release.

Savior considered these matters. "Why would the Lord give this to you? Did you pray for it?"

"No. I did not. Best as I can call it, and I make it my duty to catalog all of negatrite's, the Blue's, mutations, only you yourself received such a nod from above."

"This land promises liberty. Its sole gifts are anger and injustice." He made fists. The plate split by sheer proximity. Sauce blotted the Savior's tattered menagerie of a costume.

"Yes, and all men commit them, not merely our brothers from Africa." Edwin sighed. "We have measured upon them uncountable afflictions. Justice, especially that which comes from Him, must be beyond appearances, class, the sexes. Would you agree?"

"..."

"Okay. If we're doin' this, it can't be you." Chance stood, plate on the work table, and grabbed an equally stern chair. He placed it directly in front of the Avenging Savior and sat down. "every abolitionist got their say so did the soldiers in the war, but you know what's mostly missing in the saga of the Negro? A Negro tellin' our story. Well, this rotten day is on account o' me, ain't it? So the mouth you need to hear most jawin' in your face is gonna be mines."

FROM THE COWBOY

 "Don't you worry none 'bout my use o' the King's English. You just better put them Sun-suckin' ears to best use an' absorb every. Damn. Word. I'm gonna say."

Seer tensed a bit, more from age and a vow to never get violent if this went haywire than from the words spoken. He knew Chance. Few in these parts laid it down as well as the cowboy.

"Your justice be damned, 'Savior'. Today you whisked me up, hogtied, beat and strangled me, an' for what? A crime done by some other brother? Or you made it up? Maybe it was that lockjawed Pinkerton what came huntin' me down a year ago, you runnin' on old information? He had the wrong man. My brother did that crime in California, not me, an' he's dead. I know...'cuz I put the bullet in him." He reared back but glared hard, hard as one can waiting while holding back a deluge.

"He met justice."

Chance grimaced. "Reckon he did. He always was a--" he pulled out a pouch of tobacco, rolled some in a sheaf of paper Lick. Match. Spark! Puff. "Justice ain't pretty. You know that, but for some reason you in love with the bloodshed. I hate it. Every day I think there's gotta be a better way. Some days I get close. Then a fool like you comes along, makes folk scared of us again. Not just the paranormals now. No, sir. Folk with colored skin. You wrangled up the whole o' the Rail, an' for what? To get you one Negro, the one who has a badge an' fights for us just like you."

Savior looked away.

"But we here now. Man to man. That's right. Ah'm as much a man as you, perhaps more by the way you act! Man of God my foot! I read the same Word you do and more. I earned respect in this burg an' dammit ain't nobody gonna take it from me, or from them, or anybody unless it's been proven they done somebody wrong! Now ah'm a give Edwin here his dues on account o' he's usually right about things. I'm a figure you're a Irish man that forgot what the English done to your people. The same wrongs they did to mines, with some o' you along for the ride. Now if you wanna see me as your enemy, lemme remind you you gotta love them too, or are we throwin' Matthew out the window?  Point blank, we both claimin' good, but this ain't it. Ah made the threats. We broke bread. We had the gettin' to know each other session. But whatchu gonna do now, huh? Tomorrow? You really about that justice talk, that God livin', or should ah just put lead in you right here an' now?"

They stood at the same time. Backs hunched. Regenerative fingers on a shotgun. Fists empowered by the cosmos. 

"Gentlemen, if you please. Respect one another, and my establishment."

"Ah got this, Seer. My fight. Has been since day one." Chance eyed Savior, searching for his soul.

Savior performed a search all his own. One to find humanity in one he had been told had none. Another part dove into his own psyche, on a quest to stitch the fire in his heart with the pax Dei he studied by lamplight every evening.

"Love, worketh no ill." He mumbled it. Why was it so hard to put into practice?

But they heard.

Chance lowered the weapon. "Commissioner made me play sheriff, pushin' law on folk. Ah'm a do the same here. You wanna do this, in our burg? My town? Then you do it right. Tomorrow you fixin' the places you wrecked. After that, you doin' patrol with me, in the Free Block, on foot. Not on top o' that church steeple 'cuz I ain't climbin' up there to get you! We can start with the Negro ministers, who ah'm sure will be all kinds o' interested in you. Now, you can't bear that weight, well, the Guild O' Honor will be more than happy to chase your poorly dressed bottom right on outta Missoura."

"I never meant for you to play warden to him, Chance," Seer offered. "Spaceman or--"

"Ah know. It's fine, Edwin." 

The Avenging Savior wanted to pace. Instead, he found through prayer and this hard lecture another fundamental. "I can. Tomorrow." Humility.

Chance offered a hand. the Savior saw it. Observed it. Wondered what it meant to take it, or to not. He chose the former. They shook, eye to eye. No trust. No love. All the hardness America had to offer.

The Savior went for the door and left. Outside, the crowd pressed up against Seer's windows and the door ran for cover. For the first time, the Savior felt their fear.

Grant me the strength. He leapt away.

Edwin . "'Violent fires soon burn out themselves, small showers last long, but sudden storms are short; he tires betimes that spurs too fast'."

"You know ah love Shakespeare," Chance remarked, "but I tell you what, tomorrow's gonna be one helluva day."

"Yes."

Chance turned to Seer. "But you seen this? Ah mean, he turns out all right?" 

"Yes," Seer did his best to conceal his true feelings. "Unfortunately."

The word silenced them both.

A whistle filled the sky. Two armored heroes were about to collide into the beleaguered city...