The Envy

The black night hangs over the assembled townspeople, like the man at the gallows soon will. No moonlight plays over his quaking form - only the dull glow of a single torch. To his right the sheriff and his deputy stand, impassive, unfeeling. On the other side a figure is hunched in shadow. As the torch flame plays across him he steps back, hiding his face.

“Please!” the convict shrieks, taking a step toward the sheriff, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I didn’t know she was in the barn - it was just an accident, I was drunk, I -”

The deputy darts forward and clubs him with a truncheon, knocking him senseless - but not unconscious. He stumbles back, leaning dazed against the L-beam of the gallows.

The sheriff glances toward him, nods once to the deputy, and begins to read in a minister’s crow:

“For the murder of Janice Armington on the night of April 4th, 1852, Henry Armington has been sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence will be carried out forthwith.”

The crowd begins to titter, stirring with excitement, bloodshot eyes focused on the terrified convict’s shaking body.

In the distance, a wolf laments. It’s followed by a sudden, charged silence, broken only by the sound of breathing, the crickets of the night. They all know what’s coming next.

Then:

“Alright. Get on with it, then.”

Stock-still until this point, black against the night but for his face, the hangman swallows and steps out of the shadows. He’s rumpled. His shirt is wrinkled and unbuttoned at the top, his pants have mud-stains about the legs, and he wears no overcoat to hide his slightly-askew gray suspenders. His face is gaunt; a thin, brown-ash beard droops close to his crooked chin, as if it’s only painted on.

The convict glances at him and turns even whiter. “Aw, no,” he mutters. “Aw, no, no, no, no…” He begins to back up, but stops before bumping into the deputy who is already readying his truncheon again. As fear grasps him with its cold fingers, the convict turns desperately away, searching for any means of escape. But the crowd surrounds the gallows, looking at him with eyes that could cut bone. He has no friends in this town any more.

The convict’s shocked, frozen state gives the hangman an opening. He gently places his hands to the convict’s shoulder and back, easing him under the old, ratty gallow-plank.
The convict turns to him, eyes wide, throat quivering. He looks like he’s struggling to speak, to say No, you’ve got the wrong guy!

No words come out. The hangman fits the rope around his neck, his hands shaking as he pulls it tight.

“Sorry, pal,” he mutters in a voice like dust, inclining his head respectfully as he places both hands on the lever and pulls.

The trapdoor gives out. The sound of the convict’s life as it’s snatched away is swallowed up by the cheers of the crowd.

Hours have passed; the night has turned to a bleak, hungover morning. Above the town the dull haze of a gray sky leaks to earth in a cold, unpleasant mist.

The crowd is gone, dissipated like blood in a well, though a drunken man lies slumped against one of the saloon’s support beams. The sheriff and his deputy have both gone home; with no one to see the drunkard off, he’ll lie here until the barman arrives to shoo him away.

Aside from the drunk, only two souls share this grim April morning: the undertaker, who stands in a clean-pressed suit and a sharp top-hat, appraising the corpse that hangs from the noose as one might a piece of fine china or an oil painting, and the hangman.

“So, uh, how’s the, the business?” the hangman mumbles, fiddling with his hat.

The undertaker says nothing.

“Lot of… lot of death, lately. Figure it’s… it’s pretty good.” The hangman swallows, placing his hat on his damp, slicked-back hair. He removes it and starts to turn it again.

“Are you talking to me?” The undertaker’s voice is clipped and self-assured and nasally, a city man’s accent. He doesn’t turn.

“I… uh… I was, yes.”

“Don’t talk to me.” The undertaker produces a measuring spool, taking the dead man’s measurements and marking them down on a small, yellowed pad.

For a time the hangman continues to linger, staring at the undertaker’s back with pleading eyes. But the other man pointedly ignores him. By the tenth minute he can stand it no longer, and steps from the platform.

The streets have turned to mud - the rain in this part of the country is so seldom that, when it does arrive, the land can’t contain it for long. The hangman hisses as one of his boots is sucked into the sludge. He pulls it out with a curse and stamps the mud off in the dirt.. As he continues off, he hears something, like dry bark rubbing together. It’s the undertaker. Laughing at him.

Face burning, the hangman tears away, eyes trained on his boots. He has no eyes for the apathetic, lifeless countryside, nor the faces of the harsh town buildings that cluster together, as if taking solace in one another’s company. His only aim is to get home, as quickly as he can.

A shrill voice breaks through the quiet pattering of the morning rain:

“Oi, Ben! Where the hell are you going, at a time like this? Thought you didn’t sleep your ale off ‘til noon!”

There’s a dry, hacking noise. More laughter - this is the most he’s heard in such a shot span of time. Puzzled, the hangman glances up.

“What are you - oh.”

The hangman catches sight of the speaker - an overweight man with dark stubble shading his face and neck. As their eyes meet, the remainder of a relaxed grin dissolves from the other man’s face, replaced by a look of shocked horror. “Oh,” he mutters again. With a final, wide-eyed glance at the hangman, he turns and vanishes into the alleyway behind him.

The hangman sighs, and curses himself. He should have learned by now. No more - he resolves not to let anything stop him on the way home. There’s been enough heartbreak today.

Gritting his teeth and staring down at his knees, the hangman surges forward, trying to move as quickly as he can.

No sooner has he turned the corner than someone slams into him, hard enough to knock him to the dirt.

“Wow, pal - here I was thinkin’ everyone here was a rude asshole, then you come barrelling into me to give me a hug.”

The hangman doesn’t want to look up. He shuts his eyes. Perhaps if he sits still long enough, the other man will think he’s died, and leave him the hell alone.

“C’mon, ya big baby, you didn’t fall that hard. Let me help ya up.”

Barely withholding a groan, the hangman opens his eyes and glances up. Above him a young, pockmarked man stands. His features are worn and stained with dirt, as if he’s been traveling on the road for a long time. Over his shoulder he wears an open, filthy greatcoat that seems a size or two too big; it flaps about at his shins with even slight moments. Over one shoulder he holds a stick, the end of which is tied to a small blue bindle.

One thin, dirt-stained hand reaches out to him.

The hangman pauses, surprised, waiting for the stranger’s face to melt into horror. But it doesn’t, not after several long moments. The hand just remains. Eventually, the hangman takes it.

“I’m, I’m doing just fine,” the hangman says, his tone chipper as he dusts himself off. At the last word ‘just’ his voice cracks, unused to climbing to such decibels. This is the closest anyone’s come to him in… he can’t remember. A while.

“How do you do?” he says.

No, you fool! That’s too formal! his mind shrieks.

But the stranger looks unperturbed. “Glad to hear it, pal. Name’s Alfred Meyer. I’m a drifter - saw this little boxtown rush on by when I was riding the rails a month back, made a note to come by later - you see some interesting sorts in places like these.” He flashes a disarming grin. “I’m trying to get inspired, you see -  I plan to write the next great American novel.”

Though he’s asked for none of the information the stranger’s supplied him, the hangman is nonetheless elated, though he does his best to hide it. “Ah! Writing! Yes! Excellent!”

The stranger looks at him sidelong. Blushing, the hangman coughs. “Sorry. What do you, uh, think of the town so far?”

“Honestly?” The drifter sets a hand on his side, making a show of looking around the empty, flat facades around them. “Place is a shithole. That part’s no surprise. These boom towns are always like that. Build two hundred houses in a month, it’s not much of a surprise when they all fall apart in another. Aside from that, though, I’ve been a bit disappointed - haven’t met anybody yet who’s piqued my creative nerves.” With that same disarming grin, he turns back to the hangman. “You, though, you might be an exception. What’s your name, pal? What do you do?”

The hangman freezes. This is a big chance - a big chance to meet somebody who doesn’t know about him yet. Doesn’t know what he does. He even touched his hand!

Alright. Don’t blow it. Don’t blow it.

“I’m… My name’s Daniel Soren. I’m the, uh, the town… undertaker.” It’s a lie - maybe not a complete lie, though. He’s like an undertaker. And he’s always wanted to be one. It’s not a complete lie.

The drifter’s eyebrows have risen, mingling with the crop of shaggy hair that juts over his forehead. “An undertaker, huh? I didn’t realize this town had two.”

Shit. He knew about the real undertaker. Already the hangman’s lie was unraveling, and it hadn’t even been a few seconds. Growing quickly desperate, he searches for an escape route.

“Y-yeah, it does. I have to go,” he stammers.

“Hey, you don’t have to…”

The other man’s words are lost to the hangman as he sprints off. He doesn’t stop running until he’s left the rest of the town behind - a temporary solution, but a solution nonetheless. To an onlooker it might have looked like he’d suddenly lost his mind and tried to sprint toward one of the distant plateaus. But he’s stopped about twenty miles short, before a worn-down and weather-beaten shack. The building is so spattered with prairie dust that it blends in with the landscape like a desert reptile.

Panting, he looks over his shoulder, scanning the dust for traces of weather-ravaged men. But it doesn’t look like the drifter’s bothered to pursue him.

With a sigh, half of relief, half of aggravation, the hangman shoulders the door to his shack open. Like graveyard gates, the hinges of the front door squeal as it swings inward.

The shack’s lone room looks a lot like the surrounding outdoors: barren and dust-filled. A stack of boards hugs the left-side wall, the pile of spare clothes atop them acting as a makeshift cot; in the corner across the room a crooked, half-crushed wooden box sits.

The sight of his squalid home is enough to make the hangman freeze in the doorway - he considers shutting the door and wandering off, out into the desert. But eventually he forces it open the rest of the way and walks inside, bile eating at the back of his throat. Shame.

He’d gone west hoping to find the success that he couldn’t in New York - in California, as a gold miner. But quickly he’d seen that the miners were met largely with failure - whereas the men that sold them goods thrived. That was how the smart men made their fortunes. But it didn’t take long for him to realize he had no heart to sell men necessities at prices so high they threatened to tumble over and smother them. Moreover, he had no brain for numbers, no eye for commerce. In the end he’d lost so much money trying to get his business off the ground that going to California was no longer an option at all. He was stuck in this city, in this dead-end job. A penniless pariah.

A thin sound flickers into the shack through one of the many holes in the roof. A curse sapped of its weight by distance. With a feeling of mounting unease, the hangman stands - has someone followed him here, after all?

There’s another sound - like something heavy and wooden being dragged along a dirt path. The hangman’s posture relaxes even as his face contorts in anger. He goes to the back window.

The undertaker’s crow-silhouette flaps against the gray sky as wind tears at his cloak. He sets at work, shoving a casket forward with all his might, legs straining against the hard earth. With a last shove, the casket topples out of sight with a dull, echoing clunk. For a few moments he rests, hands on sides, panting. Then he sets to moving the earth, shovel in hand.

Clenching his fists, the hangman glares at the undertaker as he works. How he hopes that the ground beneath him would crack wide, swallowing him whole! Or, if nothing else, that he would trip and fall and break his neck in the new grave. A fitting end.

But neither happens. Brushing a cloaked arm against his damp brow, the undertaker sets his shovel down and wanders back inside the church.

The hangman stands, fists pressed against the window frame, quaking with rage. To think that he has to emulate someone as cruel and unfeeling as this man to even get another to consider his presence… It’s insufferable!

“You really hate that guy, huh pal?”

Jolted, the hangman whips around, feeling uselessly at his side for a weapon he doesn’t own. His posture slacks as he sees the stranger from earlier in his doorway. “Mr. Meyer. Hello.” The hangman glances around, face reddening as he becomes painfully aware of his sparse lodgings. “Why don’t we talk outside?”

The stranger produces a cigarette from his sleeve. “There aren’t two undertakers in this town, huh pal?”

Swallowing, the hangman says nothing.

With a chuckle, the stranger lights his cigarette with a match that seemed to materialize from nowhere. “You don’t have to give me that look. I know how you feel - believe me. Though you must be in one hell of a shitty job if you’re looking at the goddamn undertaker with covetous eyes.”

“I don’t… it’s… well, it’s complicated, I suppose,” the hangman says. “I’ve just-”

The stranger raises a hand. “No need to explain yourself. I’m here to help you. Now - what do you think the best course of action would be to end up in that fella’s position?”

The hangman scratches his head, knocking his hat askew. Righting it, he frowns. “I don’t know. I’ve tried to get him to talk to me - hoped I might convince him to take me as an apprentice. That’s a good way to go about it, right?”

Snickering, the stranger shakes his head. “Not if he won’t even talk to you. I saw your exchange earlier today - that guy’s never gonna give you the time of day.”

The hangman blinks. He was watching earlier? But no one else, aside from himself, the undertaker, and the town drunk, was in the square. The consideration doesn’t stay long.

“So let’s talk alternatives. Say the position were to suddenly… open. I don’t suspect there are others who want to be the town undertaker?”

“I’m not sure,” the hangman says, fidgeting with his hat.

“But the job’s an important one - if there were an opening, you’d be a shoe-in, even if you aren’t totally qualified. How hard can burying bodies be?”

“I… I’m not sure what you’re getting at. If there were an opening I might be able to take it, but Mr.Gregorio’s been in this job for years - he’s not just going to up and leave.”

“I fully agree with you,” the stranger chuckles. “So, let’s say - hypothetically speaking - something were to happen to him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Say he… falls in a freshly-dug grave, and breaks his neck. Position’s open then, huh?”

The hangman’s eyes widen as the implication sinks in. “You want me to murder him?”

“I didn’t say nothin’.” The stranger turns away, swinging his bindle in an overlarge arc. Something falls from it, clattering to the floor. “Did I hear something? I certainly hope I didn’t drop anything,” he snickers, glancing at the hangman over his shoulder. Then he vanishes through the front door.

The hangman realizes that his entire posture has stiffened, and a cold sweat blooms on his neck and back. He tries to calm his breathing as he stoops on the floor, looking for the item that the vagabond deliberately dropped.

It doesn’t take him long to find it - it looks like two small, round handles of black-polished wood, finished on either end with shining metal. There’s a hinge between them - as the hangman picks the device up, it swings open, revealing a wickedly-sharp, four-inch-long knife blade.
The hangman swallows, and pushes the handles back together. As he does so, he makes out something that glints - etched on both handles, running parallel to the seam between them, are two detailed line-arts of what look to be grasshoppers. It’s hard not to wonder at the craftsmanship of it - the insects are detailed to enough of a degree that they are unmistakeable.

Strange that the vagabond would simply give him this. Stranger still that he was advocating murder.

“Good heavens,” the hangman murmurs, letting the blade swing open again. Him, a murderer? He cocks his head, considering it. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d killed someone - but then again, the divide between pulling a lever to execute a criminal and stabbing an arguably-innocent man in the back was substantial. In the eyes of God, though, he was probably already doomed. And the blade of the knife was rather lovely… he stared at it. As it reflected the sunlight, it almost looked like it was chewing it to pieces and spattering the disemboweled rays all over the room.

Maybe I will pay the undertaker a visit, the hangman thinks, turning the blade in his hands. He feels...good. Better than he has in a long time.

He waits until the sun creeps below the blasted horizon before leaving his home again.

As he walks through the darkness, blade folded and hidden in a deep trouser pocket, the hangman feels his eyelids twitching. With a grimace, he massages them gently, though he knows it won’t do much good. Exhaustion rides upon his shoulders - he’d tried to get some rest as he waited for nightfall, but no matter how hard he tried he could not coax the black kitten of sleep into his home. He’d felt it then as he did now - twitchy, fidgety, like he’d just downed six cups of coffee. He stares at his hand, trying to keep it as still as he can. Each finger flickers; his wrist shakes.

It isn’t fear, or consternation, that pumps adrenaline through his veins. He knows that if that were the case he would have fled the graveyard.

But instead he waits, crouched in the curved alcove that made up the back of the church.
There is no moon. The night is dead silent - no coyotes, no wolves, no insects, nothing. It would have been unnerving - should have been unnerving. But the hangman feels… confident. That even if a brown bear set upon him, or a pack of coyotes, they wouldn’t stand a chance against him.

The darkness only barely hides his grey grin.

Footsteps break the silence. The hangman flinches, his resolve wavering for a quarter of a moment. Steeling himself, he rotates his shoulder, unfolding his knife in preparation.

The undertaker is returning, as the hangman knew he would, to finish the work he’d started that morning. The hangman had never studied his patterns, never watched him work for more than a few moments before turning away, sick with jealousy. But now his eyes trace his every movement

A soft, muted light bleeds from a lantern onto the parched earth a few yards ahead. Fortunately for the hangman, it’s no more able to pierce the night than a hairpin could kill a horse; the circle of yellow barely creeps a few feet beyond the man caring it

The undertaker stands hunched above the lantern, twisting a pin on its side. The light wanes, becoming little more than a pinprick.

Again the hangman feels his resolve waver. The undertaker never bothered to smother his lights  - usually he brought two or three, letting them blaze at full intensity. A testament to the man’s bloated sense of self-worth. Trying to shine with enough opulence to rival God! But now it was the opposite.

But he wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings, focused on his work as he was. The sheer darkness, coupled with a quick strike, would have ensured the undertaker’s death. But the hangman hesitates.

I’ll wait until he starts his work in earnest, he thinks. Then he’ll be distracted.

In truth, his bravado has all but ebbed away. In all their interactions the bastard had been short on everything except careless bravado. But now it’s as if he’d flipped - his frame is huddled, and every few seconds he rakes the ground with suspicious, sharp glances. For a moment he even looks like he might raise the lantern. The hangman shrinks back against the cold stone, knowing there is no place for him to escape. But after a moment the undertaker sets it down again, returning to his work.

Sighing with relief, the hangman squeezes the knifeblade, trying to regain his composure. It’s still vaguely present, with all the smoldering hate he feels every time he catches sight of the undertaker’s face, but the fear crossed with curiosity has all but frozen him.

Suddenly, the undertaker straightens, stepping away from his lantern and into the darkness. The hangman flinches, ears strained for approaching footsteps. They aren’t, thankfully - instead they clomp to his right, around the side of the church. Was the undertaker just leaving the night’s work? It doesn’t make sense.

With yet another start, the hangman realizes that the undertaker is not at the same spot he’d been that morning. There he’d been working in front of an ornate, 200-pound tombstone, which he doesn’t see even on his periphery. This is an unmarked ditch. Something tells him that the tombstone hasn’t just wandered off.

A digressionary thought spins into his brain, scattering his concern like loose matches in a dust storm - his father’s body lies in an unmarked grave, and someday his would, too. Nobody wanted to be buried next to an executioner; they were ostracized, in death as well as in life. In a patch of dirt in the middle of nowhere, not even in a cemetery, with no more acknowledgement than a blank wooden cross or unmarked stone.

His grip on the blade tightens. He couldn’t stay in this business - couldn’t be a damnable executioner for the rest of his lonely life. They would still look at him oddly when he superseded the undertaker, but at least then he would have property, a real job. And maybe, just maybe, people wouldn’t turn tail and run at the sight of him any more.

The next moment the undertaker turns his back, he thought, I’ll finish this.

Something shakes him out of his focus yet again. This time it’s not in his head, but beyond - a sound. He can hear… footsteps. But not just footsteps. There’s something else. Something like… crumbling dirt. Something heavy being dragged.

He tries to calm down. It’s not strange. Typically the undertaker, tactless as always, drags the heavy wood caskets along the earth before dumping them unceremoniously into their final resting places. Nothing to be afraid of.

Yet try as he might to explain it away, the sound fills him with mounting dread.

The undertaker steps into the light - walking backwards. The hangman’s heart jumps - the other man faces him, though not directly. The object in his hands, which the hangman can’t quite make out, commands his attention.

The hangman readies himself, taking a step forward. He would circle around, waiting until the undertaker dumped the casket into the earth, then-

There is no casket. The undertaker drags a crumpled, blood-stained body.
Every muscle, poised to strike, freezes. Every organ ceases. Not even the hangman’s blood pumps through his veins.

It’s the shopkeep - he recognizes him by his girth, by the roundness of his face and the smile lines around his dull, unseeing eyes. The hangman visited him on Sunday mornings - his shop was typically empty then, which shielded him from the terrified, accusing glares he would receive from the other townspeople. The shopkeep himself had been, if not friendly, then at least neutral to him, which was more than he could say about most.

There is no doubt in the hangman’s mind that the undertaker murdered him. It explained the suspicious looks, the quiet, stealthy movements. And it means that, if he were to descend upon the undertaker now, it wouldn’t be morally repugnant. He would just be killing a killer. The townspeople might even herald him as a hero!

Summoning the last of his courage, the hangman creeps forward.

Something falls from the undertaker’s pocket. “Oh, shit,” he mutters, his city-accent sounding breathless and nervous. He drops the shopkeep’s body as if it were a sack of radishes, and stoops to scrabble in the dirt.

Eventually he freezes. “There you are.” There’s a note of intense relief in his voice, and he begins to stand again.

The hangman catches sight of it, winking between the undertaker’s fingers even in this low light, for the fragment of a moment before it returns to his pocket.

The black blade of a folding knife. A locust stenciled into the hilt.

Terror dig its crooked beak into his heart. He flees, faster than he ever has before.

His legs pump him blindly in the direction of anywhere-but-here. His brain is too stunned to process anything - too stunned to realize that he clings desperately to his own knife.
Blood roars in his ears, drowning out both his panicked breathing and the rapid footfalls steadily growing closer to him.

The leg that jams itself between his comes at the apex of his sprint; he topples over with a strangled yelp. A hand grips his collar before he can gain his bearings, dragging him up.

The undertaker had seen him. Had caught up to him.

Cold, agonizing pain slashes through his throat.

Had killed him.

He finally dropped his own blade as he presses his fingers to his throat. Blood flooded through them in a horribly warm torrent. He tries to breathe and regrets it instantly.

The undertaker drops him heavily, his fuzzy outline rising to its full height. A cruel chuckle escapes him.

Though he is already fading, the hangman still has enough consciousness left to be struck dumb one final time. The undertaker’s laugh is dry, callous, mocking. This one is a deep, gurgling baritone.
It’s familiar, but doesn’t belong to someone whose voice he’s heard often. With yet another twinge, he places it - with a voice that watery, it could only be…

He hears the dull scrape of a match being lit. The orange light plays across the town drunk’s rugged face as he lights the cigarette in his mouth. Even the tiny pinprick is enough to make the blade of the knife in his other hand glow. Between grubby fingers the hangman can see the glittering gold of the stencil. The stranger had visited this man, too.

“I seen the way you look about. You don’t ‘preciate whatchu got,” the drunkard says, tossing his match into the dirt and grinding it with his foot. “People never leave me alone - ‘Get up, Pete, yer ab-struc-tin’ the road, yer a dirty old man, Pete, yer better off under the dirt than lyin’ in it.’”

The hangman’s response is lost in a gurgle. The drunkard continues.

“But if I start hangin’ folks, like you, people’ll leave me be, like they leave you be. I can finally drink in peace.” The chuckle, again. “Thanks, pardner.”

The drunkard’s last few words come from a vast distance. With the last of his thoughts, the hangman curses the damnable stranger, the undertaker, the lot of them. But it doesn’t matter. He knows he’ll be seeing them all again, soon enough.