Ain’t Nowhere Left for You to Run!
Chapter 18 of The Ballad of Abigail Lambert
The snow fell gently upon them as they crossed the border into Tennessee. It had been nearly 2,000 miles they’d traveled to get here, and Abigail felt a sudden sense of emptiness wash over her as they made their approach. Would she finally be free? Or, perhaps worse, did she even want such a thing anymore? They rode up a hill to see the homestead down below on a big plot of land covered in a thick blanket of snow.
“That’s it,” Esperanza said.
All was quiet. They rode down the hill and made their approach. Abigail looked around and spotted broken windows, bent boards and found the house in a general state of disrepair. This farm may have been prosperous at some point, but that must’ve been long ago. One’s first thought would chalk that up to the season, but it was clear from how badly it was falling apart that it’d been a year or more since any upkeep had been done on the property.
“You sure someone lives here?” Abigail asked her.
“We used to,” she replied.
They approached the house and hitched their horses to the rotting railing of the dilapidated porch. They dismounted and Esperanza took heavy steps in the snow toward the front door. Abigail trailed close behind her. As Esperanza reached out to open the door, she hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” Abigail asked.
Esperanza turned and gave Abigail a hug.
“Thank you,” she said.
Abigail rested her hand upon the girl’s head, and held her close.
“Go on,” she told her.
Esperanza turned back toward the door and entered the house. As the door swung open, now unsettled dust glimmered in the newly let in light. The house was cold. Silent.
“Ma?” she called out.
There was no answer.
“Ma!” She called out again. She stepped further inside, and searched the house for any indication of her mother.
Abigail entered behind her and surveyed the scene. An icy breeze blew in through the broken windows. It was clear to her that whoever lived here hadn’t for a long while now. She looked down at the floor and noticed a stain. She took a knee to inspect it, and from the looks of it, she gathered it must’ve been a dried pool of blood. Esperanza returned from her search.
“What are you looking at?” Esperanza looked down to see the stain Abigail had knelt beside. “Ma!” She shouted again. She ran outside.
“Esperanza!” Abigail chased after her.
“Where are you? Ma? Ma!” Esperanza cried out as she stepped through the snow.
“Your momma’s dead, Lil Hope!” A familiar and gravelly voice called out.
Esperanza turned to see Colin and what remained of his gang as they stood in the snow outside the house.
“That’s not true!” She yelled.
When she spotted Colin and his crew, Abigail drew her gun.
“Get behind me,” she said. She shielded Esperanza with her body.
“That won’t mean much, Miss.” Colin told her.
“How do you figure?” Abigail asked.
“Ain’t nowhere left for you to run!”
“You’re not taking her.” Abigail’s grip on the gun tightened.
Colin laughed.
“What’s so funny?” She asked.
“I admire your tenacity, darling. But enough’s enough, now. Hand her over.”
“Why would I do that?”
“For the same reason I followed your tail for over two thousand miles, woman! Don’t be so dense!”
Abigail had nothing to say to him.
“Don’t—oh man!” Colin laughed so hard he started to wheeze. “She hasn’t told you, has she?”
“Told me what?”
“She’s my daughter.”
Abigail turned to Esperanza.
“Is that true?” She asked her.
Esperanza looked up at her, but her lip quivered, unable to admit the truth. Colin continued to laugh.
“Ah, hell! She always was a little trouble maker,” he said. “Just like her Momma!”
“What did you do to her?” Esperanza shouted at her father.
“She wouldn’t listen to reason, baby girl. She had to go!”
“Go where?”
“Do you remember what it was like here?” Colin asked her. “This land is cursed! It can’t bear a crop. She didn’t want to leave and we would’ve died here if it was up to her!”
“Just give me an answer!” She shouted.
“I shot her!”
“How could you do that to her?” She had her suspicions, but to hear him admit it was a different pain to bear all together.
“She was threatening to kill herself and you along with her if I didn’t stay,” he told her. “Your mother was a sick woman!”
“So you gunned her down like a dog?” There would be no amount of strength Esperanza could muster to hold back the tears any longer.
“I saved your life you insolent little shit!”
“You wanted to go back to your glory days of raping and pillaging, don’t feed me bullshit!” She yelled.
“Don’t speak to me like that, girl! I’m your father!” He boomed. “Now get over here!”
“Over my dead body.” Abigail planted her feet firmly in the snow between them.
“Suit yourself,” Colin said.
He was quick on the draw and shot at her. Abigail was fast enough to shoot too, but Colin’s bullet was quicker—her shot flew past his head and she took a bullet square in the chest. She staggered forward, and fell back into the snow.
“Abigail!” Esperanza cried out. She took Abigail’s gun and fired at the gang, but with her attention in one direction, one of his crew was able to circle around and grab her.
“Get her out of here!” Colin demanded.
“Let me go!” Esperanza cried as she thrashed in their grasp, but she was overpowered and dragged away despite her best efforts.
It was getting harder for Abigail to breathe. She heaved and coughed up the blood that had begun to fill her lungs. Colin stepped over to Abigail and took a knee.
“I hope it was worth it.” He told her.
“It will be when she’s free of you.” Abigail said.
“This whole time, I’ve been trying to make sense of what’s going on in that head of yours,” he told her. “How consumed by rage must a woman be to destroy a man’s family? Maybe it’s got something to do with the same impulse that possesses her to burn down a house with women and children trapped inside it. The more I tried to rationalize such behavior, the clearer it became that I simply don’t have the mental faculties to comprehend the psychopathically incomprehensible.”
“Does it help you sleep at night to think of me as the psychopath?”
“Do you even know how many people you’ve killed on your way here?”
“I did what I had to.”
“Then I suppose we’ve got that in common. I will certainly sleep easier now that I have my daughter back. Consider what I’ve done for you a kindness.”
“Yeah?” She coughed up more blood. “How do you figure?”
“You won’t have to suffer your delusions for much longer,” he said.
He rose to his feet and reconvened with his gang. They rode off with Esperanza and left Abigail behind to die in the snow. She laid there and bled out for a long while, long enough for her resting place to be covered by a blanket of snow in totality. The entire homestead was covered in a beautifully unbroken white blanket. To anyone passing by, it would seem as though it had been as undisturbed as it was when Abigail and Esperanza first found it. Something shifted beneath the snow, and out from underneath it, Abigail emerged. She struggled onto her feet, but managed to stand up straight, injuries be damned.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She heard the Stranger ask her as he watched her from the porch.
“I have to save her,” she told him.
“You’ve played your part,” he said. “Is this not what you wanted?”
“I can’t rest until she’s safe.” She staggered over to her horse.
“She never will be. Surely, you understand that by now?”
“Then I’ll never rest.”
“If you leave this place, there will be nothing I can do to protect you.”
“What have you ever done to help me?” She slowly mounted the horse.
“I got you this far, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t get me this far,” she told him. “She did.” Abigail whipped the reins on her horse and rode off.
The snow began to fall thick in a blizzard. She struggled to see far ahead at all. Her horse shared in the difficulty and displayed immense trouble navigating the snow as it trotted along at a slow pace. Abigail coughed and was overcome with an aching weakness. She clung to the horse’s neck, but as the gusts grew stronger, her strength quickly faded. She fell off the horse and landed in the snow. Her horse ran off into the storm and left her behind.
She dragged herself on her hands and knees through the snow, but she didn’t gain much ground. She looked up, and spotted a silhouette in the blizzard. She lifted her hand in an attempt to drag herself just a little bit further, but she succumbed to her weakness, and fell flat in the snow.
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