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Boyd dies in a forest, on his knees, on his hands and knees, blood dripping from his mouth and onto the cold black earth. He dies on Ava’s floor, that same blood on his lips, a holy name in his mouth. He dies in Harlan, dies and dies, and the blood drips out his mouth.
In the forest, he curses Jesus, and begs him, and berates him, takes the Lord’s name in vain. On Ava’s floor, he curves his tongue around Raylan’s name, and it burns. The sacred has always burned him, although before this moment he never knew it. He dies like living, since it is his life, blood-borne and holy in its own way, a century of tainted blood, spilling from his lips, an inadequate sacrifice for the blood he’s spilled in turn. Boyd has God on his lips and it burns, and he lets it. He is not a man to let, to let anything, but he loses himself for once in his life, lets his own Pentecost take him, feels his tongue cleave with fire.
He does not die in a mine, and his mouth fills with coal dust, and he speaks of the fire, does not feel it. He walks out of the mine into too much sun, comes up from the underworld into the light-- at least, that’s the theory. Raylan’s hand in his, and that name again on his lips, holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Raylan’s hand on Boyd’s face, smearing thumb across his cheekbone. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Raylan smiles like dying, like the spark before the walls caved in. Boyd dragged Raylan out of that mine, but it’s Raylan who drags him away from its mouth, who cleans his face, whose own lip is bleeding.
Sometimes, Boyd wonders if part of himself died in that mine.
Sometimes, he wonders what it makes him if it didn’t.
“There ain’t no one else like me,” he tells Raylan Givens, and, because it’s Raylan Givens he says it to, it’s only half true.
Out in the forest, he sees things that ain’t there.
Oh, he knows. He knows exactly how crazy he sounds. But Boyd Crowder has sounded crazy since he was 19 years old, and he’s used to it by now, knows how to use it, how to make it hurt you and not him. It’s an imperfect method, relies on the bait-and-switch, that you see the Boyd that you expect to see, and not the one that’s really there. He is a vision of a vision, a find-the-lady game that you’re destined to lose. He knows that he’s crazy, but so is everyone else. He always sees into everyone, right down to the bone, cut to the quick, no matter what they try to hide. He sees smokeless smoke on the horizon, hears voiceless voices, feels the sting of wounds that leave no marks, but he’s not stupid. He sees things that ain’t there, but he also sees all the things that are.
Sometimes, Boyd wonders if he really died in that mine.
Sometimes, Boyd wonders what it makes him if he didn’t.
“You know if they put you in jail for real they’ll make you take a psych eval,” says Raylan, like this is funny. It is. A little.
“The United States military saw fit to allow me into their hallowed ranks, Raylan,” says Boyd, and cocks his head, ever so slightly.
“They also saw fit to kick you out on your ass,” says Raylan, dismissive, and Boyd enjoys, the way he always does, the way Raylan’s whole body tenses when Body allows a corner of his mouth to pull tight in a smile.
“Ah, but they let me in,” says Boyd, “Which is the point. They opened the door, and let me in. Ain’t no gettin’ rid of me now.”
“You ain’t in the army no more,” says Raylan, nose wrinkling after, falling back into old habits.
“Ain’t I?” says Boyd, and it’s delicious, the way it always is, at 19 and at 39, to see Raylan Givens lost for words.
He smells fire in his dreams, or, rather, its aftermath, feels the crunch of wood turned to ash beneath his feet. Gunpowder does not smell like fire, of course, but of something else, something he used to have to dig out from beneath his fingernails with his Daddy’s old switchblade, and that knife, like him, was only tenuously legal. Boyd never got a permit ‘cause he never got a permit for anything, not until he was much older, and much less likely to shoot a cop just to watch him bleed. Raylan always pushed away the hand which held that knife, eyes turning distant, and Boyd knew why, even if Raylan didn’t, even if Raylan did, not wanting Boyd to know the reason. Touching that knife might passing over, stepping into the grey. There’s illegal, illegal, and illegal in Harlan, moonshine don’t matter but carrying a concealed deadly weapon does. It was funny, the way that Raylan is always funny, and glorious, and infuriating, that he would push away Boyd’s hand which held that knife, but let his bare empty unclean hand come down on the back of his neck, gunpowder leaving dark trails against his skin, other times not, when Raylan’s sticky skin was already dark with coal dust.
Sometimes Boyd’s hand would come back dirtier, after touching Raylan.
There’s a metaphor in there, somewhere.
“What is it, Raylan, that you imagine is wrong with me?” says Boyd, just to watch Raylan ponder it.
“I’ve never known, Boyd,” Raylan says, which picks a little at something in Boyd’s chest, the ghost of a bullet fragment, lodging in his veins, cold as fire and hot as ice.
“That ain’t true, and you know it,” he says, but maybe Raylan doesn’t. He always knows what he knows about Raylan, and what Raylan knows about him, but he’s never quite sure what Raylan knows about himself. Perhaps that’s why Boyd was born, to be not merely the mirror, darkly, but simply the mirror itself. Raylan, who thinks they’re different. Raylan, who thought he could run.
“I missed you, when you went away,” he says, and Raylan’s face twists.
“Never really went away, did I,” says Raylan, and, oh. Maybe he gets it after all.
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels--” starts Boyd, and Raylan grabs his shoulder.
“Don’t start with that shit,” he says, and Boyd doesn’t. Raylan’s hand on his arm, even through the jacket, the shirt, worn to hide the ink beneath, is a revelation. In that moment, time lasts forever. But this is Harlan. Time always lasts forever. He wonders if Raylan knows how the verse ends. But it was his Momma’s favourite. Boyd doesn’t have to wonder. That’s it. With Raylan, he never does.
--but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
He is Boyd Crowder, whose fingers sank into the dirt as he prayed, whose mouth saved men far beneath the earth, born to Harlan and of Harlan, of its hills and hollers, to its unforgiving nature and its blue, blue skies.
He is Boyd Crowder, the unbeloved of the last scion of the Givens, and he has never been nothing.
(Raylan’s daughter is not a Givens, and never forget it.)
“What shit would you like, Raylan,” he says, and, because he already knows, pours him more moonshine, lets him, unbothered, sit in the thick, cloying silence of a Kentucky afternoon.
(Sometimes, Boyd wonders what it will be like to die beside this man.
Sometimes, in his darkest, darkest moments, Boyd fears that he’ll never get to find out.)
Boyd wears myth like he wears his suit, flat against his skin, just-right, sharp at his wrists and too-tight about his neck, the ghost of a dog-collar everyone can see but that same everyone is too afraid to mention. He died on Ava’s floor, under Raylan’s hands, as he will die again one day, blood flowing from him like a river, returning to Harlan’s hungry earth. He will die and he will die, and be born again until the time he isn’t, until the last of his nine lives is gone. The truth is that he was born to die, like every one of Harlan’s sons, born to become the myth he wears like a weapon, and he will die as many times as Harlan requires him to, until he becomes immortal in the death that waits for him, down in the mine where he failed to die the first time.
Harlan chose him, or God did, or Raylan. To another man, it might matter, but Boyd is not most men, and he has died so many times, and he will die so many, many more. Perhaps it was Harlan who chose him, coal dust on his eyelashes and the flash in the dark that was the last thing so many men who came before him ever saw. Perhaps it was God who rendered him the madman in the forest, the hermit with a gun, the prophet who came to deliver his people and in return was delivered, not to God-- but. To Raylan. Always to Raylan, the man who killed him, the man he died for, and what’s the difference, when all is said and done.
Deliverance. Not merely the movie he’ll use to get under Raylan’s skin for the rest of their too-short lives, but a truth, not universal but very specific, true to him on Harlan soil and nowhere else. He is delivered, over and over again, from death, from life, born to die, born to be the legend whose pointed boots leave blood behind in his footprints. He went mad in the desert; he didn’t. He’s always been mad. Every man has his time in the desert. It’s just that Boyd’s started the night he was born.
“He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him,” he says, and says, and says.
“God’s not fuckin’ listenin’ to you, Boyd,” says Raylan, in the forest, in Ava’s house, in a cop car, in the jail, the bar, beneath the earth.
“Weren’t talkin’ ‘bout God, Raylan,” says Boyd, and it doesn’t matter what Raylan does or does not know, Boyd knows. He always knows.
Boyd will die as many times as he needs to, and it always be Raylan’s face he sees when he wakes up.
But it isn’t always Raylan. Her hair is gold, gold like the sunset, gold like his pocket watch, and he will love her forever, the only thing he’s ever loved that exists truly outside of himself, a clean clear crack in the world, not of him but to him, and his love frees her, as it is freely given, and through loving him she frees herself. He is necessary but not, and he loves her for that, not like the sky and the hills, not like the rivers and the earth, but like the books he reads and the memories he has of places that are not Harlan, places full of deathly heat and quiet nights, where he was a version of himself, the becoming of Boyd Crowder, the calm before the storm.
He loves her, and she is not a part of him, and she keeps his brother’s name and he gives her a ring, and she changed the story, a little, and made herself a myth in a way that he will never be, expands his story of two out to a story of three, demands her place and is given it, a shotgun in those thin pale hands, her face sharp in the same places as his own, the sister he never got to have, the only woman he’ll ever love.
“You’re gonna leave me one day,” Ava says, and because he respects her he does not lie to her.
“I ain’t gonna leave you til the day I die,” he says, and she closes her fluttering eyelashes, seeing a future beyond him, the future he cannot see, except as a ghost Harlan will never exorcise, the storm clouds above this town that will never clear.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” she says, and-- he can’t lie to her, so he doesn’t. He takes her hand, and he loves her, but he can’t promise he will never leave her, because he will.
He’ll take Raylan with him, and she knows that, too.
He suspects it comforts her, knowing that he will never be alone, for she can be alone but he-- he cannot be. He was born part of a set, a matched set, each playing their roles and re-making them anew, the lawman full of fire, the outlaw full of God. He was born to die, as all men are, but unlike them he was not born to die alone.
“Don’t let them bury him in that fuckin’ garden,” he says, and it’s too much, it’s always too much, but it’s the truth and it needs to be said.
“Don’t be stupid,” she says, kissing his throat, hand warm over the place on his chest where Raylan has signed his name on him forever, “I’m gonna bury you side by side. Like you died that day down in the mine. That’s how it oughta be.”
“He won’t like that,” he says, but. There he goes again. Doing Raylan’s lying for him.
“You saved my life,” says Raylan, like it’s being ripped out of him, like it’s a challenge, an accusation, like he’s standing up in church and shouting at the Almighty, and there’s no gun in his hand, no star on his belt, merely coal dust on his cheekbones, his hair glinting under the noonday sun.
“You saved my soul,” says Boyd, and he closes his hand over his bullet wound, palm filling with blood, tasting iron in his mouth, and he places Raylan’s hat on his head, and smiles.
He’s been having this dream for years, and every time he wakes up, he tries not to pray, to give thanks and praise, to beg for more of the same.
He always fails.
“Could I have it back?” he asks Raylan, once, the investigation all done, Raylan’s shooting of him found justified, which, frankly, Boyd would have happily told you himself-- and did, to several federal investigators, hardened men who visibly wanted out of this room, away from this lunatic with the Lord in his eyes and benediction on his breath.
“Can you have what back?” says Raylan, and Boyd smiles, although it hurts him, and it’s funny, how you don’t notice how many muscles you use until trying to use any of them causes you pain.
“The bullet you shot me with,” says Boyd, like it’s obvious, but, then again, from where he’s standing, (sitting, on the forest floor, Raylan’s leg pressed against his own), it is.
Raylan looks at him, long, deciding something, and for once, Boyd doesn’t know what.
“S’in a bottle on my desk,” he says, eventually, “If you want it real bad I guess we can work somethin’ out.”
“Keep it,” says Boyd, after considering for a moment, “It don’t matter where it is. I got the important part.”
“You’re a fuckin’ lunatic, Boyd,” says Raylan, and Boyd smiles, that pull in his chest tightening again.
“That’s what your boss said. I don’t think he likes me too much. He threw a bible at me, y’know. Suggested I never read it. Course, I read it cover to cover, but it ain’t his fault that he made assumptions about my character and literacy level. I am aware that I present to the world an incorrect image of the man within. I don’t much look like a man who can read, I will admit, and I will admit that previous to prison I didn’t read none, but, as I told him, people change,” he says.
“A lunatic,” Raylan repeats, but. That’s, if not even a ghost of a smile, certainly the ghost’s cousin.
Boyd has lived on his knees for years, a gun pressed against the back of his head, Jesus in his mouth, blood in his hair and dirt beneath his hands. He has knelt because he wanted to, and knelt when he did not, been shoved down to the ground, thick black hair pulled under grasping hands, trash echoing in his ears. Boyd was born on his knees, and told to kneel, kicked every time he got up, but he kept on getting up. Kept on keeping on. Kept on coming into the light.
The truth is that it doesn’t matter whether Boyd died in the forest or died in the mine, or on Ava’s floor, merely that the constants remained the same: Harlan dirt on his face, Raylan coming to save him and be saved, and that through his salvation he was reborn.
There’s a dream, and he has it a lot. On his knees, the smell of the forest in the air, the dirt of the mine under his hands. Raylan with his gun, pressed against the back of Boyd’s head.
“Pull the trigger, Raylan,” he says, and Raylan doesn’t.
“What if I won’t?” Raylan asks, and Boyd smiles, the smile he would show Raylan all the time, if it wouldn’t make Raylan mad, and assume he was being mocked, because he’s Raylan, and he assumes that a lot.
“When I ask you to, you will,” he says, and he hears the sound of the safety clicking off.
“I already did,” says Raylan, and Boyd stands up, and takes his hand.
“I know,” he says, “That’s how I know.”
He looks down, and there’s blood on the floor, and he looks up, and Raylan’s chest is bleeding.
“You shot me,” says Raylan, but Boyd knows he’s lying. He knows Raylan knows he’s lying. He knows the truth.
“I’m waitin’ for you, Raylan, same as I been all these years gone,” he says-- and that’s when the ceiling caves in. When he wakes up.
He doesn’t tell Raylan about the dream, but he doesn’t have to. The night before the day they nearly died in the mine, they dreamed the same thing, red leaves falling and the smell of smoke, each other’s voice, saying nothing but their own name. They spoke of it once, and never again, but from that day forward, Boyd knew the truth.
The truth is, Boyd’s never left Harlan alive, and he never intended to. The truth is, Raylan didn’t, neither.
“I been waitin’ for you, Raylan,” he says, in the future, the future he knows is coming for them both, and Raylan presses a gun into his hands, says, “Yeah, well. Ain’t that what you always say.”