Jonah Hex stared at the spot where the brilliantly-white figure had been, trying to decide whether what he’d seen was a remnant of his nightmare or some new side-effect of his altered vision. To be sure, there was nothing there now, so he chalked it up to the former and tried to put it out of his mind as he surveyed the rest of the landscape, which was the same monochromatic hue it had been when he’d gone to sleep the night before. Ever since Jonah’s resurrection three days ago, the only colors he could see were the ones generated by the emotional state of any living creature, with the rest of the world being rendered in a dull palette. To his eyes, the rising sun in the east was nothing but a vibrant white sphere nestled in a sea of gray, but he gazed upon it anyways and thought of when he left Maggie yesterday morning, and how she’d sparkled like a rainbow against that other dun-colored dawn. All those swirls of violet and blue and indigo dancing about her...it was such an intimate thing to see, almost like peeking into her mind.
Be nice if’n Ah could shut it off, though, Jonah thought with a sigh, then looked down at his hands: a strong green edged with yellow, and a faint violet that faded as his thoughts turned away from Maggie. Green came up a lot in his aura, and sometimes he’d see red or blue as well, depending on what his mind was dwelling on, but the yellow had never left him since he’d been reborn in the desert. Not surprising, since he had a lot to be afraid of, first and foremost being the notion that he’d be stuck like this forever, alive on the outside but dead on the inside, thanks to the black ring lodged in his chest. Secondary to that was the nightmares that plagued him when he slept: memories of when he was
fully dead, with his soul trapped inside his stuffed and mounted corpse, unable to let anyone know of the torment he was in. The only thing that kept him from being consumed by fear was the thought that Green Lantern would be able to fix him. It had been a long time (from Jonah’s point of view) since he’d last seen the hero, but he remembered Hal was a good man, plus he’d been involved in the nonsense that had resurrected Jonah in the first place, so who better to turn to for help?
Jonah’s stomach growled, so he put an end to his ruminations and turned his mind towards breakfast. He dug through the duffle bag until he produced a cellophane-wrapped package of crackers slathered with peanut butter, courtesy of Maggie’s pantry. He wasn’t familiar with the sticky concoction, but he soon found it to be a far sight better than those “Pop-Tart” things Maggie had also tossed in the bag. Those tasted like an unholy marriage of hardtack and cake icing, much to Jonah’s disgust, and were quickly abandoned by the side of the road last night. As he ate, he consulted the map so that he could get his bearings for the day. He’d spent a good portion of yesterday on foot, though Jonah had managed to hitch a brief ride with a man who’d dropped him off near someplace called Barstow. That was mid-afternoon, so Jonah had kept on walking on through sunset, doing his level best to avoid sleep for as long as possible. But eventually, exhaustion had forced him to stagger away from the moonlit road and collapse at his current location...which meant he now only had a vague idea of where he was. Placing his thumb over the dot representing Barstow, Jonah slid his index finger up and to the left as he guesstimated how far he’d traveled over the course of the night, finally coming to rest on an unmarked section of map. “Yep, just whut Ah reckoned...middle of nowhere,” he said around a mouthful of crackers. “Nice tuh know folks ain’t crowded up every last bit of the Earth yet.”
Once the crackers were gone, Jonah took a few swigs of bottled water (the existence of which puzzled him to no end: he knew California was an arid state, but was it really necessary to sell folks water in bottles?), then packed up his gear and got back on the ankle express. He would have preferred a horse for such a long journey, but as the old saying went, beggars couldn’t be choosers, so the best he could hope for was to hitch a ride should anyone happen to drive down the road. By the time the sun was good and clear of the horizon, however, Jonah could see that his luck was taking its usual bad turn: over a dozen vehicles had roared past, most going in the wrong direction, while the ones heading Jonah’s way were oblivious to his outstretched thumb. “Gonna be one of them days,” he muttered as yet another automobile left him in the dust.
The sun climbed higher, and Jonah trudged on, the brim of his hat pulled low over his eyes -- his altered vision caused them to be sensitive to bright light, and daylight in particular made him feel like he was half-blind. Due to this, he almost walked straight into a sign posted alongside the road. Luckily, the shadow of it caught Jonah’s attention before such an embarrassing situation could occur, and he paused to squint at it. The sign was made of a rectangular sheet of metal, the same as many of road signs he’d seen over the past couple of days, and like all the others, its message was short and succinct. In this case, it read:
Welcome to
PARADISE CORNERS
Jonah spent a good minute looking at the sign, his head tilted ever so slightly to the left.
Ah’ve seen this afore, he thought.
Not exactly like this, but the words...the same words. He ran a hand over the sign as he tried to dredge up the memory, but he kept coming up empty, and it disturbed him. It wasn’t the fact that he’d forgotten something -- that was perfectly natural, he’d forgotten things before -- but he kept getting the sensation that a large chunk of his life had been ripped out of his mind, leaving behind only tattered bits that hinted at what used to be there.
Maybe thet’s really the case, he told himself.
Yuh spent over a hunnert years by yer lonesome, an’ yer mind had pretty much cracked tuh pieces by the end of it. So maybe when yuh got put back together, some of them pieces got left out...but if’n thet’s so, then whut else might be missin’ up there? The yellow in his aura flared up as he considered the possibility that, on top of everything else that was wrong with him, he now couldn’t trust his own memory. “Just take it as it comes, Jonah boy,” he said aloud, skirting around the sign and continuing down the road. “Ain’t no sense in worryin’ about something yuh cain’t even remember, right?”
About a quarter-mile down the road, Jonah spotted a few houses, then the edge of what he assumed to be Paradise Corners proper. Compared to other modern towns he’d seen so far, this one was relatively small, but to his 19th Century eyes, it still had an air of prosperity with its many brick buildings and paved streets. Hoping perhaps he’d come across something that existed from his time and would help jog his fractured memory, Jonah walked all throughout the town, his eyes going from one building to the next. Sadly, though he saw many structures that appeared to have been standing for quite a long time, none of them looked like they would have existed in the 1800s. The closest he got was when he found an old cannon sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the town square -- a war memorial, he realized upon closer inspection -- but even that appeared to have only come into existence around the same time as something called World War I, whatever that was. During his self-guided tour, Jonah passed quite a few townsfolk who were also out and about that morning. Most of them seemed too focused on whatever business people in this century occupied themselves with to pay him any mind, but some were friendly enough to give Jonah a nod or smile when their paths happened to cross -- after a hundred-odd years of being ignored, small gestures like that were like a balm for Jonah’s wounded soul, and he soon found himself flashing a very genuine smile right back at them.
At the far end of town, Jonah passed by an old church with a tall wrought-iron fence running alongside it. There were a large number of people gathered behind the fence, whom Jonah figured were engaged in some kind of church social and therefore ignored them in favor of gazing upon the church itself. Unfortunately, like everything else he’d seen within Paradise Corners, it failed to make any sort of connection with him, and he was beginning to get frustrated over the matter.
Ah wish Ah could recollect something ‘bout this place, he thought,
even if it was just a little thing. Don’t seem right thet Ah kin remember the name an’ nothin’ else. Must’ve been important tuh me somehow, way back when, or else why would the name have stuck in muh head fer so long?As he stood at the foot of the steps pondering this, he heard a voice call out to him, “Hey! We’re all back here already!” Confused, Jonah turned to see a man waving to him from behind the fence. “You’re a couple of hours late, but don’t worry, there’s still a lot to do,” he said.
“Whut in the Sam Hill are yuh talkin’ about?” Jonah replied as he walked towards the man, who was a bright shade of indigo to Jonah’s eyes.
The man cocked an eyebrow. “You’re not here for the cleanup?”
“Cleanup of whut?” Then Jonah looked past the man and into the area beyond the fence and realized it was a cemetery, or at least the remains of one: every grave within it had been torn open, every headstone tossed aside, and every coffin shattered to splinters. Despite this, no corpses could be seen, for they had all been reanimated by the black and sent out across the land three nights ago, dead soldiers in a war whose climax had rendered them all to dust...all except one long-forgotten cowboy named Jonah Hex. Respectfully, he removed his hat and watched as some of the townsfolk did their level best to bring some order to that chaos. Men and women alike repositioned headstones or took up shovels to fill in graves, and he even saw children helping to pick up debris. Throughout it all, each one of them gave off the same indigo aura as the man Jonah was speaking to, just wave after wave of compassion spilling over the scarred soil.
There ain’t even no bodies left tuh put in them graves, but they still care enough tuh make it look proper again, Jonah thought.
“It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?” the man said, as if he’d read Jonah’s mind. “You look at it and think, ‘There’s no way this can ever be made right again.’ But it
can be made right, it just takes time.” He gestured towards another part of town, saying, “We took care of most of the plots over in Sacred Heart Cemetery yesterday, and there’s still a few people putting the finishing touches over there right now, laying sod and things like that. This one’s a lot smaller, though, so we should be done before sundown.”
“Yo’re good people fer doin’ this,” Jonah said quietly. “The folks thet was buried here...Ah know they’d thank yuh if’n they could.”
“Seemed the best thing to do. It wouldn’t be right to forget about them just because they’re not here anymore.” The man started to turn away from the fence. “I should get back to work. You have a good day, sir, and God bless.”
Jonah stood by the fence for a few minutes and watched the volunteers work at their grim task, then he made his way down the length of it until he reached the gate. Settling his hat back upon his head, he walked into the cemetery and over to a middle-aged woman shoveling dirt, her face red from exertion. Without a word, Jonah gently took the shovel from her and assumed her place beside the open grave. No one asked who he was, and he didn’t offer to tell them, he just became another volunteer amongst many.
What followed was a long, hot day filled with back-breaking labor, but Jonah didn’t utter one word of complaint about it. To him, helping out in this task was the least he could do after the damage he’d caused when the black had a hold of him. It wasn’t exactly guilt that he felt, more like anger at letting himself be used to harm innocent people. In his old life, he’d killed hundreds of men, but he felt that each one of them deserved what they got. Nekron, however, targeted every living soul, and in doing so made Jonah spill the blood of those who had never hurt anyone.
Maybe thet’s the reason Ah came back when nobody else did, he thought as he filled yet another empty grave.
Maybe Ah got chose tuh serve penance fer all those innocents thet us dead folks killed, an’ now the Lord’s gonna do tuh me like He done tuh Job back in Bible times. Reckon thet ain’t even remotely fair, considerin’ the misfortunes Ah’ve already suffered, but then again, the Lord’s always seen fit tuh make me a right fine scapegoat.
