InsaneJournal

"Yeah, sure, they drag him behind a horse for an hour and then he just gets up and shoots them dead? His arms should have been ripped off by now." 

Dutch extended a leg and fumbled for the VCR's pause button with his big toe but hit stop instead.

"It's realistic enough for me, considering that it's a spaghetti western. And especially considering that I've seen you do it once."

"You mean that time last summer? That --"

That was a completely different thing; she'd been dragged behind a truck, not a horse, and not far, and she hadn't had her hands tied, and she wasn't a flabby middle-aged actor. For about a minute Dutch had been pretty sure she was dead, which would have meant they'd be together in paradise in another minute since he wasn't in any position to help her out. Seeing her lift her head and climb onto the back of the truck had been a really nice surprise. He couldn't always predict what she was going to do next in a fight, but you rarely needed second sight to know what she was going to say next. Especially when watching a movie.

He pushed play again. "Yeah. You want to hear one of my favorite movie quotes, Revy? 'If you can't say something nice, shut the hell up.'  That's from Disney. Can you do that?"

Revy grumbled something and went off to seek someone she might devour. No, she probably hadn't been fed enough Disney crap as a kid.

It must have been 20 years since the last time Dutch watched this particular spaghetti. If he'd been younger he might have seen himself in Giuliano Gemma's character, the idealistic young stablehand who became a gunslinger; but he'd been about Revy's age and cynical enough to sneer at both Gemma and the movie's cheesy French dub, which he barely understood. This time he found himself rooting for Lee Van Cleef instead, the aging gunfighter who took Gemma on as a sidekick. Gemma was young, still fast on the draw, and idolized this father figure enough to do everything he told him. Cleef rewarded him by teaching him the nine laws of gunslinging (and at this point Dutch would have had to throw something at Revy if she hadn't already left the room).

Having children were a kind of insurance if you didn't have anything else; you had to hope that one or two would still be around to take care of you when you were too old to do it yourself. That was why Cleef finally said yes the fifth time or so that the kid came around begging to be his sidekick. Of course, he was using him as cannon fodder to be sacrificed as soon as it became necessary. But in the final showdown, when Gemma realized he was the bad guy and killed him, it was just possible that Van Cleef chose to let him draw first. That was the risk that came with having kids, or maybe just with growing old and sentimental.

Of course, you didn't get to select your children like you did with employees. Revy might not be the greatest mind of the twentieth century, but she understood the rules and didn't cry about it, which made her the other grownup in the Lagoon Company - well, some of the time.  If it came down to it, she would choose her own survival over his, just as she knew he'd let her die if his life depended on it. That was the first of the nine (cute!) laws of staying alive in Roanapura - or staying alive around a lot of crazy, heavily-armed fuckers, which was much the same thing - you shouldn't trust anyone else too much. Benny understood that too, but Rock would probably protest that it wasn't fair. Rock was definitely  a Gemma-type hero, but give him another six months...

All right, he hadn't really selected any of them, even Revy, but he still was thankful they weren't his kids. So long as he could keep Revy from killing the boys, the four of them should be able to keep each other alive. If it became necessary to sacrifice them, he hoped he'd still be young enough.