I Have Forgotten the Face of My Father [Jake, Dinah]
Raylan didn't know what to make of The City. His first full week in the expansive metropolitan bubble had been strange, to say the least. The City had provided him with everything he needed, as judged by an outsider's perspective. They provided him with a home, a motel room similar to the one he'd left in Kentucky (but thankfully not owned by that monochromatic fellow on the hill,) and a job with local law enforcement. In fact, so far as he could tell, The City was fixin' to keep him around for a while. An officer of the peace? On his first day, he jokingly paid a visit to the civil enforcers who'd left a message on his phone and was surprised to find himself greeted with a nameplate and a badge. An amusing dream, right? But then the dream lingered into a second day. And then a week. And then two weeks. Or was it that he only imagined time to have past so quickly? Raylan never pretended to be a very smart man. Quick witted and aware of his surroundings, but no genius. Maybe there was some truth to this illusion.
He'd been told on his first day that he was far too calm in his accepting on the bizarre and unexpected. He could only surmise that his reaction was half laced in shock and half in whiskey. But it spoke something of his character that he didn't have a nervous breakdown, nor cry himself to sleep.
Keep yourself busy. And that's exactly what Raylan did. He went about his day just as he would have if he had been in Harlan County. (Except there were a hell of a lot less coke dealers and redneck drunks to disturb his work.) He wasn't really a Marshal in this place, though his badge said as much. A man couldn't really be a Marshal of one city and one group of people. That was a Sheriff. At least, in the days of his great great grandpappy, it was. As for The City, well, Raylan didn't try to make sense of anything. He took each day, one at a time. Just as his boots took their steps.
The City Shooting Range had become a place of solace for Raylan since his arrival. There was familiarity in that place. The quiet, lilting crescendo as his finger pulled back on the trigger of one weapon after another. He was a sore thumb amongst others in The City's civil employ. He held to no particular uniform, aside from that which gave him comfort. Cowboy boots, a slim fitting suit jacket that hung (almost duster-esque) beneath his hips, a light colored Stetson hat, and a loosely slung holster (canny to a different age.)
He took in a deep breath as he aimed for the paper marker across the range. The voice of his aunt, the woman who'd first put a gun in his hand and taught him to shoot (because his father was too busy involving himself in criminal undertakings,) was a coarse reminder of the teachings of revolvers: Don't aim with your hand. Aim with your eye. Don't shoot with your hand. Shoot with your mind. And killing? Well, if you're gonna kill something, do it right the first time. It wasn't poetic, but Raylan remembered it. He remembered it as if it were a mantra from some other place and time. Maybe even a place and time coexisting with his own. But that sort of thinking was beyond him, really. At heart, he was a very simple man who enjoyed simple pleasures and had minimal needs. But when he thought about Helen's words (words which he took with him when he taught firearms at Glynco,) he thought that they might have once been more poetic, maybe even hymn-like, before she got ahold of them. Of course, thinking about such things just reminded him of his father and how he would have liked to forget him. But that was another story entirely.
If he could have, he would have made the words more right himself. But language had never been his specialty. Raylan was more a man of actions and of presence.
He pulled on the trigger and the shot rang out across the length of the range, deafening to the unprepared.
I kill with my--
The bullet pierced the region of the heart on the paper target.