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“Believe in me, and you shall never die,” says Boyd Crowder, his right hand moving in the shape of a cross, never quite letting his left hand know, and it’s the first lie of many.
“Believe in you, I’ll do shit else,” says Raylan Givens, his mouth twisting mean and hot, and when Boyd’s breath catches in the back of his throat, it has the sting of something holy to it.
Boyd crushes Harlan dirt beneath his boot-heels; Boyd is not of the hills; Boyd is a preacher, not a king. Some of these are lies, and all of them are truths, and of is not quite right, for he is not of these hills as Raylan is, blood to blood, but blood has always run in rivulets down these hills, and he was born to Harlan, moonshine pure and vowels twisting, in a way even Raylan Givens never was, at least for a little while. He is something, not of nothing, not of place, a monomyth that lives and breathes and bleeds beneath a sun that beats down, too, on Raylan Givens’ unforgiving smile.
Boyd Crowder was born in a mineshaft, nineteen and stupid as he ever was -- which wasn’t much -- and scared for the very last time. He almost died in it, saving Raylan, saving a brother blood had nothing and everything to do with, gunpowder on his hands and Raylan’s panicked breath in his mouth, and not for the last time. He won’t die in one, maybe, but be dead in one, a surer thing he’s never known. Harlan kills all her children. Those whom these gods love, die young. Those whom these gods love, truly love, above all others, were never things to live at all.
There’s coal dust beneath his nails, and blood, and Raylan Givens’ smile. He’s just a man. Ain’t that the way of it, though. Nobody ever thought of lettin’ Harlan know.
“Ain’t nothin’ but a two-bit preacher,” says Boyd, slow and quiet, a pantomime in being slow and quiet, on a backroad out of Detroit, a cop who’s never seen him before shining a light in his eyes like he won’t be denied.
“You must think I’m even dumber than you are, boy,” says the cop, which was, after all, what Boyd was going for.
“I’ll prove it t’y’all in any way you like,” says Boyd, because it’s not felt right for about ten years now, driving anywhere without the Gospels in the glove compartment, even if sometimes they were hollowed out, the drug that belonged to earlier gods stashed inside.
“He’s a Deacon,” says the cop’s partner, smirking like this is going to be a grand old time, eyes shining with the malicious glint that tells Boyd just how fucked he ought to be.
“Of course, gentlemen, I must render unto Caesar, like the Lord tells me I oughta,” says Boyd, and thinks, fuck you, playin’ Russian roulette with the hillbilly, thinks, and you ain’t God, thinks, checkmate.
Raylan Givens is beautiful like a rattlesnake, like a gun being cocked, like the burn of moonshine when it flicks into the corner of your eye. Boyd always knew he was out there somewhere, breathin’, not ever quite managing to forget the things he was owed. He was beautiful with his skin turned cracked and dry with coal dust, when he put a bullet into Boyd’s chest, when he handcuffed Boyd a hundred times over, when he stood at his Aunt Helen’s funeral and did not cry. He was beautiful to Boyd before he knew what beautiful meant. He was beautiful to Boyd before Boyd learned that what’s trapped beneath Raylan’s skin, simmering resentment and hair-trigger violence, that drive to always crush beneath his boot-heel, is something nobody should find all that beautiful, or that blinding.
And that’s it, maybe: Raylan Givens is beautiful like looking into the sun. Twenty-odd years of being blind, and Boyd Crowder’s never tried to look away once-- and maybe Raylan knows it, and maybe he don’t, but beautiful has never been the right word for what the last blood-Givens is to the last blood-Crowder, because there ain’t no word, there ain’t no words, there ain’t nothin’ ever enough for that, not even if you were askin’, not even if Boyd tried.
“You missed my heart,” says Boyd, on a long, dark drive to nowhere, on a long, dark drive with Raylan’s hands behind the wheel, from which neither of them might ever come back.
“You missed my heart, and I ain’t nothin’ but a bad guy,” says Boyd, and Raylan’s long, long, killer’s fingers tighten on the wheel, but the cards were always on this table, so that is that is that.
Boyd Crowder is not the last of his name, and don’t you never forget it. The last scion of blood that bore nothing, that bore vengeance and was his, truly his, in a way Ava never will be and Raylan always will, but what makes a Crowder is not blood, nor name, nor law. Ava is not his because she is hers, not a possession but a thing which possesses him, blonde hair at sunset and a shotgun that her hands hold, not his. Crowders are made, not born, and those that survive, that stand when the smoke clears, get to claim the name. Raylan is more Crowder than Bowman ever was, not that he’ll ever tell him, not that Raylan’d ever want to know.
Crowders are survivors, are myth, are blood spilled but not blood flowing. He is the last scion of a house he killed himself, a cousin’s viscera flecked on his face and he’d take nothing back, none of it, except maybe to have killed his Daddy with his own two hands.
If Raylan is a Givens, perhaps Boyd is, too. If Raylan is his brother, what else could Boyd be, what else could that make him? If Raylan is the law, it is only right that Boyd is what dwells outside, for between them they are everything, an eternal strive to balance that even Boyd can acknowledge straddles something older and more frightening than himself.
This, above all else: if Raylan is the hills, perhaps Boyd is the hollers. Boyd was asking the wrong question. This serpent eats its own tail.
“My boss thinks you a crime lord,” says Raylan, and Boyd wonders, as he always does, if Raylan even knows he’s doing it, if he even knows that the years strip away and that he’s never more Harlan, never more home, than when he’s talking to Boyd, years of pretending and making sure those goddamn Yankees can understand him gone in less than a second. You a crime lord. Oh, indeed, thinks Boyd.
“Your boss is repeatedly findin’ himself in possession of a very overactive imagination, Raylan,” says Boyd, and letting it curl, at the base of his spine, his lips across his face, Raylan’s fingers reflexive at his belt, “But what makes you think I ain’t?”
“What makes you think I don’t,” says Raylan, petulant, pressing his fingers to where Boyd’s ribcage is torn and bloody, not quite enough to kill him but enough to have made Raylan worry -- worry, and hate himself for it -- if only for a little while.
“The ambulance will be here soon,” says Boyd, red fingers closing over red fingers not his own, “But it won’t, one day. Will you let me be a crime lord that day, Raylan?”
Raylan smiles, angry, fond, nasty as he only ever is in Harlan, and does not make Boyd ask it-- Raylan Givens, will that be the day you come home?