Wendy Running Guns

Wendy put to sea and took to running guns with
a fiddler and a fugitive. They shared their passage in
care of illicit liqueur and a ransom in lace fringed with
a threadbare caress. At length the fugitive would tire
of his fantastic stories relayed in the reverie of
an accomplished liar. From dusk the seas would long to embrace
the heavens – the stars a candelabra on the watery canvas.
The fiddler was by turns tragic with romance, or flush with
dispassion; he’d play a dolorous address to the unfeeling tide.
The confines of their derelict coracle necessarily subdued
the devil in Wendy’s flounce, but the fugitive had affected –
around the 49th parallel – a trilby à la Dick Turpin in which he'd vainly
flaunt a tricolour cockade, though in truth he knew not from whence it came.

Wendy awoke dockside to her rendezvous – sporting a
caftan. Her careworn valise is tailored with a
nimble flourish, once intended, no doubt, to accessorize
a proud debutante; now marred by the casual
embrace of a weary world. The polished asphalt
echoed the tattoo of her impractical shoes. The rhythm is
offbeat and her stride is skewed. Habit slips her
innocuously into a speakeasy, frequented by dapper lapels
whiling away other men’s time at baccarat with
guileless smiles. Fancy that – a dandy with symmetry in
his cravat and sleight of hand deploys a glance that fidgets
Wendy’s nerves and unsettles her poise. His voice commands
a tequila sunrise swiftly delivered, in hushed undertone he said:

I’m Clyde. With a practised flourish he manoeuvred Wendy
through to a private parlour. The eyes are fatigued by the tasteless
décor and sallow walls which purvey a stale scent of foreign
cologne and cheap cigarettes. Wanted across the six counties, his
manner impassive. In a sibilant drawl –his back all the while to Wendy–
‘Well luscious lips, they’d said you were back in business’
Wendy considered, and offhand-feigned she countered: -Naturally,
this business is selfish, it leaves no room for altruism.-
-Verily- intoned the dandy -and yet you imagine this to be?- Bejeweled,
a hand motioned the crate of matériel. The gun-runner acknowledged
the white elephant with -It is not my place to justify expedience or means-

Presently, arrived the fugitive with the fiddler in tow
and for fear of pursuit, a hasty retreat was enjoined thro'
valleys estranged over years by the tramp of harried feet.
Inevitably the relentless dawn broke with false sympathy
- stifling the vain ambitions of their deceived optimism.
Nine miles shy of the border, the premature stir of hope was
stillborn on the cusp of our fugitives’ souls, as a clinical
ambush waylaid and triumphed over a swindled ideal.
To ease the gun-runner, the dying fiddler bathed her brow with
two drops of diamonds, along with: 'Maybe the change of scene
will furnish the relief you seek’ – he meant that candour
of thought delivered on a rifled wind, which presents
the void of redemption, tempered by a concealed fatigue.
They say at the departing of the soul, it was the contempt of belief
that prompted our lonesome romantic to insist:

–it must be better than Wyoming-