The Trini Gang
Final Act – Hang’em high
“Ok, dude, gimme that bullets. Great, appreciated. Where do you go? Come, sit down, please, I haven’t told you the name of La Trini and I haven’t told you about all the members of the gang. I haven’t told you about me. Maybe that should have been the first thing you should have asked. You don’t have to pay for this story, this one is for free.
It amuses you, I see. Yes, now I am just a tumbling old drunkard that barely stands on his feet, capable of selling his old friends for a couple of bullets and some bottles of cheap alcohol. But it wasn’t like that in the old days, you know… They call me Jürgen “The Old Jackknife” because I was a master with knives and could stab you in the neck from 30 feet away before you could even reach for your piece. I was good enough to skin you alive from head to toe without making you faint a single time, well, and if I was sober enough maybe I could still do it, but no one drinks four bottles of Cienfuegos and remains sober, right? But now I am not even a badass in the gang, just a simple ganger. I can’t complain, they respect me and all that, but you can’t avoid getting older and I am physically not the same as before.
More than 40 winters ago it happened to me this funny story that… won’t leave you indifferent. You see this scar in my side? It is the biggest I have on my body and it wasn’t caused by a pit beast, or a Nowater gladiator, not even the homemade bullet of one of those filthy scavengers, and I have quite a few of them… It was caused by a bad decision, pierced my liver and left me for dead. I deserved it and I could not complain, because I had lived a full life with a good woman.
Her name was Carmen and she was a real beauty, as pretty as fragile. We lived in a small shack that had three adobe walls, reason why we were envied in all the Beam Quarter. I didn’t really care about the matter, but she wanted children; it was her goal in life, but sadly she could not get pregnant. We tried for a long time, but all was useless. A goddam old hag got her ear with a bunch of stories, saying that in Shrine of the Watch there were this “priests” that could help her with her illness, but that would cost her a serious amount of money. She became obsessed with the issue. We started saving money, we sold our house and moved to a smaller one, we took to pawn all our stuff… But it wasn’t enough.
I was second-in-command in the “Pussychaser” gang: this guy had three-and-ten sons from seven different women, and he kept them altogether in his hacienda. He was not a bad chief, he didn’t deserve what I did to him. We had almost a complete control of the tea market in Scrapbridge, and a guy like you got in touch with me because he had heard that I was in need of a lot of bullets. He promised me an absurd quantity of shells in exchange of the head of the Pussychaser. I sent him to hell at first, but when I returned home and found Carmen crying in that piece-of-shit shack, something clicked in my head. At the end I agreed, and we started to plan a set up for my boss, my friend.
The plan went perfectly and they killed him. I collected my blood money and we went with the old woman to Shrine of the Watch searching for a remedy that maybe didn’t exist, or maybe it did, because we didn’t get to know it. Near the hills we were ambushed by the old hag’s thugs. They killed Carmen and left me for dead, because I had this nasty big cut in my side and it was bleeding bad.
For my disgrace I was healed by the priests of the shrine, who managed to stitch my liver and closed the wound with some weird oils and songs and prayers that didn’t sound that anything I had heard. I don’t believe in that things, but the truth is that ever since they patched my liver… I can drink all I want without getting drunk! Sit down or I’ll slit your throat! I haven’t finished my story yet, so don’t be rude.
When I returned home I found that the bastards who hired me didn’t stop after wasting the Pussychaser, but they had also killed all his family, children and wives included. His hacienda was reduced to ashes, but there, in a back room, crying behind a wall, was this little girl. I thought in breaking her neck, but I had more than fulfilled my quota of wickedness, and I thought of Carmen and the child she never had, and I decided to take care of that girl as if she was my own. You know what name did I give her? Yes, you know! I see in your eyes and the way you are looking for a way out that you know the answer: I named her Trinidad del Carmen.
It won’t do you any good to cry for help here, in the Beam Quarter. We all love La Trini, I told you that from the start, but you don’t listen. Your friends must be dead by now, my daughter and her gang should have wiped them out two bottles of Cienfuegos ago. But I wanted to talk to you, I asked her to deal personally with the asshole who wanted to make the mistake to ask me to betray her. Remember I said that if I wasn’t drunk I could skin you entirely without even making you faint a single time? Well dude, it seems that I am not drunk after all.”
THE END