HIRED MAN

 

Jayne Cobb has seen a lot of life in the twenty something years he’s been off his home world. He knows a lot more than people give him credit for too. Don’t need schoolin’ to be smart. Just need to have brains and he’s got them, an’ a whole load of feelin’s to go with ‘em. ‘Cept the hired man ain’t there for that. He’s there to shoot to kill and take his pay and go rut it away in a bar on whores and cheap rotgut. So that’s where he is right now. Rutting his pay away just like expected and keeping out of the gorram way.

This bar’s got more’n enough spit and sawdust to go round. Whores are on parade so much they may as well be all hung up in a shop window like finery for the fancy shindigs the rich folks go to. It’s one big regret Jayne has that he never got to see Kaylee all prettied up in her pink ‘n white ruffles with ribbon in her hair. He’s seen the dress all hung up in her cabin like it’s some big prize she’s won. Mebbe being seen out at the ball with the captain on her arm was the prize.

Jayne inhales another slug of whiskey before the taste can hit home and slams his glass down on the bar impatiently. Someone he cared about once told him he drank like he was out to forget a whole lot of things and that was when he was no more’n sixteen years old. They weren’t wrong.

Finishing another shot he blatantly ignores the come-ons from the girls who are looking to be hired; he ain’t in the mood tonight. This is the only kinda place Jayne is ever considered to be a catch. He’s well known in the cathouses on most of the rim. Might have a temper and let his fists fly or his weapons find the words for him every once in a while but never with the girls. With them he always pays up straight and he never outstays his welcome. He treats his hired women good.

Jayne’s pa has been a hired man all his life. Worked fifty years for a rich farmer. Right here on this moon as it happens. Probably no more’n an hour away from this very bar. The others on Serenity don’t know that. Don’t need to know that this goushi buru piece of rock is where generations of Cobbs have grown up, working themselves raw for gorram nothing. It’s one of the reasons Jayne left.

His ma’ll be real mad if she ever finds out he’s been back here on Nova Six without a visit home but what she don’t know won’t hurt her. Jayne’d like to see her again but he can’t face the others. No rutting way. He writes to her as best he can seeing he’s never been to a proper school. Poor people like him don’t get the chances the doc and his moonbrained sister got. Mind you least he’s bettering himself every day that passes whereas for the Tams the last few years must’ve felt like being dropped into the biggest pile of gou shi in the ‘verse. Not that he cares much, tries not to anyhow.

“Drink down,” shouts the bartender and Jayne feels a female arm slide over his shoulders. He’s so gorram tempted to get stuck here after shutdown and hide himself away in poontang but he can’t do that cuz it ain’t his way. He’s been paid to do a job and he’ll do it. Hired gun is all he is.

Stumbling backwards as he tries to remember how to stand upright, the stool flies out from under him splintering on the floor and a whip crack of laughter sends his hand straight to his hip the way it always does. ‘Nough people have laughed at him, ain’t room in this world for no more. He’s not quick as most times though, not with this many whiskeys burning their way through his guts. Gotta get a handle on this drinking or one day Kaylee’ll end up dead cuz he’s too drunk to protect her.

“Stay outta here, gan ni niang, until you can learn to keep your guns away from my girls.”

Unceremoniously thrown out into the street, Jayne slowly picks himself up and dusts himself down and turns back to look at the bartender’s heavies who sneer at him and stride back into the saloon. He weren’t meaning to hurt the whores, they must know that. They shouldn’t’ve laughed at him, got him riled up. Shouldn’t’ve done that.

Jayne tries to get his bearings but he’s all turned around. It’s hard to think with two bottles of whiskey inside your brain. Where the rutting hell did Wash set down? Can’t remember to save his life.

With no better plan coming to mind Jayne follows the track leading out towards this dead looking firwood forest. If he doesn’t find his way back to Serenity soon then it’ll be lock down and he’s already spent too many nights in the cells in this gou shi township and that ain’t nothing to be proud of seeing as he left here ‘fore he was sixteen.

It’s the clouds of glowfire smoke over to the west that pull him up short. The chemplant’s still pumping out poison like always, day and night, spreading its disease into the moon’s atmo. Jayne thought he had the rough end of the stick when Pa’s boss, Jensen didn’t want him for farmwork and picked his brother Mattie instead. Had to admit it was more like the middle of the stick when he got to work in the plant rather than slaving for next to nothing in the mines - leastways until the sickness started and he couldn’t keep nothing down. The day he was sent home from the chemplant was the day he found out what being a hired man meant on Nova Six. That was when he started acting up, learning ‘bout drinking and fist fighting and guns. Fourteen years old he was.

Jayne spins slowly around looking for some more points of reference, trying to get his gorram brain to function enough to find Serenity. First alarm siren is sounding and he’s got less than thirty minutes to get back to the ship, after then if he’s caught on the streets the martials’ll drag him into jail and beat on him until he’s angry enough to hit back.

Giving up on thinking Jayne lets his feet do the work and finds out that even they’re cleverer than his head. Ramp’s left open and Zoe and Wash are loading up the last of the dried rations with their hands rambling all over each other. That touchy feely gou shi makes Jayne wanna heave, worse’n when he was breathing in them dust clouds of poison. Happiness always does that to him. Like the way Kaylee shines when she looks at the doctor or the captain. Shiny little Kaylee.

He gets back to his cabin without need for useless talk, just a nod from the shepherd which suits him down to his boots. He ain’t in the mood for trading insults tonight. It’s too close to home for that. Unlocking the hatch and sliding down the ladder he sits down on the bunk too tired for the bother of undressing and the like. This little hole is the best piece of happy he’s ever had in his gou cao de life and that thought ain’t worth dwelling on for too long.

Kaylee says he ain’t got no stuff around to make it personal, none of the pretty pretties like she has cluttering up her walls. But he has Vera and Binky and the rest of his best friends -- the ones he can rely on. He has his letters and the rutting hats and ugly sweaters his ma sends him once in a while. Anyways he’s a hired gun and there ain’t no point in making out this is a permanent deal. He ain’t crew and he ain’t trusted and never will be, not since Ariel. Captain made that clear and made it clear enough too that if he puts another foot wrong he’ll be replaced and not in a gun for hire kind of a way and spacing ain’t the way he wants to go. Bullet to his chest in a fair fight is what Jayne has planned, not marooned out in the black or puking up his guts in a one roomed homestead on Nova Six. Death with dignity is all he’s asking for. Ain’t had much of that in life so he’ll give up his right arm to have it in when he dies. He has it writ down and put in the box with his letters and other personal e-ffects, is that what they call ‘em? But when the time comes he don’t expect anyone’ll have a care to go look.

Problem with living in a metal box becomes apparent when Jayne rolls over and tries to go sleep. Gorram married crew rutting like there’s no tomorrow. Course with the captain’s latest pi hua plan tomorrow might well be their last so he shouldn’t be sour for ‘em.

Stealing a shipment of pythax from under the noses of the feds ain’t gonna be as easy as Mal thinks. Jayne knows how much they value pythax on the Core and the doc should too ‘cept he’s always kep’ himself too clean to know the real use of that particular chem. Inara would know if she were still with the ship but she’s gone off and found herself a sugar daddy to keep her sweet once it was set that the captain wasn’t wanting nothing more’n a rut from her.

Pythax is there for making genseed grow strong and healthy on rocks that haven’t taken the terraforming that well. That’s the o-fficial use anyway. Most other folk who ain’t retarded know that it makes a man come like a rocket and sends him higher up in the atmo than any named planet in the verse. So they value it highly and Jayne’s tried to tell Mal all about that and he should know seeing as he was the one to work in a plant that made the gorram stuff but the captain don’t listen to his dumb as an ox hired gun who’s only useful for one or two things.

Yeah, tomorrow is looking to be a ta ma de wang ba dan of a day and that’s if Jayne can ever get some sleep to make it that far. Pulling his T-shirt off and burying his head in the folds of thin material he listens to Zoe cry out sounding as if she’s been hitting the pythax and wonders what the gorram hell Wash keeps in his pants. Wonders also how much more whiskey it’s gonna take to send him unconscious.

“Didn’t think my yanse lang was coming home tonight,” says a voice in his ear and Jayne jumps as an arm snakes around his belly.

It’s almost worth laughing at. Where else could he go? “Not gonna risk getting stranded on this piece of shit am I? Not when Vera’s likely to have her blaze o’ glory tomorrow.”

Fingers are working away at the zipper on Jayne’s pants and his cock falls out heavy and soft into Mal’s palm.

“Reckon you’d gone off to stick your ji ba somewhere hot and dirty and I’m betting you did, didn’t you, Jayne?”

Mal squeezes tight making Jayne wince even with the numbing qualities of all that whiskey.

First time this happened was over a year ago now. He’d been waiting for the tellin’ off for how he’d humped up the gorram plan by opening his mouth and letting fly then following it up with a burst of gunfire. All hell had broken loose that day. Wash had got a bullet in his arm and Zoe had come damn near to getting a new hole in her head and there was not one of ‘em arguing ‘bout who’s fault it was. But there was no tellin’ off that night.

“You do as I say or you’re off this ship,” was all that had been said to him then he was thrust up against the bulkhead, his pants were pulled down and the breath was hot like fire against his neck. He wanted to fight but for some gorram reason he didn’t. Fingers wet with something he didn’t want to think about shoved inside him, making him burn, making him mad. Making him hate himself for getting hard. And when Mal pushed him down onto the floor on all fours he still didn’t fight because he knew his place and one foot wrong would send him hurtling off that ladder and out into space.

So now Jayne lets it happen and it could never be called rape because he gets his pleasure from it. Though pleasure ain’t so much the right word. He gets to come. There’s no ties and he’s free to stay out the gorram way and go rut away his pay as long as he’s there when they need him to shoot to kill and shoot in most other ways too. As long as it’s not shoot his mouth off.

So why does he do it? Loyalty mebbe?