I couldn’t help myself lol. I saw this text exchange this morning and immediately thought of them. Sorry if someone else beat me to it because it’s just so perfect haha.
You know what it’s even better? It looks like John is playing Mario Sunshine.
“None of this is the way you remember it, I expect,” I said to my Aunt Sadie about fifteen years back as we watched Buck Jones on the television defeating the Hundred Hands Gang.
She smiled at me and said, “Nothing ever is, Jack. Even when it was happening, everyone saw it differently. The truth’s got a thousand different facets. It all depends on the storyteller. You and Bea know that better than any of us.”
It still amazes me how Buck Jones turned into a real phenomenon. You can still see his square jaw and resolute eyes, grit tempered by that winning smile, on kids’ lunchboxes, on novels, and on television.
America has always loved Elijah “Buck” Jones, right from that first episode broadcast in to fill space left by programs shuttered suddenly by the Depression, where a desperate outlaw finds his breaking point and is betrayed by his gang for it, and comes out of it seeking a new way of life rather than vengeance. People took to the bandit-turned-hero maybe even more so than the likes of the Lone Ranger and Marshal Dillon. Those men are easy to admire, but they almost inspire super-human awe more than love. Buck Jones was always flawed, and I wrote him that way. Given the hard times we’ve seen, maybe the idea that there can be grace, that someone fallen can still come out on the side of the angels, appeals to our idea of being truly self-made. The notion that goodness isn’t inherent, that it’s a path chosen and sometimes earned, helps us believe that we can find our best selves. No matter what stumbles we’ve made, we need to hope that redemption is possible.
I knew plenty of men and women like that, neither angels nor demons, but those who chose the way of the righteous in the end. They gave the inspiration for Buck Jones’ many adventures. They gave their blessing to tell their tales someday, and their children and grandchildren all agreed that it’s a story that should be told. Some of those tales are my own, including one about a boy, an Italian gangster, and a spaghetti dinner that’s become a well-known part of Buck Jones lore.
It’s a more complicated story and a harder world than the one of Buck Jones, Hattie Faber, Paulina Morning Star, Robert McQuarry, and so many others. But this world we live in now is a far more complicated one, full of questions about what “right” truly is, whether we treat everyone fairly, whether the law is always just and right. So it’s a world perhaps more ready to hear this kind of story where the lines aren’t so clearly drawn.
It’s been ten years since my Uncle Arthur passed, and he was the last of them. Fitting as from what I knew of him, he always needed to wait and be sure others were all right before he could let himself rest. I’ve spent that time since then compiling all of those stories into this book.
There were so many towns over the years that none of them clearly recalled the name of the town where the doctor tended to my birth. My mother thought it was named Diamondback Junction, but she wasn’t quite sure. Though I’m not certain that it matters. If they taught me anything it’s that origins and even history aren’t destiny. I am who I am no matter the name of that town.
It’s a story told so far only in the long-yellowed newspaper articles of the 1880s and 1890s mostly listing notorious acts and desperate pursuit by the law. It’s a story of outlaws, orphans, immigrants, titans of industry, gangsters, bronco busters, tough women, Indians, soldiers, miners, gunslingers, tuberculosis and cholera, gunfights and preachers, railroads and stagecoaches, big cities and boomtowns and wilderness and desert. All of it a portrait of a long-gone American West where they grew up and lived, and whose dying days I was born into somewhere in Utah in 1895.
But it’s more than the events of the previous century. Aunt Sadie was right that the truth depends on the storyteller. So this is the truth of the Van Der Linde Gang as it was told to me by the survivors who chose to walk away from that life in the end.
There’s plenty of that to make for a hell of a read. But like how Buck Jones’ years striving to be a man worthy of his second chance at life became the part of his tale that grabbed people’s hearts, I contend that the people those former outlaws became after those days makes for the far more remarkable story. Because this is a tale of redemption as much as anything, and Buck and the rest of them owe much to it. This is the story of my family, and my wife Bea’s family. It gives me great pride to finally tell it, and it gives Bea great pride to provide all of the illustrations for it.
Okay y’all I been thinking on this for a while now. So as we all know Arthur did have a son named Issac who was the result of a one night stand with a waitress named Eliza. Yet, we do also know that Arthur did visit them for a few days after a couple of months. Tragically we do also know that on one of Arthur’s visits we know that he found two crosses outside and immediately he knew what had happened. We do also know that the perpetrator who robbed them only turned up with ten dollars once the whole ordeal was said and done (which is suspicious). Now the mystery is WHO TF ROBs AND KILLS TWO PEOPLE FOR TEN DOLLARS???
Well I think I figured it out… and it is none other than:
YUP Mary Linton. Everyone’s least favorite thot.
Now stay with me. We all know at this time this bitch Mary had ran off with another man ,even though they made plans to get married, which broke his heart tremendously. So I think right before Mary got married she had second thoughts and went back to Arthur to try to work things out. But to her surprise she found that Arthur had moved on and started a whole ass family with another girl. So out of anger and spite this bitch decides to pull a whole fatal attraction on Arthur’s new bitch which brings me to my ultimate point.
Mary Linton backwards is notniL yraM which makes no sense just like how someone kills two people for ten dollars. Unless you’re a manipulative, disloyal thot like Mary Linton.
“Jack got to my camera. He could’ve easily broken it but I wouldn’t even be mad at him for that. Boy is bored out of his mind most of the time, playing with a camera must’ve been the most entertaining thing he did in a long time.
Of course he used it to take photos of chickens and his mamma. This kid is too innocent to live with us, but where else would he be safer? Everyone protects him here. Even John.
Sometimes I catch him looking at the boy with longing. Before he notices I’m staring and his expression turns into a scowl. I think John wants to be a father, he just doesn’t know how. Or if he’ll be good enough.
I know how he feels, it’s a big responsibility and when you fail, the pain and guilt of it are unbearable.
can we like talk about how the game feels so depressing after playing as jack and how they’ve taken away the random citizens greeting u and making u feel welcome and important hello how are not more games doing this HOW did this game have such an immersive npc world SO far ahead of its time
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
