The dog recalled a laugh. A certain voice. It perked his ears when he imagined it. He remembered the smell of a car and the cool air rushing by. His person’s grin. The sudden softness in his face. The dog remembered food handed to him, all kinds, and lying on the warm dirt in the sunlight. A hand on his head. Blankets over his nose. That was some time ago. He remembered when it changed: the chain falling over his neck, a weight he had never known. He remembered the many men screaming, with blood in their eyes, and paper in their hands. He remembered a dog across from him with no eyes—no, it had eyes, but the eyes could not see for they had been blinded. He remembered the immense strength and the teeth sinking in and the tearing, and he remembered the feeling of hatred. He remembered drifting and the smell of death. He remembered the loss of hope and the weight of bodies. But it was all so long ago. Now, there was cosmos. There were stars and moonlight and more stars. There was sand one step, and cool grass in the coming gallop. And there was hope too. Granted, it was a different kind of hope; it was a hope in the darkness. Love was long ago, but he knew it was there. And pain, well, the pain had passed, though there had been much of it. Ethereal, he became.
The brothers Braven were courageous, well-known fools. It’s true, they carried themselves tall. They tried to be good, and say that which was right. They rushed into any fight they could find to defend the goodly and the righteous, and the weak. They considered themselves lucky. But the world was playing a prank on them, always, for the world had created the elder Braven a foolhardy stumbler, and the world had made the younger Braven loyal beyond all doubt.
Once, a monster plagued the woods above town. It had killed three villagers, one of them a little girl. So they hiked into the trees, climbed the branches and waited for the demon. The elder brother had green arrows and the younger, blue. They slay the demon with arrows from their pouches. They stuck the gnarled head on a pike and dared any beast to foul their woods again. Only the younger brother saw the blue arrows protruding from the beast, and the green spread about the forest limply.
A year later, the well was tainted by a witch’s poison somewhere to the north. They tracked the stream to a smokestack isolated in the highlands. They arrived cordially and sat to dinner with the witch, for she was beautiful. She offered them the finest foods they had ever seen with a smile on her face. The elder brother, sure of himself and warm in his heart, set to take a bite of the roast. He held the meat to his lips, salivating at the smell, when his younger brother slapped the fork from his hand, and threw the witch into the fire.
“Child’s play,” the elder brother said, “There is nothing in this world that can beguile us.”
“Aye brother,” the younger said, without a doubt in his mind.
Neither heard the peculiar hiss of the fire that night. They did not hear the witch’s curse as her skin bubbled, and her hair crackled in the flame.
Considering it a foul place, the brothers agreed not to stay in the witch’s den, but begin their trek home or sleep in the highlands somewhere along the way. Not a mile from the den, it began to snow. In two miles, it turned a blizzard.
“This way!” the elder brother called.
The younger brother felt a pang of pain he had never known. Something burned in his chest, but he could not recognize it. He could not tell that it was doubt, that he doubted the direction his brother was leading them in. He did know that they had little time before they’d freeze to death without shelter. But the world had been cruel to him, so he followed.
She heard that it was a battle. That planes painted in red dove into the sea and struck the many hulls, struck his. She was told they drifted for weeks. That sharks came next. And then starvation, dehydration, and sunstroke. She was told what probably happened. Still, she hiked the cape every morning, alone but for the Sun on his rise. Still, she looked out over the sea. Were it a hundred feet off shore, I’d swim out there myself, she thought, but since it fell so far, I do not even know the direction. And it’s true, she often looked down the many hundreds of feet to the sheet of blue shimmering in light, and thought of leaping to meet him. Where he probably was, they said. She knew it was cold, frigid. She longed for it. She gave herself deadlines. She appointed him dates to make it home by before she did it. Every morning, she waited atop the cape and considered the plunge. He never came back. But one day, the sunrise was especially beautiful. She had been crying all night. Indeed, she began her walk in tears. But the sea breeze shook the fir trees and dried the drops on her face. The waves that crashed below hushed her sobs. And a flash of green caught her eyes on the horizon. It was he.
He survived three winters before this one. His traps had always come through full and his roofs always held, and now he attributed it all to good luck, or maybe a sudden strain of bad. His undoing was swift. The snapping of the ice cracking sounded through the fall. And now, still alive, he knew very well that he was a dead man. A finch, no larger than the palm of his hand and dusted with snow, landed just before his face. It flitted from one branch to the next, keeping near. “To meet here, is a wonderful joke of fate.” He said to the bird, “Tell me little bird, how do you survive such harsh winters?” But the bird did not answer him. It chirped and titled its head. The bone that pierced his pant leg glowed red-white beside the powder. He leaned back and closed his eyes, listening to the falls pound away at the ice below. How can such a little thing weather a lifetime of cold, while I must struggle each season to scrape by? A twitch on his breast shook him from his thought. The finch had landed on his chest, and stood looking down on him, in what he imagined, was pity. “Look at you,” he said, drunk on pain, “I could snap your neck with less than a flick of my wrist, and yet,” he looked closer, “why should one ever?” The finch shook the snow off its feathers. “Forgive me little finch,” he said, “it’s in jealousy that I rant. I am grateful not to be alone at the end.” And the well-built little finch stayed with the man until the ice crept over, ever a friend to weather the times with.
The old man sat silently most of the time. He listened, and he watched, and he thought. Everyone around him drank more than their fill and spoke over one another, but he had stopped drinking some years ago. He had stopped seeking the cloud. He kept himself as keen as the years would allow.
“And his father, who was born 1902, died by the same pistol-“
“No,” the old man objected, his voice momentarily raspy from its lack of use, “He was born in 1889.”
“Well that doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s true.”
And the third generation leaned in with their beer bottles to listen. The old man didn’t stammer. He didn’t take long to think. His small eyes darted around the circle as he wove his words of those that were gone. Brothers that had long ago left him behind. A father far off. A pistol cursed and a family ran wild to the west. He told of horse chases and the wars they handled. Cigarettes in Mormon households. He spoke of funny men—cunning and loving. And when he finished, they sat for the most fleeting of moments, and time stopped. The old man could see clearly faces from a century ago. A clink of glass resonated. Laughter floated out from the inside. A dog chased his ball. And the younger generations spoke on, and the old man went back to sitting and thinking.