Western Fiction
Title: The Black Heat of Summer
Word Count: 591
Note: Tried this for a writerverse challenge and it's safe to say that I will never write Western-based fiction again.
"You think she'll remember me?" he asks.
The darkness around us is thick as tar, filled with the maddening buzz of crickets and rumble of toads from the bullrushes along the stagnant ditches, just the light of the moon to provide any sense of depth and direction. I stare up at it a moment beyond the branches of the tree above us, tracing the craters and cracks of its surface, the reckless spread of stars around it.
"No, I don't imagine she will," I reply.
The horses are tired, restless. I feel muscles twitch beneath my legs, hear the occasional impatient stomp of a hoof against the dirt. The fading heat from the day has left the air muggy and oppressive, so that with the dark and the noise its almost claustrophobic, an odd contrast to that beautiful spread of sky above us.
"I should have waited, shouldn't I? Till she was older?"
"You should never have done it at all, Max."
I knew the man beside me, once. We'd sat in the same sweltering single-room schoolhouse, passed answers during tests. When we got older, we'd wander down the abandoned wagon trails, skip rocks on the old ponds, pick through the smashed boulders outside the mine, thinking we could find gold. Older still, and he fell hard for my sister, Bea, married her in the tilted little chapel on the outskirts of town.
"You understand though, don't you?"
Elizabeth came screaming into the world on a night like tonight, in the black heat of summer, tiny pink fists and a voice like a squalling cat. Two years later, her fists were still tiny and her voice ten times louder.
"No," I say, "I don't understand."
My horse paws the ground beneath us, I stare at the moon, and Max shifts slightly beside me, adjusting his bound hands behind his back.
"You'll need to be going soon, right?" he asks.
"Yep."
I can't look at him anymore, this man that I knew, once. Two months of staring at his face on worn paper, following him from town to town, the weight of Bea's confessions around my neck, that was enough. The fact he barely looks like I remember makes it easier. At least, I try to convince myself of that.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
"It's awful late for apologies," I tell him.
Down the long stretch of road beside us, the toads and crickets sing a chorus right back to dim lights of Alice Creek. It's nothing more than a pulloff, general shop and schoolhouse and tilted chapel and tired old houses, a mine that barely spits out anything worth keeping, but it belongs to me, in my heart. Like Bea's rosary, like my little niece curled in my wife's arms, sleeping away her screaming. The things I don't understand, but the things I possess.
I lean over and gather the reins off Max's horse, and the quiet grey mare turns her head to stare at me with soulful eyes. I feel my tongue cluck against the roof of my mouth, and my horse shuffles forward, the mare following when her reins pull tight.
"I'm glad it was you, Zeke," he says, before the noose pulls tight around his neck and draws him backward off the horse, his feet tangling in the stirrups briefly before he slides off her backside, the branch above him groaning with his sudden weight.
"Yeah," I mutter, steering the horses down the road, his choking lost in the chorus of the toads. "Me, too."
Word Count: 591
Note: Tried this for a writerverse challenge and it's safe to say that I will never write Western-based fiction again.
"You think she'll remember me?" he asks.
The darkness around us is thick as tar, filled with the maddening buzz of crickets and rumble of toads from the bullrushes along the stagnant ditches, just the light of the moon to provide any sense of depth and direction. I stare up at it a moment beyond the branches of the tree above us, tracing the craters and cracks of its surface, the reckless spread of stars around it.
"No, I don't imagine she will," I reply.
The horses are tired, restless. I feel muscles twitch beneath my legs, hear the occasional impatient stomp of a hoof against the dirt. The fading heat from the day has left the air muggy and oppressive, so that with the dark and the noise its almost claustrophobic, an odd contrast to that beautiful spread of sky above us.
"I should have waited, shouldn't I? Till she was older?"
"You should never have done it at all, Max."
I knew the man beside me, once. We'd sat in the same sweltering single-room schoolhouse, passed answers during tests. When we got older, we'd wander down the abandoned wagon trails, skip rocks on the old ponds, pick through the smashed boulders outside the mine, thinking we could find gold. Older still, and he fell hard for my sister, Bea, married her in the tilted little chapel on the outskirts of town.
"You understand though, don't you?"
Elizabeth came screaming into the world on a night like tonight, in the black heat of summer, tiny pink fists and a voice like a squalling cat. Two years later, her fists were still tiny and her voice ten times louder.
"No," I say, "I don't understand."
My horse paws the ground beneath us, I stare at the moon, and Max shifts slightly beside me, adjusting his bound hands behind his back.
"You'll need to be going soon, right?" he asks.
"Yep."
I can't look at him anymore, this man that I knew, once. Two months of staring at his face on worn paper, following him from town to town, the weight of Bea's confessions around my neck, that was enough. The fact he barely looks like I remember makes it easier. At least, I try to convince myself of that.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
"It's awful late for apologies," I tell him.
Down the long stretch of road beside us, the toads and crickets sing a chorus right back to dim lights of Alice Creek. It's nothing more than a pulloff, general shop and schoolhouse and tilted chapel and tired old houses, a mine that barely spits out anything worth keeping, but it belongs to me, in my heart. Like Bea's rosary, like my little niece curled in my wife's arms, sleeping away her screaming. The things I don't understand, but the things I possess.
I lean over and gather the reins off Max's horse, and the quiet grey mare turns her head to stare at me with soulful eyes. I feel my tongue cluck against the roof of my mouth, and my horse shuffles forward, the mare following when her reins pull tight.
"I'm glad it was you, Zeke," he says, before the noose pulls tight around his neck and draws him backward off the horse, his feet tangling in the stirrups briefly before he slides off her backside, the branch above him groaning with his sudden weight.
"Yeah," I mutter, steering the horses down the road, his choking lost in the chorus of the toads. "Me, too."