Christmas morning was a numbing blur as he wandered aimlessly down the town’s street. A covered wagon on sled runners with a family inside passed by, and the kids, looking out of the back canvas, laughed at him. Then another team of horses bridling an open sleigh rode up, with a young attractive couple dressed in their Sunday best. They stopped and the man, with a pleasant face, a trimmed mustache, and a stove-pipe hat, addressed him.
Daniel stopped treading the snow and turned in his direction. One of his eyes was swollen shut, his right ear caked in dry blood, and his lips were split from the chapping and crusted over.
“Hey there, buddy!” the fellow spoke out of kindness. “Have you lost your way?”
“Haven’t we all?” he grumbled and began walking heavy footed again.
They headed up closer until the horses made a slow trot beside him. The woman, wearing a cabriolet bonnet that was covered by a red hooded cloak, only smiled at Daniel with considerable pity as her husband continued.
“Say, you do look familiar..,” he thought about it, “resembling the likeness of a Stone, you do. Why, land sakes, is it you after all of these years?... Daniel Stone?” he asked with all curiosity, as the lady seemed impressed by his knowledge.
Daniel looked again, but only briefly and ashamed. “Nah,” he waved the man on. “I stopped being him a long time ago.”
The man was confused as he looked to his wife, who merely raised an eyebrow and they rode away.
Further along the road, Osprey appeared in a country cutter sled, pulled by a mare and galloping towards him from the distance. Daniel turned around when the snow began to pile around his feet and once he saw that it was Osprey, began to stagger off towards a group of trees that lined some woods.
Osprey halted the horse as the sled slowed up, jumped down and began chasing after him. Tromping through the damp thickness that was a foot deep, Daniel tried to go faster, but his legs started to give out when Osprey had grabbed him by the arm and pulled him around to face him.
“What are you doing to yourself?!” he shouted. “And what are you doing to us for that matter? You go all this time without as much as a word and then you just take off! Surely, you know there’s no other place on earth where you’re more welcome than in our home!”
Suddenly, Daniel’s expression began to change, and all of the anger was resonating through his clenched fist, while his eyes welled up from the strain.
“Look at me!” he shouted back. “I don’t know what I’m doing! I don’t even know who I am anymore. I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t even care if I make it there. What does that say about me?! Is that the kind of person you want around your family? As far as I’m concerned, I’m not your brother anymore. Hell, I’m not anybody.”
He turned to walk away, but Osprey was now infuriated. With all of his might, he rushed his brother by the back of his coat and tackled him to the sunken earth. Then he flipped him over with a wadded up fist and hit him square on the chin. Daniel just rolled over and cupped his hands over his face.
“What’s wrong?!” Osprey pounded his fist into the snow and started to hit him again with a threat.
“Is there not any fight left in you?! Why don’t you get up and take it like a man? You’d never let me whip you before!” he shouted in disgust.
Daniel raised up to sitting and began sobbing out loud. “Because I’m less than a man! I’m not even human! Is that what you want to hear?”
Osprey grabbed the bear skin hat from his head and shoved it in his face. “Well take a look at yourself, how about it?!” he insisted. “You’re wearing an animal! You look like you crawled out from under some rock and quite frankly, you smell like it! When was the last time you washed yourself or cut your hair?!”
Daniel continued to sob into his hands, without looking up at Osprey, who now stood over him. Then he realized just how broken he was, and unable to defend himself and his diminished will. So he reached down and helped him up.
“Come on and let’s get you home,” he said as they headed towards the sleigh. “After you get cleaned up and get a good nights sleep, you’ll see things different. And we can talk about whatever ails you, just like we used to.”
Then he stopped and eyed him directly, with a sincerity that pierced him to the core. “You’re my brother and I still love you.., no matter what you’ve done.”
And the snow began to whip up around them like the things that mattered little, against the strides that brought them closer to home.
He had slept for several hours before he came to and realized he was sitting in a pool of water. It was a washtub tin, and his legs hung over the sides in a way that made him feel stuck, but was a welcome relief as Osprey scrubbed at the arches of his back, that were scarred with burns from the top of his shoulders, all the way down his legs. Most of his body had been afflicted, but they didn’t mention a thing about it, and knew that he would talk in good time.
“How’d I get in here?” he questioned, as the warm soap suds ran down the side of his face from his newly cut hair. Then he reached up and rubbed at the beard that was no longer there.
“With a whole lot of help,” remarked Osprey, as he called for Lila to assist him once again.
She had left the room for a few minutes and cried at the sight of his marred skin, and came back, trying her best to mask the tears. When she walked over from the table, Daniel realized he was in the middle of the kitchen, and he became aware of how naked he was.
“Don’t worry,” she said as she patted a towel gently around his head. “The kids are staying over at Judith’s, and I’ve kept my eyes shut the whole time.”
Then she gave Osprey a wink, but he only glanced upward with a naïve whistle at her in response.
Daniel merely nodded and without the strength to stand, allowed them both to lean in and hoist him out, with their shoulders braced snug beneath his armpits. Osprey draped a sheet around his middle just as quickly and tucked it snug against his hip as they led him to the boys room.
There was a spool turned bed and the covers were already pulled down, and they helped him onto the mattress and wedged the bedding against the length of his body.
“You’re running a fever,” Lila said to him in a reassuring way, “and probably no doubt pneumonia, but I’m going to give you some soup that will help to clear up those air passages.”
Daniel nodded again, and didn’t try to protest her help. He only closed his eyes for a moment and let the warmth of an added blanket subside the chills. Then she left the room and he was alone with Osprey, who sat by the bedside in a slat-backed rocker.
“I’ve got all the time in the world,” he said. “You can rest or we can talk. I’ll let you do the choosing.”
After he had eaten some chicken broth and sipped on some chamomile tea, they did talk, but not about all the things he wanted to say, but about how he felt. He told Osprey about his journeys down South and meeting Annabelle and Emmett. Then he explained their predicament in New Mexico when they had all been taken captive by the Apaches, and how afterwards he had been forced to join the Federal pursuit. Then there was the battle at Valverde, where the river ran red with the blood of its victims, while fording it to retrieve the dead. It was then that he had lost himself, as he found more solace in the dead than in the living, as he could no longer carry the guilt from having killed so many, and more so from not being able to rescue the ones he had loved.
“So that did it for you, huh?” asked Osprey, but in a way that fueled a response, whether he was willing to give in or not. “I guess it was easy to give up after that, to quit caring.., to just wander around like a dead man, but you’re not dead. Not while there’s still breath in your body.”
Daniel turned away, as though the life was draining out of him. “I don’t know why Mother gave me the biblical name,” he said. “Hell knows I’m comin’.”
Osprey got up from the rocker and leaned over his brother with a pointed finger at h
is bottom lip, and said vehemently, “You’d better watch it! Death and life are in the power of the tongue! And you remember that the next time you’re fording some river bed, or any cross lane that just might take you into the afterlife.”
“You don’t understand,” he complained with tired eyes that had grown weary from so much struggle. “I tried to find them after the war was over. It was no use. Wherever I looked, I came up empty.., just as I am now.., empty.”
“They why don’t you fill up on some good for a change,” Osprey instigated. “For heaven’s sake, brother, you’ve tried death.., you’ve tasted it even and you see where it’s brought you.., why don’t you give life a chance?”
Daniel looked at his brother and his eyes watered up as he strained to keep them open. He breathed in deep a couple of times and then laid there very still, as he was losing strength again.
“I tried her once and she left me bitter..,” was all he could say in response.
“Well try again, why don’t you?” Osprey tried to give him a new sense of being. “You once had a zeal for adventure about you. You were searching and searching”
“I was searching for her. It was Annabelle,” he raised a weak hand to stop him from carrying on about it, as he answered in a faint voice. “I just didn’t know it then.”
“What about the treasure?” questioned Osprey, as though grabbing for anything that might pull at him.
“It dulls in comparison,” he replied. Then he took a deep swallow and turned back to his brother once again, as though the urge to express his innermost thoughts was right on the tip of his tongue.
“Sometimes I think we’re no better off than flies and the like. We’re made to enjoy some simple pleasure, before the life gets squashed out of us, and another rises up to take our place.”
Osprey looked at him, but his expression had suddenly became harsh. He was disturbed by such dark thinking, but he knew that another day might bring a more favorable position.
So rather than arguing about the foreboding nature he couldn’t change, he simply stood and said, “You’re wrong about that.” Then he walked out of the room.
among the unmentionables