Brown Boots

Chapter 1

He stood there, in the rain... worn brown leather boots. Laces torn, ends frayed... His hair dark only made darker by a streak of white like a cartoon skunk. His throat accented by a dark long scar, eyes like long burnt coals turned to cold soulless embers. He never looked at me; as I struggled in the fetid, blood drenched field, blacking out as I raised my arm, drenched in the ferrous remains of my childhood friend, I tried to scream but no one heard, tears diluting the purulent shit that stained my face as he turned his back slowly trudging through red clay mud. I called, unsure if he couldn’t hear me or if it was my voice that failed.

I don’t remember who found me, I remember Silas’s eyes empty, his lips pale and locked mid word as he cursed me, as he begged me, as his cheeks turn purple in the icy winter wind, as he asked the gods down to witness the cowardice sir Robin reborn... I remember his mother striking me, demanding her son return, asking her God to take me instead. I remember being carried out to witness his revenged remains returned to dust, as his father stood stoically, eyes consumed by dark thoughts as he tracked my path around his families’ graves playing on repeat how he’d personally punish me, graves I knew well, Graves where Silas and I hid from prying eyes... where he told me made up stories of long dead ancestors... Here where we planned our great escape. Two weeks is a long time to be alone yet I lay silently when Silas’ younger sister would come to change my dressings, she’d tell me stories of how happy I made him, proclaiming how she dreamt the we would have made it to America, that we would have sent for her when we’d settled, how she would have married a true gentleman. Day in, day out I sat by the window, wondering about the mysterious man in brown boots... the bastard that deprived me... snapping from my grasp the last promise we’d made, in the last light of summer, when he first told me he’d loved me, when I promised I’d die with him. In this town of fifty people half of whom, cousins of Ursula and Silas, not one person I knew that fit the description of the brown boot man.

“I think sometimes Papa is glad that Silas died... I mean the whole town and two over knew about you guys, now he can claim God was punishing him.” Ursula was crouched poking the smouldering embers, “You know he used to think we’d end up together? He never seemed happier then when we sat at the table talking about her he would sell me of to you for an enormous dowry, like cattle at the market. It use to drive Silas up the wall, he’d smash glasses and plates, he smashed Grand mammas china set one time, I remember because you could hear the screams for the log shed even at the front of the house, I thought it was because he was standing up for me... but I guess it was probably more about you, though a little about me too I’m sure.” Ursula threw a dry log into the raging fire. “I still hear him you know? In that house, not talking... obviously but like... He’s still there watching out for me. I cry a lot you know, for all the times he looked out for me, I wasn’t there when he needed me. Though I probably wouldn’t have been much help, I mean look at you... and I’m half your size. Father Grayson says it’s healthy to cry, he keeps asking about you by the way, wants to know you’re okay, I keep telling him... but... well you know Father Grayson. Do you mind if I sleep here tonight, since you ain’t using the bed anyway? The mattress is nicer than mine, plus the sheets... they still smell like him, you know...? I’ll take your silence as a yes!” Seating herself beside me she opened the copy of Leaves of Grass “I never understood why you two loved this guy, he doesn’t even rhyme!”

Even with her running commentary, Ursula would read to me every night, she’d never admit it but she’d cry every time she read the words “When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d” at which point she’d spend an hour explaining how meter was important, performing a one women critique of Whitman, I think it really just reminded her too much of you, she’s always said you were her hero... I guess that makes me the solitary thrush destined to warble alone. For some time they left us alone, perhaps they doubted her healing hands, at times so did I... through the increasingly long nights I would sweat and shiver, as she tended my oozing wounds empty chamber pots and make soup from what little grew, but never did she let me see the doubt she felt, determined not lose another brother she never left my side, when I reeled in pain and cried in sorrow, never did she despair, how did she become so brave?

Though there were never parades through city streets we wore crape-veil and in silence mourned, though the silence was harder for some than others. When I could again stand together we carved into that old oak “For Silas... Words were always more your thing” someday that oak will reach the heavens where no one will need be reminded to cry.

The day would be spent sleeping being silently tortured with flashes of images from that day, I wake sweating, scared and crying before being overcome with anger, an unending cycle, unyielding and unforgiving condemned to relive that day over and over, the hooded figures that laughed... oh how they fucking laughed! Then the man in brown boots too late to save you... Too soon to let me die, the way that gravity seemed to warp with his every step, the tree line recedes and the rain seemed to pause as his boots left no prints, he’d sigh a sorrowful sigh and with it again I’d believe. Between the smell of rot and death the odour of musky, damp tobacco. They say that when they found us, nothing reminded... a mile in every direction birds fell from the sky trees died and crops failed, perhaps in mourning, in respect or more likely... in fear... never have I felt that kind of fear, when everything around you as if in synchronicity had their souls torn from their bodies replaced by the fear of a thousand souls across a thousand years forced on to the point of a pin. I’ll never forget that day, no gods, no angels, just a man in brown boots.