A Splendid Weakness

We were shielded. And wrong.

A Splendid Weakness

Before the soldiers came from the east, we were forever one. Shared our constant meals. Our dreams. We dragged our forever eyes over highways looking for junk to sell to Old Martin in town. Every time we pulled up in our rusted truck, he’d shuffle his teeth before he spit hard and brown on the junkyard dirt. Called us twins.

No truth further. No lie bigger. You were tall and strong to my weak. You called the shots each day we went to do brother things, brother. You reached out each time my lame leg failed me, gave me your shoulder crutch.

For years we shared the house and chores and our imperfections. No, my imperfections. Defects. Still, all those years and you never once said what you might have.

Until the soldiers came.

We both remember the fires that swallowed the hills that one season, the hot mouth of some angry god eating the grass and trees above the valley. You told me to stay and went with the crews to carve a break line, make that god die.

From safety, weaklings watched the sky blacken. We could see how the wind broke itself into frail breezes against your courage, and how you pushed the flames back to their dull embered hell. The whole town praised you.

And you weren’t finished. When James Ritter drunk dropped his boy into a well, you rope climbed into the deep dark, came up with the body, cursed the damn sky, and put James down so he never got up again. Sheriff just stood there.

Your acts laid a track from one unforgettable to another. No one could touch the path you carved.

But somewhere your compass bent from its north. No fixed date, no sudden strike of sign or horrible wonder. Gradual, like cracks in tree bark. It started sometime after mother died. Maybe three years before the soldiers came.

Bit by bit you wandered from us until one day bootsteps from the east lured you full throated into an empty land.

At first, we dismissed the sound those boots rumbled as boasts of craved power that wouldn’t catch on. You wouldn’t let them in. The world was safe for weaklings. We were shielded.

And wrong.

Maybe it was your shrouded arrogance. That and the growing scent of power from the east too seductive for your pride.

When they came, it was like you saw some regimented part of yourself in those regimented rows that marched with dreams of subjugation. You didn’t even whisper a protest, seized their offer with an anxious hand.

But you must have thought of me. You must have remembered that time as brothers we sat on stumps in the woods and that damn wild hog snuffled into the clearing. Lurched like a crotch shot soldier into our union. Something big wrong with that creature. Its mouth foamed and its hackles climbed. But you stood firm, brother. You stood for me with your grit and gun.

Weaklings can’t scrub their pain clean. They can’t keep the emptiness in their guts silent. That void hot screams at a god who would leave a man lamed. Screams: not their fault they twisted out sideways from the womb.

How fast will you run to the river? you always asked, and it was ever with a playful melody of compassion in your voice, and a harp chord of encouragement, as if all things were possible in a harsh world. Near daily you asked.

Until the soldiers came.

When the soldiers came, they shot young Thomas in the face for his token dissent. The whole town shuddered. The soldiers wanted a reckoning for something we hadn’t done, some invention of spite. When they came, you smeared your family face ugly with their promise of reward for your support. They called you Captain, pleased your conceit.

That’s when you called me naïve and crippled for the first time, a confession they insisted you summon from your secret hollows as the cost of their ranks.

And you were right.

My weakness washed over me. My splendid weakness gave you strength. It proved you. In your judgment, my innocence acquitted your secret condemnation of all things foreign to you, as if my failings were a bench to wait kindly upon until the truth of yourself could reveal.

Since you changed your loyalties, my leg stumbles harsher, a lesson learned without you. In the night sometimes thoughts of my future pain me, but not as much as the end of the stories we shared.

Despite all, my trickery of hope finds you as you were on the side on the road. A revived brother untouched, uncontaminated. Strange thing devotion. An addiction. Yet even an addict can see how ambition snatched you from me when the soldiers exposed your secret love of injustice.

But that one time, shortly after the town became your vassal, Captain. That one time.

A July day.

The creek was dry and crows watched us silent from trees. Miracles had never been mine to witness, but at times gods of our past earth still rise on the third day. You put out your hand.

Goodbye, you said.

That’s when it hit me. You would never be back. It wasn’t passing. Your need to be seen had consumed you.

We shook. The sun dropped a notch, and dust rose in small angry clouds as my good leg kicked the afternoon dirt. My mind rummaged through our history for an answer, but there was nothing there. All lay barren.

We parted, you back to your confidence, me to my doubt. And in the trees, the black robed crows stayed impassive in judgment as they slow measured the dark depth of their verdict.

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Thank you for reading Dynamic Creed. This piece / parable is dedicated to all who have lost someone who yet lives. As always, if you’d like to leave a comment, I would love to hear your thoughts. Victor David

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