The night was dark and alive with flickering forks of lightning, loud with the sound of the rain pelting the windows, and cold with the chill of the wind that hissed through the cracks in the walls. He sat cross legged on a pallet of blankets in front of the fire place, photos strewn around him on the floor. Battered hands, work worn and riddled with scars, trembled as they picked up the picture of a smiling brunette with spiral curls and warm cinnamon eyes, lounging against a Harley. He stared at her face so long his own eyes watered, and his free hand reached to the bottle of bourbon beside him, the whiskey burning like fire as he took a long drink.

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Only then, fortified by spirits did he consign that image to the flames. Others followed, the photo of himself standing between his best friends, his arms over both their shoulders, while they saluted the camera with bottles of beer.  A photo of a little girl finger painting, an image of a dog with a freshly retrieved duck, the picture of an old house with the mountains rising up proudly behind it, all found their way into the flames until the ground in front of him sat as empty as the bottle beside him.

 

Tears dripped down his cheeks and snaked through his beard, yet he saw no reason to wipe them away. What was the point, anyway, there was no one left to see him this way. He fumbled for his pack of smokes only to find that it was empty, so he crushed the cellophane pack in his hands and hurled that into the fire too. Nothing left now, nothing left at all. Save for the weight in his pocket, its heavy presence an inescapable reminder of what he’d driven up here to do.

 

With fumbling fingers he drew the gun from his coat and held it in his hands as the firelight danced over the shimmering chrome. It would only take a few seconds to pull the trigger, only take a few minutes before he could see them all again. His resolve was strong but his fingers unsteady and he nearly dropped it as he turned it towards himself and angled it beneath his chin.

 

His finger squeezed but nothing happened, and he shook as he lowered the weapon, shock having widened his eyes. The safety, damn it all, he’d forgotten the safety, he thought as he turned the gun to find it. It was then that he heard the banging, a loud and insistent knock upon the door.

 

He hesitated a moment, torn between completing his task and finding out who was at his door. The howling of the wind grew louder and with a grumbled curse he shoved the gun back in his pocket and went to answer the door. Whoever it was, he couldn’t just leave them outside on a night like this, not unless they were as eager as he was to find a hole in the ground.

 

“I-I hope I’m not disturbing you, I saw the lights in the window from the road,” the old man said once he’d opened the door. Rain poured off the brim of a battered hat, while gray hairs poked out from beneath it, limp and dripping. “My truck broke down awhile back and I guess I should have stayed with it, but my daughter, she gets real anxious if I don’t come home on time. Do you have a phone that I could use for a moment?”

 

“Ummm…yeah, sure, ummm, come on in,” he said as he stepped back to allow the older man inside.

 

“Thank you kindly, I’m Garret, by the way,” the old man said as he offered his hand.

 

Shaking hands, he felt compelled to give his name as well, thinking as he did that it might even be the last time he gave it to anyone. “Baz…errr Sebastian.”

 

“Nice to meet you and thanks again. Heck of a storm we’re having’ ain’t it.”

 

“Sure is, awful late to be out in it too.

 

“I sure hadn’t planned to be,” Garret admitted. “Went to a swap meet this morning and ended up detouring well out of my way coming home so I could check out a couple ponies. My grand-daughter’s birthday is coming up and I’m thinking that would be the perfect surprise.”

 

“How old will she be?”

 

“Four, but you can never start ‘em too young, my father used to say. Got me my first pony when I was that age, and my daughter was four when I gave her, hers, though my wife was fit to be tied sometimes with as horse crazy as our little girl turned out to be. You ride?”

 

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the back of a horse. Mostly I just ride my Hog these days.”

 

Garret nodded, eyeing him up and down in a way that made Sebastian vaguely uncomfortable. Then a light seemed to brighten the older man’s eyes and Baz found himself going from uncomfortable to just plain scared.

 

“You’re Darren Hartley’s boy, aren’t you?” Garret said suddenly, his voice having taken on an almost excited tone. “Why I haven’t seen you since the State Fair in, ’97 or was it ’98. Junior rodeo, you won the saddle bronc and the bareback events, then stunned everyone when you beat your brother out ridding that bull from over at the Double D, Anger, wasn’t it.”

 

“Yes, sir,” Baz nodded, stunned as the memory of that day went flashing through his head, the pride he’d felt, the praise he’d received from his old man, the feeling of family, of home as they’d closed in around him, offering cheers and congratulations. It had been one hell of a sendoff.

 

“Shocked you never went pro, but I heard from your old man that you’d gone off and joined the Marines, you and your brother both. He was proud as hell of you boys. Was a shame about his passing the way he did.”

 

Baz had to swallow hard, forcing the words past his lips, the ache of it still burning like a raw flame in his gut. “Yeah.”

 

Garret clasped him on the shoulder and gave it a squeeze and it was only then that Baz realized that his eyes were leaking again. Angrily he brushed them away and scanned the room, spying his phone he quickly snatched it up and thrust it into Garret’s hands. The quicker the old man left, the better.

 

“Thanks,” Garret said and quickly called his daughter. After a short exchange, he hung up and handed the phone back to Sebastian. “She’ll be on her way as soon as she can get my granddaughter into some warmer clothes. I hate to have her wake the little one up once she’s down, but there ain’t anyone else around anymore, now that my wife passed on.”

 

“I-I’m sorry,” Sebastian said, swallowing thickly, his thoughts on his own wife, her flashing smile, her long curls, the way she used to look in the firelight as they’d lay with their daughter between them. He’d thought he was done with death when he’d been discharged with a leg that would never work quite right again and pieces of his brain scrambled, the memory of his brother’s death along with half their squad still as bright as road flairs behind his eyes.

 

Meeting Jessie had been a Godsend and he never could figure out what he’d done to get so lucky. The two most beautiful sights he’d ever seen in his life had been her coming up the aisle towards him on their wedding day and the moment when the nurse had laid a little pink wrapped bundle in his arms, introducing him to his daughter for the very first time. If the bastard who’d run the stoplight, killing them both hadn’t killed himself in the process, he’d have beaten the man to death with the phone he’d been taking on and happily taken any jail time the state had seen fit to give him.

 

Losing his father not two months later had been the final straw and he’d sold damn near everything he’d owned, thrown the rest in a backpack and hopped on the back of his Harley, returning to the home his father had left him, fully intending to end his own life in the place where it had began. The corner of his mouth lifted just a little as he thought about the story his father had always loved to tell, about how their mother had stubbornly insisted she wasn’t in labor until it had been too late to get her to the hospital before the babies came.

 

“Never been so glad I was a famer in all my days,” his father used to joke. “Wasn’t much different than birthing a pair of calves.”

 

Then the old man would swerve to avoid the swat he’d known was coming when their mother laughingly teased him about likening her to a cow. Still, it was a hell of a story. Sebastian and his twin, Samuel, had never grown tired of hearing it. Now he was the only one left to tell it and what was the point, when there was no one left that he wanted to tell it to.

 

“Hey, son are you all right? I don’t think you’ve heard a thing I said in the last five minutes.”

 

Sebastian blinked, and there was Garrets’ weathered face right in front of his, gray eyes narrowed with concern.

 

“I-I….Sebastian stammered, shaking his head when he couldn’t get the words out. No he wasn’t okay, he was a far cry from okay, but if Garret would just get a move on, then he could find okay. The gun swayed, heavy in his pocket, reminding him that he was so, so close.

And yet there he was remembering the hug his father had given him, in the doorway as him and his brother had been getting ready to leave.

“Take care of each other,” he’d instructed. “Write home as often as you can, you don’t want your ma to be worryin’”

There had been pride in his eyes as they’d each answered with a crisp “yes, sir,” and he’d tried dammit, but there had been rounds flying at them from all directions and even now he wasn’t sure which of them had been hit first, him or Samuel, he just remembered draping himself over his brother and wishing like hell they were back home.

 

His bad leg buckled and suddenly Garret was helping ease him to the ground, and the gun, that damned swaying reminder that he’d forgotten to take the safety off, was spilling from his pocket and skidding across the floor.  He could hear Garret talking to him but it sounded like the old man’s voice was coming from a long distance away and that was fine because Baz didn’t really want to talk right now, he didn’t want to do anything.

 

The next thing he remembered clearly the storm was gone and the smell of coffee had replaced the stale smell of cigarettes in the room. He blinked and found himself on the floor, propped against the wall with Garret beside him, the old man talking about crop reports while a woman about his own age moved around in the kitchen. A blanket moved on the couch and he was drawn to a small face peeking out from between the folds, peacefully sleeping.

 

“I hope you don’t mind, but I couldn’t leave you alone in the state you were in.”

 

Sebastian rubbed the back of his neck and winced before slowly working out the kinks.  “I guess I had too much to drink last night, sorry if you went through any trouble.”

 

“It was no trouble at all,” Garret said reassuringly, “In fact, I was just reminding my daughter, Chelsie, about your performance at the State Fair all those years back and she and I have a proposition for you.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Well,” Chelsie said as she came around the corner to set a steaming mug of coffee in his hands. “My father’s getting up in years and it’s getting harder for him to work with some of the more difficult stock. We’ve got a few ornery horses that need work and we were hoping you’d say yes to helping us out with them, that is, if you were planning on sticking around for a while.”

 

Sebastian looked between the pair, confusion written all over his face. What could they possibly be thinking to offer him a job, especially with what they must have witnessed from him last night. At best he’d just sat there muttering, but at worse, he’d likely relived moments, memories that he’d rather never share with anyone.

 

“Son,” Garret began gently, “I can’t begin to imagine what you went through over there, but you’re home now, and I just thought that it might help you to see that if you could do something that you used to love.”

 

Sebastian shook his head, opening his mouth to say no, then snapping it shut again. Clear headed, with the storm no longer raging like RPGs were going off overhead, he felt sick with shame.  Memories welled up behind his eyes of men begging for someone to help them, praying for someone to save them, clinging with the last bit of breath and strength left in them to the fragile treads of life, and here he’d made it, only to be ready to waste it all. All those years fighting, for freedom, for the men standing next to him, for the people back home who were trying to carve out good, honest lives, wouldn’t it be like spitting in each of their faces to throw his away?

 

He wrestled with the question, unable to decide on an answer. There was one answer he could give, as he looked up into Garret’s hopeful eyes. “Yeah,” Baz said at last. “I guess I can stick around for a little while and lend a hand.”

 

When the pair smiled at him, Baz felt as if he had a purpose for the first time in months. It might not have been what he’d come home looking for, but maybe he’d found exactly what he needed.