Chapter One

Oliver Ketch lay on his back in the woods, staring up at the swaying canopy. The wind tugged lightly at the branches of oaks and hickories and fir, and they danced like spectral ballerinas, flowing lithe and graceful and pure. He waited, as he always did, for the leaves of the individual trees to touch. To him, it had been like playing with magnets as a kid, trying to force the positive ends together and feeling that mild resistance as they fought against his will. They always won…always. And he wondered if the leaves possessed that same sort of magnetism—positively charged five-pointed maples, broad elms with serrated edges that looked like saw blades—all fighting and vying for that same life source, hungry for canary-yellow sunlight. 

Just once, he wished he could see them brush against one another.

“Too bad Buckshot can’t see this.” He said, breathing it all in. The sun rose, shifting the hues and contrasts of the forest floor until those warm, golden rays pierced the underbrush like spotlights and gave a breath of life to the woods behind his home.

He loved his life. He loved its simplicity. Working to tend a small-yield farm that his father and grandfather and his grandfather before him had tilled, pulling up wheat and soybeans and potatoes over the course of six generations. It was all he would ever know—or love.

“Thanks, gentlemen.” He said, placing his hand reverently over his heart and looking up at playful trees. “You always know how to fix me.”

He stood and dusted himself off as best he could and walked back contentedly to the plow cart just over the horizon line. The plow cart was right where he’d left it as he came over the small hillock. Buckshot—his horse and best friend—had wandered a few paces away, pulling at the weeds and scrub that peeked up reticently from the soil. Buckshot noticed the return of his friend and hurried back over, excited for the prospect of sweets. Oliver chuckled and held his arms wide open to embrace the horse’s neck when Buckshot was within reaching distance. The horse leaned his long face over oliver’s shoulder and pulled him in close. He smelled like hay and horse sweat: two of Oliver’s favorite fragrances.

“Give me a plow and a strong horse like you, Buckshot,” Oliver said, patting the black stallion's flank, “and I could till the whole of the earth.” Oliver wormed his way out tfo Buckhshot’s embrace and fed him a sugar cube from the front pocket of his flannel shirt. The horse huffed in excitement and attacked Oliver’s hand with gusto. 

“Easy, fella.” He laughed, pulling his hand back quickly at an accidental nip. “I can’t give you more if you bite my damn hand off.”

He reached into the pocket again and gave Buckshot another sweet cube. It would be a long day, and the horse enjoyed the work. 

They toiled through the morning until the sun hit its high point like a bullseye. Oliver didn’t bother to look up; he knew that noon had been fast approaching. His half-turkey sandwich and coffee had been devoured before Buckshot could finish the first pass, and the rumbles of a hungry belly told the time better than any watch ever could.

“Alright, Buck.” He said, unhitching the horse from the plow and patting him on the hind quarters. “Go get some food and some water. I’m proud of you, son.”

The word stung.

Son, he thought, mulling the word over in his mind.

He’d never have his own—sterile, they’d told him. 

“Life sets us up for exactly what we’re meant for, Ollie.”

His mother—so sweet and so pure that he welled up thinking of her—spoke like angels did, and she made him feel like a little prince.

She’d died shortly after she’d said those words to him; the little prince having found the queen hanging from the rafters outside of their bedroom. 

A week after his baby brother had been stillborn.

And a little prince’s life was wailing for weeks, then months, and over two years until Oliver, in a fashion, had finally made peace with her absence. 

He laid forget-me-nots on her onyx headstone and a single bit of blue flax over his baby brother’s small slab of polished marble—they were going to name him Oscar.

He was beautiful, and looked just like an angel when mama had held him to the light.

“Keep sleeping, bubba.” Oliver whispered, patting the headstone with all the love he could muster. Two decades of sleet and rain and sun and dust and snow had kept his little brother company while Oliver worked to keep the farm going, and the stone was nearly smooth slick from it. “…I got this for both of us.”

He stepped inside and looked directly up at that rafter where he’d found his mother. He wanted to hate it…but found he couldn’t.

It had given her peace, after all, when time wouldn’t.

“Miss you, Mama.” He placed his hand over his chest in solidarity.

He scrubbed his hands and his face in the washroom basin, the clear water turning black as hours of hot western dust coated him like a second skin. He checked his face for any spots he missed, then dried his hands and face and combed his too-long brown hair out of his bright blue eyes. He’d have to go to town for a haircut this evening, he thought, while he was there for seeds.

He eyed the rafter again, and felt the darkness rising.

He stuffed it back down deep.

No room for that here. He thought.

No more.

“On second thought, big fella,” he called out to Buckshot, “I’m gonna give you the afternoon off.”

No sense in putting it off, he thought. The field would be there tomorrow, and Buckshot would work harder to make up for the free day. 

“Too bad people can’t be more like horses.” He said to the room at large, hoping that, maybe, the spirit of his mother would agree with him.