The little boy next door wanted to know why the snow was yellow. I told him that the sun is melting.
-
Their Bones
He’d been a purely dangerous man in earlier years, but a good woman and married life had settled him down. He raised cattle now and led packing strings through the Sierra passes for pay.
She begged him to stay, but he refused, knowing the Basque herders had been cut-off from town by the consortium. And a man true to his word, he’d promised to help those shepherds, should push come to shove.
She’d cried that she could feel trouble brewing deep in her bones. He wishes now that he had listened, as his bones lay mouldering on the mountainside, unseen.
-
The Wait
She stood at her kitchen’s sink, staring out the window, across the open expanse towards the tree line far ahead, recalling how he promised he’d be back within the week. In her mind’s eye she could still see him leading the two mules into the wooded area along the worn path.
It was a simple chore – one he’d completed many times before; resupplying the sheep camp in the upper meadow. She should have never let him go, she thought as a hopelessness racked her soul.
Then she caught her reflection in a window pane, an old woman, wrinkled and gray-haired.
