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“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
***
Their end of things was a white church on a mountain and down the trail a cabin still standing older than any living person on earth twice over. Once these had been places for tourists to visit and take pictures and shake their sunburned heads at the primitive ways of life which at the time had seemed to them unfathomable, untenable.
For long weeks they’d wandered aimless speaking hardly at all, silent agreement that they’d know it when they found it, wherever and whatever. This was not easy. They were strangers to living without purpose or plan or destination. Often, huddled shoulder to shoulder around a small smokeless fire off the main road, one or the other would lose the strength to go on. Full up of lament and self-pity and he into the unforgiving night would say we tried so hard and for nothing and for now what? They never allowed themselves to be weak at the same time. That was death, that was something they’d learned forever ago and so the other would lean in hard and say for us which was its own fortification against despair.
It was a beautiful place of high green trees and flowing water, a pocket miraculously unstained by the end of things. They walked the land and didn’t find it occupied but for deer and prancing rabbits and turkey and mountain lions and black bears and squirrels and owls. Long accustomed to the clumsy tromp of men through their wood and when they came through cutting away with machetes the animals regarded them, disinterested, and went back to eating, to sleeping, to hunting.
Along Cades Cove Loop Road they found Elijah Oliver Place, so named by a placard on the doorframe, log and stone, dogtrot cabin with a breezeway and a spring for water. For a long time they stood and stared and breathed in sweet quiet air and when they went at last inside they set down their load and looked at each other eyes brimmed with tears.
***
A few mornings a week Sam trekked down to the church in the pre-dawn whisper and he sat in the pews holding a hymnal open to his chest. Leftover from centuries, pages oiled thin. The sanctuary wood and windows to let in light and there were bibles too which he left alone. He sat and let the silence seep into him and sometimes when that was too much he read the ancient poems out loud. When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur, and hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze. The words rang through, leftover from centuries, balm to even those who weren’t looking. Behind the church a small cemetery whose stones Sam came to learn. He walked slowly past each one and pressed fingers to the names and he said thank you, thank you.
***
Plentiful fish in the river and they hunted for game and used the book for plants good to eat. The water from the spring clear and clean. They sat together nights in the glow of an oil lamp and they didn’t talk about what had been. They read to each other or made up stories or else just laved in presence. Warm, familiar. Hand finding hand and they’d move to the wooden frame bed set up with their sleeping bags and blankets and they would hold so close there was never room left for breathing. Forehead to forehead. They’d remember the waste of years they hadn’t allowed themselves this. Afraid, how afraid. How foolish, they’d think. You were always right there and I too and us both blind to it. Well. None of it mattered anymore. We found each other at the end of things.
***
Dean took to fishing like he’d once taken to the belly guts of a car. Fling of the line, whir against his palm. Rivers to choose from. He sang out where there was no one to hear him. Zeppelin and Aerosmith and Bon Jovi, songs that had carried him through. Although sometimes there was someone to hear him, sometimes he’d reel in and head for the bank and Sam would be sitting with his pants rolled and knees up and eyes closed and his face a wonder of peace. More he’d say. Many an afternoon run out like that and nothing they were missing beyond. Ease on to dark, the stars above more numerous than he’d known. He thought at the night sky us too, us too, we’re not so different. Continuing despite.
***
How long, do you think?
How long what?
Can this last.
Forever. What do you mean? Forever.
Others might come. All the land. There’s food, clean water.
Don’t talk like that.
It’s all I can think about some days.
Look at me. We’re safe. You and me. Hear? It’s never been any other way.
I guess. I know.
Say it.
You and me.
***
They made friends with a wounded elk that limped to the edge of the Elijah Oliver property one day and collapsed forward onto its front leg. A moan that reverberated through the trees. Bleeding from the shoulder. Sam hurried out to the porch, Dean behind and they froze before the animal still somehow regal in its pain. It looked at them beseeching, antlers pointed ever toward the sky. Towels, Sam said, first-aid kit on the table. Unwise perhaps to waste their materials this way. The elk let them do what they needed to do and after it didn’t get up but stayed there on the ground with them and nudged its snout against Dean’s leg.
It’s thanking you.
It’s a wild animal.
Then it was back, early morning and again at dusk. It stood and watched the door until they spied it through the front window and came out. If they had food to spare but they didn’t and they knew it was used to fending for itself anyway. Two more days. It seemed the elk wasn’t after anything except a bit of benevolent attendance at the end of things. They could give it that.
It’s a wild animal Dean said and Sam said are we now so different?
***
Days they put twenty miles on the boot. Every trail they could find, everything theirs. They’d come upon crumbling signs dividing the wild from the tamed and they’d forge ahead, pioneers of the new ancient world. Dean would ask Sam about the first settlers to this place and Sam would tell him how they had fought and taken what wasn’t theirs. Is that what we’re doing? he asked and Sam said it’s not like that anymore and it was easy to believe that was true. They’d swim naked in the river, silt on their skin and they would laugh and laugh and examine every inch of their bodies glistening wet in the light. They were boys they’d once been and boys they’d never gotten to be. Everything and nothing theirs.
***
Cold months. All their energy spent gathering wood and chopping wood and tending a fire determined to snuff. It snowed and snowed, ground under hard as cement and icicles hanging from the rafters sharp like teeth. Almost overnight the game disappeared. Hungry months. Hard to see through. Finally they said I wonder about the rest of the world because it was getting on that they couldn’t help it anymore, thinking about what was out there beyond their mountain. What they had caused. The darkness and the burning and everything after so quickly gone. We did this. Because of? Because of what. For what. Back then every motivation had been sharp and well-set: we did this for us, for you and me. Cold and hungry months and their minds closing in on them. So with what reserves left them at the end of the day they pressed hard and slow into each other and cried their names and felt the beating of their hearts under tongue and after they lay warmth to warmth and said we did this for us, for you and me.
***
They asked the question: Was that reason enough?
***
At the church Dean went to his knees though what he was after he couldn’t have said. He lifted his palms up. Bite of the wood. He welcomed the hurt. He tried to feel the people who’d once been here or he tried to think of them and what they had believed in. If at their end it had made a difference. He said out loud into the silent empty space and into the silent empty mountain I don’t know if I have ever done the right thing. He walked back afraid and alone, wind kicking around his feet. The brush rustled with animals unseen. Sam had water boiling over the fire and after that a squirrel which they ate quickly and pleasurelessly and then went to bed and Sam didn’t ask.
***
Gathering wood when he saw it, tiny blade of green thinner than ribbon. Another one next to it. He dropped the wood into the snow and he ran inside and he said Sam, Sam and they crouched down around it like children. The wood on the ground now damp and useless but they couldn’t make themselves care. For at last the push of spring.
***
I need you to understand something.
There’s nothing to understand.
Yes there is. There is. I was afraid. My head was so screwed up.
I know.
Stop. You don’t. Don’t excuse me, okay, not now. In that moment I couldn’t see anything beyond. Not the consequences, nothing. Not the world. It was just what was right there in front of me and what was in front of me was you. My little boy, okay? Just my little boy. How was I—
It wasn’t just you there. I was a part of it, don’t excuse me either.
You say that.
Because it’s true.
Sam.
You could’ve done anything. Asked me for anything and I would’ve let you. My whole life.
Sammy.
Are you sorry?
Don’t ask me that. Please.
***
Sunrise pink above the trees and the first tentative calls of the Carolina wren echoing through. They hiked up to the top of a ridge and stood and looked out over the purple layers of mountain. It was their end of things or else always it had been their beginning. They stood and looked and put their hands to each other’s necks and held there. Silent steady tears for the morning.
I never used to cry this much. Shit. At everything.
Goin’ soft.
You too.
Yeah. Guess so.
They felt the changedness of the world and they felt too that it was not much changed. If it kept on turning and the stars above still shone and if the water flowed fast and free below. Not all ruin. Their brother beside. Was that reason enough? And they answered yes, yes.