Our Brother Discontent

It was long ago, he thought to himself, when he had believed in superstitions. He went to have his fortune told.

“You are leaving your home.” The teller said with her back turned to him.

He shrugged. Anyone could have known that.

“You will bring me death.” The woman’s pale face turned to him.

“I doubt that. I don’t hurt women.”

“When you give death you hurt mothers, daughters and lovers.”

“That isn’t what I mean.”

“But it is what will happen.”

“Do you do fortune telling here? Or did I come here to learn me some morals?” he said cockily.

The eyes of the woman blazed at him. “You are ignorant of the spirit.”

He laughed “Woman! I came in the flesh! I have no need of spirit!”

The woman shuffled her Tarot cards. “If you want nothing of spirit. Then you look for an idol to give you meaning. Pick one.”

He did pick one. He did not care which. He only cared to be seen as confident in his choice.

The long fingers turned the card out face down and covered it with her hands. “It isn’t too late.”

“Too late for what?” he said.

“To not know.”

“But I came to know.” said the man.

“Knowing is its own curse.”

“Not knowing is a curse on its own.”

“That is only because it won’t seem like your fault when it happens.”

“I am not convinced of you. Any more than a preacher. All words.”

“Then why come to me? If words are powerless?”

“Mindless vibrations that only mean anything because we agree to their meanings.”

“Or they mean what they mean because they shake with the original intent of God.”

They glared at each other for a moment.

“Show me the card.”

The woman went to turn over the card. The man reached for it and it spun and lay sideways to both of them.

“What the hell is this?”

“Nothing is ever as simple as it looks.” The woman looked at it pensively.

“Then what is it?”

“The card is called The Knight of Pentacles.”



Of the ghosts that walked the earth there was one named Avery. He was not dead yet. But he was largely unaware, as ghosts seem to be, that everyone else was also a ghost walking.

Avery walked out of the front of his house. He dismissed the affectionate farewell of his mother with silence. Kicking up the dust as he walked. He was enjoying the cascade and haze as it caught in the sun beyond his shadow. His path led to the crossroads. That was where he meant originally to meet Malcolm. But once he consulted his watch, as he wound it, he knew that he was going to be significantly earlier than Malcolm was likely going to be done with his chores. So he crossed the field to the East. Where at the North Eastern corner the outcropping of rock stood where only the tops of cactus was visible beyond the sunbaked hulk.

What was on his mind? It was, much of a mind like Malcolm’s: set on adventure. Desirous for the opportunity to explore and discover. His mind was electric with the possibilities. It was going to be dangerous, that was a great lure, to be a man who survives. Not to be just a man who can survive but to be known for it. And for a second a nobody steers a tribe with the acclaim of his grit.

Why would anyone want to be known? For the same reason as anything else. To be held in esteem. To have a value that was not his own imagining. He had no great achievement in mind. But he knew he wanted to achieve something great.

He could see a spotted cow edging slowly toward the corn field. So he knew his cousin was there. That was her job in the afternoons. But she was not there with her stick. So he naturally drifted further East. He did this for two reasons. First he could steer the cow away from the Delrio lowfield. Second, it would give him the perfect opportunity to surprise Malcolm from behind the corn rows when he eventually ventured down the road to their meeting spot. And so he calmly made his move.

Then there was Malcolm. Walking down the road. He passed the corner of the field. It was too late. Avery almost tried to wave. He thought for a second that Malcolm had seen him. But only the cow took another brazen step toward the corn. Avery froze. And unexpectedly Malcolm went up the rock.

For what? But as his eyes caught view of the girl standing pert and at an angle toward Malcolm. He realized that Malcolm had gone up to greet his cousin. That is. Avery’s cousin. Malcolm was from a different family altogether. Heteira was the settling name. But now under that umbrella were the Delrios. Avery was a Gennaedario. And the girl was Pleon.

Avery couldn’t hear anything. And he watched as they embraced again. And Malcolm walked down the far side of the rock. Then he saw her draw herself up, to a high poise and he saw the strap fall loose. Malcolm’s face spoke of the beauty that moved rocks and trees. But the view from behind the girl afforded him no view of her exposure. But the gesture told him everything. Her body held tense. She was a statue for a moment. Completely without pride but if beauty herself had seen her poise she would have been proud to not exist alone. He watched as she ran flushed with the blood of life and then dashed off to intercept her cow from getting into the neighboring cornfield.

He felt something move inside him. The ghost in him contorted at the witness of life: Cold and warm. Something just happened but Avery could not explain to himself what he felt. And it was almost as if he could not remember what his eyes had just seen. No he saw. He felt he should be upset. But he felt something he had felt many times before. But never before now so strongly.

There was something very wantable. To be shown beauty. Given it. But something soured in him knowing that it was not for him.

He himself woke to the clang of the cow’s bell as if the absence of the sound had held them all, maybe the world, spellbound. And released from this temporal ceasation of time he returned to himself with the thought that he must not show that he had seen anything at all. He didn’t know how he could acknowledge it. But then how was he to explain his standing in the middle of the field? Anyone would think he was spying. Because he simply had spied them. He just hadn’t intended to. To cover his tracks he ran to help his cousin at her task.

“Hey cousin,” he called as he came along to help turn the cow back to its overgrazed patch of brown grass. The girl turned and then paused to watch the cow go a safe distance away, her hair and dress slowly let the wind die out of them and settle down. And all the excitement, the flush of life, with a long glance at the now disappeared Malcolm, was gone. Only the lifeless desert remained, with a thin cow, a spindly cornfield and a now lonely girl pining for something beyond her reach.

And then there was Avery. The least important of these. At least in the eye of the beauty he now recognized in his cousin. She was the judge of goodness and beauty for she had become suddenly and inexplicably, Beauty herself.

Then Beauty recoiled herself back to her girlhood, satisfied in her job being done for the moment, she walked over to embrace Avery. It was not like the embrace he had seen moments ago. He felt her willing in the formality; but there was no further desire to remain near him. That and their kiss was quick even though he had dangerously left his own lips lingering; hers did not.

“You just missed Mel.” she retreated away from him, “said he was heading down gulch-way.” It had never struck Avery before. She had always called Malcolm ‘Mel’. Avery had thought it silly and girlish. But now he wondered how his own name could be made sweeter on her lips.

“Was he?” Avery sounded as if this was new news, and because he felt the need to leave the situation. As something near a chilling shiver of shame gaining on the finish line of his jaws, “I guess I will have to catch him up.” He walked past dismissed, his desire to be held winged by the missile of jealousy and that fell upon his regret of putting himself this far out in sight; and the truth of rejection was left up to his interpretation; and that he left to his emotions. In a small moment she had become the symbol of his unfair life. Only because he thought highly of the girl, and even though his friend had been so fortunate as to have her love; the bottom of the pit in his stomach said that he would rather have this best than celebrate with his friend for having it.

She represented a love he could not have, her lithe and tan form or her attention to anyone else was a timeless tribute to his deficiency of love and attention that he should and ought to have. But it did not. In this darkening of thought it seemed to either lower the hat over his face or the very light in his eyes and bent his shoulders under the sun, dim and hopeless, earthward. So beauty led to despair.

Oh the ghost that wants! What does it want? Why does it haunt? Your own ghost haunts your body like a specter in an old house. We are our own campfire stories not knowing we are the ghosts of our lives and just like those poor wandering apparitions so we roam the roads of the living unaware of our purpose in being here.

He walked down to the gulch. It was not a great landmark. Other than it was marked by a bridge to even the road and keep it open when the rains fell and sparked the torrent of flooding that the solid caliche refused to allow to soak in.

Mal waved from below. Avery hesitated a step at the ridge. Looking down was no dizzying height but it was loose dirt and rock; but more it was that Malcolm seemed for a moment an enemy of everything good. Because it seemed that he would have it if Malcolm did not exist. The years of adventure and laughter, staled in memory, in an instant. He questioned his purpose in this meeting; but remembered that this thing was friendship. So he pushed his pretty cousin from his mind and sauntered down into the gulch to his friend unconscious that his hand was resting on the handle of his holstered pistol. If she did not exist in his mind he could think clearly. But now the charm of many adventures were not with him. And though Avery met Malcolm for adventure. Only Malcolm was truly there. Avery trailed along drug down by his yearning to forget the girl.

“Hey Avery.” said the lad cheerily. Avery felt like he was approaching a stranger and words felt foreign.

“Hey Mal.” he managed and they clasped shoulders. Avery did his best to feign heartiness.

“You ready brother?”

“Born ready.” he returned, shaking off the thoughts as best he could as they turned to follow the path the deep winding tumbled stone road the gulch laid out before them.

Mal led the way. Avery followed. The sun blazed hot overhead. The stones beamed white and their shadows in dirty yellow. The sweat was already standing out on their skin. Avery looked at the back of Mal’s head and the thought occurred to him, suddenly, to wonder what it would feel like to press the barrel of his revolver to it. Try as he might the thought kept fluttering back in like a butterfly to a flower. He had killed animals on the hunt many times before and a pistol made it quick.

The gulch led down to a stream bed where a trickle of water still ran from another source that pointed toward a mountain to the North. Mal stopped for a minute to drink and wet his head, grinning with the delight of the adventure. Avery copied him but only managed to look grim.

Grim is the face of a haunted man. The ghost inside is troubled. Looking for a reason to exist.

The boys followed the water downstream until it led to a small pool that did not seem to have an outlet. Here the clear water sat still having found some subterranean exit. On the other side of this pool was a small opening that was difficult to spot by daylight as the sun washed stones cast no shadow to give up the entrance. Here again they stopped.

The cave had formed when the flood pool filled. A large stone angled across nearly cut off the entire ravine propelled the floodwater directly at the wall of the ravine. The years of bygone torrents had torn into the side of the hill either due to many years of erosion but leaving the entrance disguised though surprisingly open and easy to enter. When it would rain this place was a deathtrap. They had seen it once. The risk of being battered into the rocks to drown was a likely ending for the rare event of rain in the desert.

In the carnage of such rare floods the sand and stone had uncovered many interesting things that beckoned the adventurers by the lure of coolness in the mouth of the cave. They found coins and occasionally shiny rocks that they could see through when they were held up to the sun.

Mal opened a bag and produced two lanterns, a box of matchsticks, coil of rope and roughly a dozen steel stakes.

Something moved as Mal lit the lantern. His face jerked to see.

“Snake.” said Avery, “Copperhead, I think.”

The lanterns were raised high and they entered the cave cautiously. A few scorpions clung to the walls, but the deadness of all noise met their ears as if all of life had ceased on earth. The stones sweat near the entrance as the yawning coolness met them and tangled with the heat above.

The first chamber was almost perfectly round and strewn with boulders and gravel almost neatly piled in the middle. This was a second whirlpool formed from the first. But this one was bigger and because of a slight drop from the first whirlpool created a stronger and more violent flow. The ground sloped down in the middle and then back up to a ledge. Where it again sloped downhill as the water had cut a gentle spillway further into the cave.

“You suppose there’s a wildcat holed up in here?” whispered Avery through the gloom.

“I don’t see why there wouldn’t be,” said Mal, the adventure in his voice, “Could be anything down here.”

Avery marked their progress with a short stub of chalk. The air grew yet staler as the went deeper into the earth. Mal looked at the flame of his lantern every time the flame flickered. He repeated himself about the worry of gas that could kill them. But each time it was only a draft from somewhere below.

The chalk stub ran out so Mal dug into his satchel again and produced a hammer and some old railroad spikes. He drove a stake into the ground and lashed the rope to it. They would take turns, walking the hundred foot length. If someone passed out. The other would be able to pull them to safety without inhaling poisonous air.

Now the stakes marked their progress. They switched back and forth a couple times before they came to a wall where the only further exit was through a black hole in the ground that their lanterns could not reach the bottom of. They sat at the edge thinking and taking a moment to eat whatever it was kind of food Malcolm had pilfered from his home pantry. They sat staring at the black spot in the floor considering safety and feeling out the state of their bravery.

Mal struck a match and once it was burning well tossed it into the opening; the two boys squinting after it. The match floated down merrily but as it sped it seemed to go out save the dim blue aura. But they saw nothing for a time until it bounced from rock to rock scattering into red sparks and died again into blackness.

“Did you see that?” Avery said excited.
“What?” said Mal, looking a question at his friend: he hadn’t seen it.
“Something reflected down there.”
“You might have just seen a spider eye looking back.”
“Maybe. But now I’m curious.”

Avery tossed a rock. It fell silent for a four count.

“Forty - maybe fifty feet.” Avery said confidently. It was a cliff that in daylight they might have tried. But in the dark the going would be slow. This time a stake was driven, and another behind it. The rope was again lashed to the far one. Upon the second stake they wrapped a coil of rope around. The rope was then wrapped through the belt of Avery and Malcolm fastened himself to the end of it.

“Watch for scorpions. It’s going to be too cold for snakes down here.”

They began their descent. The rocks were dry here. If there had been any sort of wetness I’m afraid both the boys would not have survived to tell the tale. As anyone who has attempted to climb a wet-clay rock can tell you. But the rocks held their foundations and nothing rolled out from under them, beyond a few loose pebbles that clattered like rain interspersed with hail somewhere in the deep black beyond them. They came to the bottom. For a moment they stood hearing nothing but the womb of the earth. They peered to the limits of their lanterns trying to see the whole of their surroundings. The caves went on in many directions. Here the air was stale so they both felt they were too close to each other. Avery stepped to the side and something snapped under foot that rang like a curse in a foreign tongue in the midst of a nightmare.

Hearts leapt in a lightning crescendo of fear.

“What was that?” hissed Malcolm.
“I don’t know” Avery pleaded back. They raised their lanterns and let their eyes try to tell them what they saw. And when they did they bent closer. And when they saw they hoped to look away but there was nothing else to see. They recoiled before they knew what they were seeing.

A skeleton lay draped over the rocks, clothed in decent fashion, mummified in the dry earth. The reflection was from the metal belt buckle around its waist; a marking bearing a symbol they did not know but it was curiously memorable. An empty leather gun holster was at its hip. The boys looked it over a long time before either felt they could take a breath.

“I suppose he fell in here and couldn’t find the way out.”

Avery put his hands through the pockets and found old cigars. The paper wrappers also bearing a curious emblem, and old matches.

“I suppose he died in here and it flooded after?” Avery offered.

“I dunno, if you were down here, how many matches would you not use before you gave up and died?”

“You’re right. Definitely dead before he got here.”

Avery swore immediately after.

“What?” asked Mal following Avery’s pointed finger: there was a crisp round hole in the skull, right between the eyes. Mal swore too at this. And sat down in surprise.

As he sat the gloved hand gave a glimmer from the tangle of a fist of dried leather. Mal carefully tried to open the dead grasp. But as he did the glove pulled apart like dust had been the mortar that held it together. As the finger bones fell so also did two gold coins.

The boys whistled low as they picked them up to look them over. They were heavy and cold.
“It’s gold sure enough.”
“What do you see?”
“There’s something on it...I can’t make it out in this light.”
“Let's get topside.”

Avery pocketed the coins and the brothers began their way up. Faster now, because they knew their way. As they climbed this dark rock face another thought entered Avery’s mind. He was above Mal. The image came to him like a vision. To push a rock, not even a large one, at his fellow climber; it would be over quick. The gold would be his. No one would question his fortune. And no one would know of Mal’s demise. And if he failed he could blame the very real danger they both were participating in. He reached the stake and the top. And thought, only for a half second, before he turned and assisted Malcolm to the top by pulling up the rope that was fastened around Mal’s waist.

They maneuvered back out of the cave, over the whirlpool and into the bursting daylight of the equatorial sun. The gold was too bright to see. They handed them back and forth a dozen times or so. Looking for clues as to what they were. Or to whose fortune they belonged. The lanterns they hid back in the opening of the cave. Promising and ensuring that they would return later.

“What kind of coin is that?”
“Ain’t from round here.”
“But it's gold?”
“Oh yeah. I have never seen so much before. But yeah. It's gold alright.”
Mal wiped the sweat off his forehead. And they sat in the gentle soundless trickle of a motionless stream filling a very still pond.
“Who do you think he was?”
Avery shrugged and sat.
“He either climbed down there and someone shot him... Or was he dead a long time? Washed in here years ago.”
“How far up the gulch you been?”
“No farther than you.”
Looking North the gulch veered back and forth leading generally North by East. But it opened and crossed itself in flood cut oxbows as water sped through the paths of least resistance over the stretch of desert made desert by compact and unabsorbent earth. The boys set off following the gulch but using the compass to choose at the crossroads of washouts and tumbled rock. An hour brought them to a low upward angle that brought them to the desert level. They could see the mesa and the other plateaus that stood on their own. They could see the jagged cut of the gulch like a wound through the ground. The sun was closing on the horizon; the boys agreed they should head back. The excuse was that their water supply was low. They drank the last of their water while Avery sketched a map of the northern foothills. But in their reconnaissance they saw no clue as to where the body came.

“That man either died between here and the cave.” Malcolm thought out loud, “Or somebody dumped him in the cave.”

“But then why didn’t they take the gold?”

“He was shot. That much is true. So it is pretty clearly murder.”

“The person who shot him was either after the gold. Or he was stopping him from something else. The gold just happened to be in his hand.”

“Or something else stopped the murderer from taking the gold from him.”

“What are we going to do with the coins?” They started their walk back with this question on their minds.

“How much do you think they are worth?”

“I dunno. The price of gold weight at least.”

“Should we keep it?”

To find a coin on the ground in the middle of the desert leaves little wonder that the finder, in the lack of footprints to and from, ought to keep it. To find treasure in the hand of a dead man leaves the shadow of many questions that it could neither be called a gift nor could one take ownership by the pure neglect of the undefendable corpse.

“Maybe we should try to find out who he was first?” said Mal.

Avery nodded his head in squinting agreement and folded up his map and they began to head back to town.

“What do we do with the gold in the meantime?” Mal asked aloud, half to himself half to Avery.

Avery thought about it. In his heart and dreams he wanted those riches. He even felt he needed them. But it irritated him that at best he only got a share of them. He wanted to be the complete conqueror. But he knew he had no such claim. Another dark thought entered his mind.

“You keep ‘em.” He said. The hollow of his eyes contradicted his words. He couldn’t argue for a claim on them. He had no just cause. But he could argue a need; he could plead and ask Mal to not claim them; to help him in his struggle, his need to be independent(he had never felt he needed to be independent before now but the thought clearly came to his mind). It was no doubt that his friend would, without a doubt or hesitation, give all over to his brother. But pride alone held the boy to not put word to desire. The sting of asking was too much exposure to his covetous heart. No he would let Malcolm hold them. He could always claim this as a favor to Malcolm, a favor he could use as leverage later.

Mal thought too before he answered. Avery was like his little brother. And a brother you can choose is always a greater friend than the blood brother you must know and put up with. Mal grinned seriously and looked him in the eyes.

“I will keep them secret.” he vowed, “I will find out their worth. And I will find out if we can indeed claim it. Whatever the case, reward or no, we found it together. This is the story we can tell our grandchildren about.”

The spirit in Avery calmed. He was glad. No not glad. He was satisfied to have a mystery.To share it with his brother. This was a comfort that satisfied his perceived inequalities. Despite the ghostly call within him, he could endure, maybe not with pure intentions. But he could accept a challenge. Even if he believed he was not loved. The ghost of Avery, of course, had him twisted. Beware your ghost; though invisible: it is never clear.

They clasped hands: nothing more needed to be said. They turned, at last, back onto the main road feeling as if their fortune was made. Dark thoughts and light ones intermingled in worry and adventure; following them.
They crossed the cornfield to the open pasture looking for that guardian spirit to find that the girl had driven her cow home and was not there now to greet them. Their hope had been on this very thing, but now dusk was falling, and with it the hope to see her all lay at The Goose.


© Jesse Selin