The Longest Road
~*~
Baran had walked for a long time. The road behind him was a scar cutting through hills and pines, leading nowhere. The ground was dried around old footprints now crumbling under his boots. Ahead, the sun was kneeling behind the clouds while the owls in the woods nearby stirred. They surveyed the forest floor through transparent eyelids.~*~
As he approached a ruin on the side of the road, he heard a steady wheeze. It sounded like air blown through a flute. A single note.
The door hung on one hinge. Baran lifted it, dropped it aside, and entered. He approached the bar and was so parched he couldn’t get the words out. The old man behind the counter roused upon hearing his rasping voice. He poured him some water.
Baran drank. The water tasted stale and moldy, yet better than nothing. And it went down easily. The drink jostled the cold that had settled in him ever since he left the warmth of his home. It loosened the veins and arteries, allowing the blood to flow freely. And it cleared the dust in his throat. But when he spoke, the old man merely stared. He didn’t seem to understand his words, or the creases the miles had carved into his brow, or the way his hands moved as if saying one thing and its opposite. The old man did not realize that he was the first face he’d seen in half a year.
His eyes gave it away. Ravaged by frost and shadow. They swiveled left and right, tracking the old man the way an owl tracks a field mouse.
“Where are you going?” The old man asked.
“Where?” Baran drank of the sour water. “I have not seen a map in months. I do not remember the borders drawn on them. I recall the birches thinning and the pines spreading. I recall following a river from the source to the end. But the taste of the air has not changed. Neither has the color of the sky. Where am I going? I only know the space between two steps. In fact, I would not have been able to tell that this hut was a bar had it not been for the sound of your breath. Where are the cicadas? Where has the wind gone? Where are the wooden signs that promise refuge? What is this road with neither beginning nor end?”
The old man couldn’t remember the day he’d opened the bar. Only the bills he paid. His signature scratched papers by candlelight behind his wife’s back. She only had eyes for the varnished wood, the stage that was to host their son, the hearth, and the grease of roasted pork growing thick in the air. Her laughter made up for the years of silence. But it was so long ago now. Before the frost. Before the marching soldiers and the brigands who eventually took her.
When he looked in the mirror behind him, his face was skeletal. His fingers were held together by skin that had grown thin as if pressed by unhappy years.
Had it been so long?
The old man snapped out of it. “Where are you from?”
“From a land where the ice is so pure it is eaten.”
“It’s been a long time since I thought of home.”
“You are rootless.”
“Yes, rootless. Has it really been so long?”
“Join me,” Baran said. “I climbed a hill three days ago and couldn’t see the end of the road.”
“I have nowhere to go.”
“Neither do I.” He pushed aside the drink. “But look at yourself. You chained up your life and stopped feeding it. Your eyes are shrinking. They hide in the sockets like balls in winter and the red lightning of anger has faded to pink.”
“Has it really been so long?”
“It will be longer if you do not follow. We could talk. Of anything. Everything.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“This bar cost me everything. If it hadn’t been for the war, the room would be packed. You’d hear the clink of coin and the rasp of forks. They’d be eating, you know. Drinking. Dancing to the rhythm of my son’s lute.”
“Where is he now?”
“Who?”
“Your son.”
“In the yard. Gods! Has it really been so long?”
“And your woman?”
The old man caught his breath and told Baran what happened. To his surprise, the outlander said nothing and wringed his hands. The only sound remaining to fill the air was scratching on the counter.
“Your nails.” Baran glanced down. “They ravage the wood.”
“I’m a nervous man.”
“Leave this place behind.” He leaned in to whisper. “I tire of speaking to no one. I ran out of things to say to myself. I stripped naked before my own eyes and know my mistakes too well. When the Gods call me, I will list them before they can read from their notes. I’ll even mention sins they are unaware of. I no longer see the signs carved in bark and moss. I stopped hearing the voices riding the wind and pulsing from the sun. This land is ghastly. I am lucky you speak in a tongue I know.”
“What about my wife? I can’t leave her dream behind.”
“The dream of this bar? The dream of the life you had together? Of her hopes for her buried son?” Baran scoffed. “The dead do not dream. I did not know this until now, but as my eyes meet yours—I know you are dead and do not dream.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“I will die if you do not join me. What must you pack?”
“A blanket.”
“A blanket?”
“I kept her flowers pressed inside it hoping to preserve the perfume she liked to wear.”
“Roses, lilies, daffodils?”
The old man tried to bring his thoughts close to hand, but as he looked out the front door, they seemed to drift out with the breeze. “I don’t remember.”
“Get it so we can leave.”
He had faltered at some point. The scratching had stopped. He was sitting in a corner behind the bar. To his left was a crossbow he’d loaded a long time ago, but never fired. A thick layer of dust covered the bolt like snow on a fence. To his right stood his loyal sentinels, his only friends. Bottles of fine wine he’d meant to open on special occasions. Occasions that never came. When he looked up, Baran loomed over him and his brow was heavy. “Now.”
The old man obeyed. He nearly slipped on the mug he’d dropped. And when he found his footing, the rag stuck to his shoe. He lumbered past the bar and jogged into the bedroom. He rushed to the edge of the bed and kneeled.
The chest hidden underneath had rusted. He tried to pull it out, but it was fused to the floor.
He flung the bed aside. The rotted frame cracked. The mattress collapsed inward. Then, he touched the chest and molested the lock. Where was the key? Where was the bloody key?
He wept when he remembered. Images flashed past him like spring thunder striking an oak tree. Their fire spread. Past parchments and silver, past shouting and the rustle of mail belonging to those who’d stripped him from what he held dear—he remembered the day he’d buried his son. He ripped the key from his neck. Tossed it in the hole. It landed on his son’s lip and cracked a tooth. When he scraped the dirt back into the hole, his arms were trembling. His heart shrank to a pinhole in his chest.
Baran entered the room. He brought the old man to his feet and had him reveal where the key was.
Outside, a shovel stood against the hut. Baran took it and thrust into the soil. It cut through dirt like a knife through linen.
Death had left so long ago that the hole smelled of grass and little else. By the time Baran climbed out of the grave with the key in hand, the sky was black and the remaining stars were yellow. The trees were swaying from a wind carrying the branches away as if trying to rip them off.
Baran passed the old man the key through the bedroom window. He watched him open the chest near the center of the room. It was dark and he couldn’t see what lay inside. But he heard the rustling papers. The anxious clinks of glass. The old man was fevered. Sweat pearled on his brow in drops that should have been loud. He found the blanket and pulled it out.
It was grey and shrunken. Baran suspected that if anyone was to sleep in it, they would freeze to death. If flowers had been pressed in the cloth, they had crumbled a long time ago.
The old man’s eyes were wide, then narrow. He squeezed the blanket to his nose. Breathed in. Suffocated himself. His face paled. He closed his eyes to remember. It was something herbal. Wholesome. Like a summer field. What did a summer field smell like? What did it taste like? And the flowers—roses, lilies, daffodils? Fresh dirt swelling under the fingernails? When he closed his eyes fully, he smelled it: the damp mold and the sting of pollen.
