White
Part of the Colors collection
Pfft.
Pfft.
Pfft.
His muffled steps in the new snow were the only sound. He'd left the horse down lower this morning; a horse makes too much racket on a silent morning, leather creaking and breath snuffling and frosty coming out like the squall of a she-bear in season. His smooth leather boots crushed the snow hard and slick beneath him and he walked carefully lest he fall on his ass. He chided himself briefly for not tellin' no one where he was off to, lest they come lookin' and find him. Find him doin' nuthin' but lookin' over the new snow, the plain white blanket as easy to read for him as t'was for JD to read his dime novels. Playin' about the stuff like Billy with a new toy. From a horseback, neither could he have seen the tiny crow's feet that were field mice scurrying across the top of the snow, so light the little ice crystals held them off the ground like angels in the clouds. The bobcat track across the deadfall, cat as unhappy at gettin' his feet wet as he was, but neither leathery pads nor oiled boots would keep either from it. A small spot of blood, beautiful in contrast, dark and red in the center and pink on the edge where already frozen. A hint of an owl's breakfast, the feathered touches of the raptor's wings landing, killing, taking and leaving, silent as the tracker was now. No bears to watch for, no danger in the winter wood but a man's own ignorance. Spring would come soon, and the bears awake with it, and this would be a dangerous place again. Weren't enough wildness to a wood without bears, nor plains without buffalo.The flakes fell, covering his tracks to leave him standing in a void without past nor future, surrounded by a blanket as insulating and warm as a woman's arms. And safe. He turned to look upward, to think like the hawk on the wing, searching for a rabbit caught unawares, and north, to think like the goose gone hollering by, wonderin' at the season, and to watch the deer studying his motionless form, thinking like the wild ones...
He'd been right in his thinkin' last night, lookin' up towards the mountain, guessin' there'd be snow this mornin'. Wouldn't snow down in town, he hadn't seen it snow down there yet and doubted that it ever would, like the snow was too precious and wise to waste it's beauty on them too busy to see. He'd thought about bringin' JD, and decided against it, now regretted it just a little, for iffen he was gone, nobody'd ever teach the boy 'bout the wood and the mountain and the bear. And them that would teach him, would teach him killin' and clearin' and takin'. He shook his head, the deer bolted to see the sudden movement, and he moved to a little hollow made by a listing tree, settling down against it to let the snow surround him again. The fringe of his jacket holding flakes, he shook lightly, like a horse shooin' flies away, to cast the dampness off him before settlin' in. There was peace to be had here, and he aimed to hold it for a little while, to fill up that empty place within him to cool and smother that deep burnin' need to keep movin', keep runnin' keep searchin' for what he couldn't put a name to; but felt a sense of bein' on the very edge, of bein' on the very cusp of that discovery, yet not quite willin' to let go and plunge over the edge, fearful, ever fearful of not knowing a way back up nor out.
The End