Memories
This is Robert Baird 's fault. He posted something about the end of summer that put me in a maudlin mood. So here we are. An old wolf has a summer's evening and a bourbon to himself and thinks back on his life.
The old wolf sighed and lifted his glass, nosing into the glass and drinking in the rich history of the whiskey. Distilled in Kentucky, aged in fresh, charred oak casks, its notes of vanilla and oak flooded his senses. He took a sip and sighed as it flowed smoothly over his long tongue. Taste had never been his strong point, but his nose was still good, and the bourbon's fumes flooded his nose as it lingered in his mouth. He swallowed slowly, letting it pour down his throat, slick and smooth until it reached his belly, where it finally warmed him.
It was summer. Evening. Locusts gave off their familiar chorus from the trees and frogs called from the sides of streams. Fireflies glowed in and out of existence in the fields. He could see the bats flick by overhead, catching insects, but he could no longer hear their calls. The war had left gaps in his hearing and notches in his ears. He raised a paw and rubbed one of those notches between the pads of his thumb and finger. His fur was still thick, though stiffer than when he'd earned the notch, and around his muzzle, he'd silvered noticeably.
He took another swallow and lost himself in his senses. There was a short squeak from the field as an owl took a mouse, and he knew there'd have been almost no sound to catch, had his ears been fresh enough to have a hope of catching it. It was warm and humid, and his suit and shirt hung heavily on him, though his pelt kept the worst of heat at bay. He set his glass down and panted softly, anyway. He remembered worse heat, standing by a steaming gun in the August sun, running the stiff brush through the muzzle of it because the man whose job it had been lay nearby, screaming, missing a leg. He'd gone quiet eventually, or Charles had tuned him out. It hadn't mattered. Charles hadn't cared. The man had certainly gone silent by the end of the battle, for he'd gone still and his gums nearly white.
He remembered another battle, in nearly the same place, just over a year prior, directing guns behind General Jackson as Union shells whistled over head, blessedly overshooting his position. Most of the time, at least. The shrapnel thrown off by a gun hit by one of those lucky few has given him his first scar of the war -- neat, clean, a line that ran up his muzzle and into the fur of his cheek, grown over in pure white, now, starting to fade with the rest of his coat.
He dragged his paw over the table to pull himself back to the present, focusing on the feeling as the rough leather of his pads dragged over the weather-roughened surface. It was one of his favorite places to sit, that table, looking out as it did over the short track that lead up to the house, a small field of tall grass sloping away to a wood line that hid a stream. That, at least, he could still hear, and he enjoyed listening to the water run over rocks and into pools as it crossed the property.
Charles looked at his glass again, watching the whiskey spin as he swirled it. Mary had loved to sit out here, too, and they'd spent many evenings together on the porch, enjoying the dark and listening to the land live around them. She'd been gone four? No, three years, now. It had felt longer, especially the first year. After all, they'd been married for forty one years by then, twice his age when they'd married. Now, here he was: sixty four, alone on his porch with only his bourbon and the night's noises for company. Elder son off with wife and pups to visit her side while he watched the house. His younger son still serving the Army. Nominally the same one that had bested his home nearly twenty five years ago. But he'd come to terms with that. For the most part. Mary, almost as forgiving as her namesake, had accepted it far sooner.
An ache welled within him, heavy, familiar now. She'd been a better wife than he'd deserved, but she'd insisted otherwise. He never could dissuade her when she'd set her mind to something. He gripped the edge of the table and pressed his thumb hard into it, focusing on the sensation of the edge pressing into his pad, letting it bring him back to the present. He inhaled, drank in the night's air. The ache subsided slowly, slinking away for a while. He was sure it would be back. It always would. It had always been with him, but in the last few years, he'd come to see it is as a sort of friend, staying with him, always ready to make itself known, much like the aches in his joints.
He sighed, then leaned back in his chair. He thought of Mary, pictured her as he'd known here. Her fur gray at first, as his had been, then silvering slowly over the years. She'd worn them well, as if she'd embraced them and they walked with her, instead of dragging her down. Even in the end, she'd had the poise and will that had first drawn him to her.
After his wife, the others who'd gone before wandered through his thoughts. His brothers and sister. His parents. Men he'd called friends for years, some for decades. Men he'd seen as adversaries, but respected nonetheless. Men who'd fought alongside him and lives. Others who'd died beside him and been mourned hours or days later, but not at the time. Blessedly, neither of his sons, who both seemed poised to continue his and Mary's legacy into the next century.
At last, the parade of faces, names, and impressions faded. He tapped his glass on the table and raised it in a toast. "To absent friends."