Original Prompt by u/Red580.

Seeing Brutus

 

Andre pushed open the rear door and let it swing shut behind him. He closed his eyes and drank in the last of the sunlight. It was cooler on the porch, and the air felt fresh, still speckled with spring rain.

The murmur in the house faded as the door closed, and Andre felt a weight slide from his shoulders. Twin tears slipped down cheeks sore from faked smiles. He pulled apart his tie knot, loosened his collar, and dumped his jacket on the porch swing.

He heard his sister Colette’s voice grow louder as she entered the kitchen. Andre tapped his way down the porch steps and strode across the back lawn. He’d had enough family for today, enough for a month. He deserved a moment alone, a moment to grieve without condolences poured through hands that lingered on his arm.

The farther he got from the house, the lighter he felt. The porchlight flicked on behind him and he quickened his pace. He angled toward the barn, still standing straight despite the years. He ducked inside as the house door opened and Colette stepped out.

Andre paused in the shadow of the door, afraid she’d see and wave him back, or worse: try to join him. She glanced around the lawn, stopped, looked again, then reached into her handbag and drew out a cigarette. She lit up and Andre smiled. Colette swore it’d been years since her last smoke, but Andre never believed her.

There was a bang inside the house and Collete hurried down the stairs and across the lawn, angling for the big oak at the edge of the field. Andre waited until her back was toward him, then moved fully inside the barn.

Inside, he puts his hands behind him and interlaced their fingers just above his belt. He drank in the scent of the place. It was hay and manure, old wood and lingering musk, it was childhood and joy. It was his father’s place, and it was still there, even though his father was gone.

The stalls were empty now, save one. Brutus stood at the rear of the barn his head lowered over the half-door. A horse’s eyes are always sad, but when Andre took the old stallion’s head in his hands, the beast stared back as though it knew. Papa wasn’t coming home.

“You had a good run together,” Andre murmured.

Brutus shook out his mane, a gesture that could have been nod or negation.

“Hell, you knew him before we did,” Andre continued as the horse nuzzled its cheek against his palm. “He used to tell us stories about the war. He said you were fearless. He said nothing could bring you down, and you always brought him home.”

“He said no one else could ride you, not until mom.”

Andre paused to run his hand down the stallion’s muzzle. The horse pushed forward and rubbed its nose against his shirt.

“Sorry, I didn’t bring sugar,” said Andre.

Looking at the animal, he felt his heart cracking anew. Here was another piece of his father, another thing that lingered on after a long life closed.

“God, I hated plowing season,” he said. “I couldn’t get the mud out from under my nails for anything. You seemed to like it well enough though, you and dad.”

Andre swallowed the tightness growing in his throat.

“You know, he always said plowing was the reward, not the harvest. He said hard work that doesn’t get you shot was the answer to all his prayers. He said it was what you both wanted.”

Andre put his head against the horse’s muzzle and wet it with his tears. To his surprise, Brutus didn’t pull away.

“God, I bet you can’t even remember the war now,” said Andre. “That was fifty years ago. Dad—God I remember—Dad wanted to sign up for the second one, but thank heaven he was too old for it.”

Andre leaned back and found his attention arrested by the web of glistening hair his tears left on the horse’s face.

“You were both too old,” he said. “Thank God.”

He smiled at the horse.

“I think we’re going to sell the field,” he said. “No more plowing.”

The horse whinnied.

“Don’t worry,” Andre replied. “We’d never sell you.”

He ran his hand down the beast’s neck, then turned toward the house. He was halfway across the barn when his steps slowed, then stopped. He looked back and found Brutus watching him.

Andre looked at the empty stalls that made up the barn’s first floor. Most of them contained old horse tackle, no longer needed. His family didn’t sell horses. They used them, and they loved them, and then they said goodbye. Andre remembered a dozen wonderful beasts that passed through those stalls, though none compared to Brutus.

Brutus came to his father through the calvary and was a parting gift when the armistice was signed. He was massive and did the work of any two of their other horses. Andre looked the stallion up and down. He was still massive, his hair still silken in the spring twilight.

Andre swallowed and wondered why it never occurred to him that horses do not live that long, not even close. It was forty-eight years since the end of the war, and his father had fought for the last three when it was on. Brutus was presented to him on his first day in the calvary, already fully grown, already strong, over fifty years ago.

Andre felt the exhaustion of the day settle on him like a lead blanket. He wanted nothing more than to sink to the floor, put his head on his arm, and fall asleep, but at the other end of the barn, Brutus was watching him with those too sad eyes, and Andre found he couldn’t look away.

“You’re too old, Brutus,” he whispered. “You can’t be that old. It’s not possible.”

Andre swallowed again. It was the same horse. He was certain of it. He’d known Brutus his entire life. He’d ridden him, stood behind him on a plow as obsolete as the calvary charge, and fed him sugar stolen from the family kitchen. Brutus was a fixture in his life, a center point he'd never stopped to contemplate, and utterly impossible.

Andre moved back to the end stall, though this time he stood out of arms reach.

“You can’t be this old, Brutus,” he whispered. “How are you this old? How has no one ever said anything?!”

He thought of his father, riding atop the evergreen stallion at dawn and leading it into the barn as the sun set. He thought of his father, his body lying in state, his soul already moved on. His father, a modern Cincinnatus, ready to rise when the world grew dark, and strong enough to put aside arms when the light returned.

The world revolved around such men. Standing next to one, growing up in his shadow, everything made a quiet kind of sense, however great the chaos. His father, like Brutus was a fixed point in all their lives.

“It was dad, wasn’t it?” he asked.

The horse snorted and kicked at the half-door separating them.

“When he was here, it slipped our minds, it…” Andre trailed off.

Other absurdities bloomed in his head like a field of dandelions, bursting, spreading their seeds, then dying again in grey puffs while the green grass of youth withered below.

“He plowed that field, we all did, with horses, always with horses,” Andre murmured. “We never bought a tractor. Why didn’t he ever buy a tractor? We, we barely grew anything.”

He blinked and was back in the estate lawyer’s office, cracked wood paneling leaning dangerously from water-damaged plaster. He saw again the figure pushed across the desk: taxes due in the next six-months. He remembered looking up at Colette, their shared glance, their instant decision to sell the property.

“Where did we get the money to keep the farm?” he asked.

Andre looked down at the ring on his right hand. A shield with a single word, split across three banners, stood out from a gold background.

Harvard? How had he ever been accepted to Harvard, much less Harvard law? He’d gone public defender after, and he didn’t regret it. He slept better at night, and it wasn’t like he had any loans to repay…

Colette had a flower shop. It was a beautiful business, like a slice of paradise carved from Eden and preserved between four stucco walls.  Andre helped her with the books. The shop made Colette happy, and that was all it made. A sane businessman would have closed it up in six-months. Colette just celebrated ten-years behind the counter, and that had never bothered him before.

Andre looked Brutus up and down. The horse blinked.

“Was it you, or was it him?”

Brutus snorted.

Andre sighed. It didn’t matter. Either way, it was over now. They’d been living in a fairy castle, and none of them had known. Now the king was dead and the walls were caving in.

He wondered if Colette would understand.

When a parent dies, a part of the world dies with them. Their children cannot be who they were, because a part of that life was never really theirs. It lived in another body, attached to another life. With the parent gone, the door closes once and forever, leaving only memory to haunt the way between.

It was the way of all flesh and all families, but for them it would be harder. They had lost more than they realized was theirs. Selling the farm was only the first step. They were adrift in an unknown world, only just realizing there was a sea beyond the ship.

A foot crunched on gravel and Andre looked to the door. Colette was framed in the side sweep of the porchlight, a limp cigarette smoldering in her hand.

“He’s too old,” she whispered.

Andre nodded.

“I know,” he said. “But’s that not the worst of it.”

Colette shivered and raised the cigarette to her lips. The end brightened as she drew on it and Andre saw the hollow stare in her eyes. As the tip darkened, something moved between them; the ghost of a man newly gone, rolling up the welcome mat to Neverland behind him.