The older man’s boots scraped over the loose forest floor, colored by burnt autumn leaves. His ax, firm in his calloused grip, trailed behind him on the path toward that sloping maple tree. Frosted breath pulsed out with two deep coughs as he settled his stance. The bark felt warm as he traced the uneven body of the dead tree. Time was more of a mangled wolf than ever; each year he advanced, so did the complexity of chronology. Even with the floor fallen out from under time, the older man knew the earth-sprouted truth of nature was a part of the few untampered sands in the hourglass of this world.
It settled the older man to know that some artifacts would always hold in their roots the unmovable truth that time had sprinkled so much haze atop. Even if he chopped this tree down, the older man’s heart felt peace knowing that as long as this world lived to rise, so would this maple see sun again.
“I don’t want to do this, buddy. Just can’t have you falling on my cabin. See?”
The older man extended the ax toward the wooden structure and the grey billowing clouds that helped pack the murky sky above. Nose running, he sniffled and took in a lungful of that fall perfume. Too much of that campfire smell made the older man cough again. Three times now.
“See you’re starting to lean. I will-” The older man coughed “I’m gonna plant some seeds… I’ll plant some seeds here though. Give you a chance to be my neighbor again.” His eyes dropped and he blinked a few times, pushing the thought of an emptying hourglass out of his mind. As the old man firmed his grip around the ax in both hands, his eyes were drawn up. Caught by the top of an ice blue muscle car trimming along the horizon. Seemingly afloat along the bottom of the still orange skyline.
The older man swallowed hard and gave a grunt as he lowered his shoulders and rested the ax against the leaning maple. That ice blue muscle car turned up into his driveway. The older man swished through the autumn fallscape as the car scrunched over the loose gravel up to his smoke breathing home, alive with the scent and warmth of firewood.
A younger man emerged from the car, and the older man heard the sound of his closing door push its way to him as he reached the rusted and red mailbox at the bottom of the driveway. Empty. The older man’s eyes lifted. The younger man took the sunglasses from his face and smiled down to the older man.
Raising a wrinkled hand reluctantly into the wind, the older man shuffled through the loose rocks and the younger man started his own path down that same tattered trail.
“I feel you should be happier to see me. Most in your shoes get a kick.” Said the younger man.
“What are you doing here? You know I don’t like these visits much.” The older man coughed and walked past the younger man who spun on his heels and followed in the older man’s footsteps toward the cabin.
Stepping into the welcoming embrace of the billowing warmth radiating from the log fire in the cabin, both men shed their jackets. The younger of the two revealed a pristine button-down shirt beneath his finely tailored charcoal grey suit, while the older man stood clad only in a white thermal shirt, its fading hue marred by a thick dusting of dirt.
“I don’t know why you’re getting comfortable. You’re not even supposed to be here,” said the older man as he pulled the pot of coffee from its hissing hotplate.
The younger man scooted one of the wooden chairs out from the kitchen table and plopped down. “Get me a cup of that. We’ll talk, I don’t have to be here long.”
“Save your breath if you’re gonna go on with that same shit as last time.” The older man coughed, and the younger man scooted toward the table uncomfortably, rocking forward and back in the beats between the coughs.
“Only asking for a minute… and some coffee.” The younger man’s words were beginning to sound pressured.
The older man shot a hard look at the younger man. “You’re asking for more than that and we both know it." The older man pulled another cup from the cabinet. "How do you want your damn bean?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“How would I know how you take your coffee? I don’t know a thing about you.”
“Funny,” the younger man tried to smile as he took the steaming mug in his hands. The older man dropped into the seat , creaking the wood of the tired chair under his weight.
“I’m not signing those damn papers. If that’s why you’re here, I’d finish the coffee and drive on. Get back to wherever it is you call home.”
“You call this home?” The younger man painted his eyes over the barren wood paneling surrounding them from all four sides. The only company, the only other life besides theirs in the room, in the cabin, in that town was the snapping logs, bright with the cedar warmth. “There’s not a memory on these walls.”
“At least I know memories are meant for walls.” The older man took an impatient sip of his coffee, burning the tastebuds from the tip of his tongue.
“You’re a bitter old shit.” The younger man looked over at the shadow trail leading to the inky blur of an empty bedroom. “You know there are other girls out there, right?”
The older man kept the crackling of the fireplace as the soundtrack of the room while he sipped his coffee, eyes glued to the younger man’s. It still unsettled his stomach to see him. Eyes like his only younger. The older man coughed into his sleeve a few times and the younger man figured he wasn’t going to get a response.
“There are other girls out there. You can trust me on that.” the younger man supplemented. “You just have to actually get out there and you know… live.” The last word came like a proposition.
“I don’t call what you do living.” He coughed.
“I do call what you do, dying… It doesn’t have to be that way. But you know that.”
“I am not signing the damn papers.” The gravel in his voice mustered another cough which he cleared away and slunked down with a gulp of coffee. “Just let me die in peace.” The old man stood and headed for the exit. He pushed the creaking screen door open with the extent of his arm. “I think you should go now.”
“This might be our last chance to talk. My last chance at this.”
“I don’t believe in all that shit you get up to. You’re chasing ghosts, you’re hanging onto the walls… the memories.” The older man coughed and squeaked back into the wooden chair and the screen door pattered to rest in its frame. “It’s time to let it go.”
“No, it’s time for you to find your damn guts.” The younger man stood. “You wasted all of your years rotting away here in the middle of the woods… all alone because you’re too damn scared. Scared of rejection, scared of intimacy, scared you may not live up to that image. Well now your time is up. Don’t be too late on this.” The younger man fished a folded paper out of his suit jacket. “I know this is right for us.”
“I’m not you and you’re not me. I am at peace with my life.”
“At peace, I know that’s the easiest way for you to say you’ve given up. I know that because I am in fact you and you know that. Now don’t let us die a coward.” The younger man sat and stared into the eyes of his dying body.
“What’s cowardice is your inability to let go, to accept what is, and die like men do.”
“I’m sure it’s easy to welcome death when you never lived… I did the things you couldn’t muster. I moved on from Beck; I tried again and got myself a real life. I want to play in the sandbox I built now and you’re standing in the way of that.”
“Life’s not a sandbox… or a playground like you said last time. I don’t agree with all these games. Humans shouldn’t play God.”
“Hey, you did at some point or I wouldn’t exist. You jumped time old man. Remember? Couldn’t wait to go back and clean up your failure.”
“That was a mistake.” The older man looked down at the steam rolling gently over the brown murk in his mug.
“This will be a mistake too. We have the power of the infinite now. Make the right choice while we still can.” The younger man slid the paper toward the older man. “Go back, get your youth, do this thing again. Do it right. I know this isn’t where you wanted to be. I know the clocks tick is loud in your ears.”
The older man ran his finger along the lip of his mug, eyes placed still on the escaping steam as it pulls eternally from the source and fades into the sweet cedar scent of the cabin. The fire snaps and echoes its lonesome cry around the barren vacancy between the man.
“I have a tree to take care of, some seeds to plant.” The older man patted the table and exited the cabin.
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