Blue and Gray

Chapter Eleven – Letters Home (Epilogue)

Written by: minoan

Sheets are swaying from an old clothesline,
like a row of captured ghosts over old dead grass.
Was never much, but we’ve made the most.
Welcome home.

Peel the scars from off my back,
I don’t need them any more.
You can throw them out or keep them in your mason jars.
I’ve come home.

~ Radical Face – Welcome Home

August 20, 1871
Denver City, Colorado Territory

Flynn’s eyes opened to beams of sunlight filtering into the bedroom through half-drawn curtains. He smiled as he stretched his legs underneath the clean white sheets of the large four-post bed he’d been sleeping in.

“You’re awake. Thank god, you’re awake and you’re alive,” Calvin teased with a smirk and a chuckle, looking up from the letter he was writing.

“Nnnnh...” Flynn groaned in an exaggerated, almost theatrical manner, as if the Sunday morning sunlight filling the finely decorated bedroom he shared with Calvin was an unexpected affront. He rolled over under the sheets, pulling the beautifully crafted blue quilt over his head. “Not awake yet... gimme another hour...”

Calvin tried not to laugh as he set the fountain pen down on the writing desk and removed his reading spectacles. Every Sunday, he thought – every Sunday morning since the day I met him, he’s impossible to get out of bed. It’s like an extra sense he has.

“Sun’s up Flynn, rise and shi-ine… coffee’s waiting for you-oo,” Calvin lilted in a sing-song voice, trying not to laugh. 

“Nnnh!” Flynn grumbled again from under the sheets, though Calvin could tell he was trying not to laugh too. “Come back to bed with me instead, Calvin...” 

Calvin considered it. That’s how Sunday morning started for them most of the time: Calvin waking up first, trying to gently coax Flynn out of bed but instead being lured back in. Since Flynn habitually slept naked it inevitably led to other things. It was something of a Sunday tradition for them.

But today they had somewhere to be, and Calvin really did need to get Flynn to wake up. Calvin was already dressed in his full three-piece suit and tie, just like he did every other day of the week.

“It’s Sunday, we can sleep in...” Flynn complained from underneath the warm blankets, finishing his appeal for Calvin to come back to bed. “Store’s closed today, no customers. We don’t keep Arty’s hours.”

That was a name Calvin hadn’t heard in a long, long time. How long ago was that now, Calvin asked himself. Eight years? Yeah, eight years, almost to the day. It doesn’t seem like that long, but in other ways it feels like a different life. Time and memory – strange things.

Calvin leaned back in the leather upholstered chair he was sitting in, looking around the tastefully furnished bedroom. It was so similar to that stateroom aboard the steamboat Sultana that they’d torn apart and leaped out of into the unknown all those years ago.

His eyes settled on the mound of blankets on the bed. Flynn’s lone antler stuck out from underneath, resting against the wooden headboard that was scratched and chipped from years of casual scraping. When they moved in and first got this bed Flynn was careful to try not to scratch the headboard with his antlers, but those days were long past.

Calvin shook his head and smiled, sighing slightly. So much has changed since that perilous journey, but not him. Not us. We’re forever.

His mind wandered back to the day they met. That was where it always started when he began to reminisce; he never thought about the war any more, the awful things he’d seen and the horrible things he had done. The nightmares brought on by the Nostalgia were a thing of the past. Flynn cured him of that.

Calvin’s memory cycled through the events of their first tumultuous months together – fleeing by horse and by river, escaping from the now long-dead Captain Mason, finding refuge at the Nix farm, traveling west.

Their original plan way back in the spring of 1864 had been to travel with Cody’s wagon train all the way to San Francisco, but they never made it there. The journey west had been more harrowing than they were expecting.

Only a few weeks out of Independence, Missouri, nearly a fifth of the traveling party became violently ill from cholera. Calvin and Flynn did not, saved from the disease by the reliance on their own food supplies, but the outbreak killed seven before it was over. It had a sobering effect on everyone in the party and turned the trek dour for weeks.

Calvin nearly drowned a few weeks after that when they attempted to ford the North Platte River in Nebraska Territory. The supply wagon tipped over in the swift current and dumped their supplies – along with Calvin and Flynn – into the water. He only managed to save himself by clinging to a barrel, drifting miles downstream before he was able to make it back to the shore.

They reached Fort Laramie, Dakota Territory in June. Fort Laramie was a federal outpost with a contingent of Union soldiers stationed there, but by this point in their journey west both Calvin and Flynn knew that they didn’t have to fear them. Out here, well beyond the borders of any state, they were truly in the heart of the American frontier. The soldiers’ job was to protect pioneers heading west and afford what law and order could be afforded to such a wide, lawless place – nothing more. It was generally understood that any able-bodied man between the age of sixteen and forty who made it this far was either a Union deserter like Calvin or a former Confederate like Flynn. Out here in this new frontier, this wild west, the Army didn’t have the time or resources to care.

The party planned to stay there for a few days to rest and resupply since the next major settlement on the trail was more than a month away across unforgiving terrain. But on the day they arrived Flynn began feeling ill. It progressed rapidly, and by the time Cody and the rest of the company were preparing to leave a few days later Flynn was truly in a terrible way. The doctor at the fort knew exactly what it was: typhoid fever.

Flynn spent almost a month in a bed in Fort Laramie fighting and then recovering from the potentially deadly disease. Calvin was by his side caring for him nearly every waking moment, through the fever and the pain, the weakness and the delirium and all the terrible stages of the disease. By the time the worst of the disease had passed and it was clear Flynn would survive he’d lost more than twenty pounds. It would be another few weeks before he had the strength to walk again.

Cody and the rest of the company had long since pressed on by the time Flynn was well enough to travel. Now they had a decision to make – would they wait for the next wagon train to pass through and try to join on?

In the end they decided not to. The bed and the treatment in Fort Laramie weren’t free, and by now they were running seriously low on money. Calvin had also had candid conversations with some of the soldiers at the fort, and it was becoming increasingly clear to him that while no one cared about deserters in the frontier, they were very much actively looking for them in California, and especially in San Francisco. It wouldn’t be safe for them there.

They couldn’t continue west or head back east, and they certainly couldn’t stay in Fort Laramie, so they decided to head south into Colorado Territory. They’d heard from soldiers and travelers alike at Fort Laramie that there was a new town called Denver City that was growing extremely quickly, and that there were plenty of opportunities for work there. It seemed like the best option. So in late July, 1864, they spent most of their remaining money to hitch along with a stagecoach train to make the two-hundred mile journey.

The rumors they’d heard about Denver City were true. Within a week of their arrival Calvin had found work as a stable-hand, and soon after that Flynn was able to get a job as an assistant at a tailor’s shop in town. They were able to rent a room at a boarding house. It was rough and unfurnished, but they were used to sleeping in such places. It also provided them with some privacy, something they hadn’t had in months and months.

Calvin’s employers recognized his skill on horseback soon after he began working for them. They tested him on the yearly cattle roundup that fall to see if he had what it took to work as a cowboy instead of just a stable-hand. He proved to be a natural. He had a lot to learn about cattle and lassos, but his command of horses impressed even the veterans.

The money was good for Calvin working as a cowboy, but it kept him away from Flynn for longer than either of them liked, sometimes weeks at a time. On the long nights when they were apart they both found themselves staring up at the moon – Flynn from town and Calvin from the prairie around the campfire – thinking of and longing for each other. These roundups kept them apart longer than they’d been since they met. The distance pained them both.

The American Civil War ended in April of 1865. The news affected little in Denver City, so far away from the battlegrounds to the east. For Calvin and Flynn the much bigger news came just a few weeks later when they learned that the steamboat Sultana  had exploded and that Captain James Cass Mason was dead.

When they’d first settled in Denver City, Flynn and Calvin had the notion that they’d stay there until the war was over, then continue on to California. But now there didn’t seem to be any reason to leave. They had each other, they had a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. What would they find in California that they didn’t have here? As the months wore on Denver City started to feel like home – not the home they’d shared with the Nix’s in Missouri, not the home they had in each others arms wherever their journeys took them. A real home. A place to call theirs and no one else’s.

By the summer of 1865 it was becoming increasingly obvious to Flynn that he’d learned all he could from the tailor in town working as his assistant. Not only that, he was actually doing better work than the tailor, doing it faster and with fewer mistakes. Customers were beginning to request work from him now instead of the owner of the store. When this started happening more and more, the store owner started mistreating Flynn in various ways, disrespecting him, taking credit for his work, refusing to let him tailor for certain clients. After several months of this abuse, the idea starting forming in Flynn’s head – why couldn’t I open my own store?

One night when Calvin came home from the ranch he found Flynn in their room, sitting on the bed crying. He held Flynn in his arms, listening as Flynn told him how the tailor had yelled at him again, how the tailor was making him do almost all the work while paying him far less than he was worth, how he lied about who was doing the work to customers. Almost as an afterthought Flynn said that the shop would shut down without him and that he should open his own shop.

To his absolute shock and surprise, Calvin said he should. Flynn asked if he was serious. Calvin said he was. Flynn stopped crying, and they spent all night talking about what it would mean for them, whether it was possible and how they could make it happen. The biggest obstacle would be saving enough money for a down-payment on a storefront in town, but they were already saving almost all the money Calvin was earning on the ranch for the still-potential journey west to California. Opening a store might be a better idea. They talked and they talked and they talked, and by the time the sun rose in the morning they had decided. They would not travel to California after all. They would stay in Denver City. They would open their shop, make their home and their lives here.

It took them three years to save enough money for a down-payment. Calvin had always been a saver – a fact that had rescued them several times before during their escape to the west. Now that he had something tangible to work toward he worked even harder, taking extra jobs with other ranchers whenever he could. When he had a clearly defined goal Calvin was unstoppable. He always had been.

In their modest room in the boarding house they were able to live off of the money Flynn earned working as a tailor’s assistant while saving all of the much more substantial money Calvin was earning for his work as a rancher and cowboy.

They were hard years. They both endured long, lonely nights alone while Calvin was away on cattle drives. Flynn forced himself to hold his tongue and bear the mistreatment from his boss every day. But they’d been through worse. Through the battlefields and the bullets, the running and the hiding and the pretending, they’d been through so much worse.

In September of the year 1868, Calvin and Flynn bought a storefront right in the center of downtown Denver City near the intersection of Larimer and 15th Streets. They spent the next week buying supplies and getting the store ready to open. They moved from the squalid room in the boarding house they’d rented for years to the 2nd floor of the building, living above their new shop.

They commissioned a sign-maker to create a huge sign for the front of the store, and on the day of their store’s grand opening it was ready. Flynn tried not to cry when he saw it from the street for the first time, reading it aloud with Calvin’s arm around him:

Harrison & Riley
Tailoring * Alterations * Repairs

Flynn had wanted Calvin’s name first, since it was Calvin’s money he’d earned as a rancher that was paying for everything, but Calvin wouldn’t allow it. It wasn’t his money he said, it was their money. Flynn was the talented tailor, his name had to be first. Calvin thought it had a better ring to it this way, too, something about syllables.

Initially they thought it would be better for Calvin to keep working on the ranch to bring in extra money; they were now heavily in debt, not just for the mortgage but also for all the supplies, tools, fabrics and materials needed to get the store up and running. Deep down Flynn feared that no one would come to the store and the entire endeavor would be a disaster for them. Opening a store was exciting, but it was also scary. The night before the grand opening Flynn had a nightmare that no customers would come, all their hard work would be for nothing, all the money Calvin worked so hard for during the past few difficult years would be wasted and that it would be his fault. 

But the customers did come – more customers than Flynn could have hoped for in even his most optimistic dreams. Half the regular customers at the old shop Flynn had worked at knew him by name and were familiar with his work, and they switched to Harrison & Riley within the first month. Most of the other half would switch by the end of the year.

By Thanksgiving, just two months after opening, the shop was making nearly six times more money than Calvin could ever hope to earn working on a ranch. At the same time, Flynn had hit a wall on how much work he could take; tailoring was fine, but there was so much more than went into running a store that he’d never considered. Ordering supplies, managing money, setting up displays, just interacting with customers and making sales – it was all necessary, but it all took time away from actually doing the work he was naturally talented at. Calvin helped at night after he got home and the store was closed, and the fact that they lived above the store made things easier, but it still wasn’t enough.

In the end the decision was simple. It was right there in the name of the store. 

In December of 1868 Calvin hung up his spurs, saddle and wide-brimmed hat for good to work full-time in the store he and Flynn owned. He had no skill whatsoever in tailoring, but that made everything simpler. Calvin was good with money, he could handle the finances and the sourcing and procuring for materials. Calvin was personable and charming and the handsomest wolf you’d ever seen in a three-piece suit –  he could handle all the sales, greeting customers when they came in, the daily operations that required someone at the front of the store. While Calvin took care of all that at the front of the store, Flynn could spend all that extra time doing the work he was gifted in in the back of the store, focusing on the actual tailoring rather than all the other tasks needed for daily operation. Best of all, it meant that Flynn and Calvin could spend all day together every single day. That was worth any price.

Over the next few years business boomed. Word began to spread around Denver City that Harrison & Riley was a different kind of tailoring shop than those the town had been accustomed to in the short time since its founding only ten years prior. Harrison & Riley was a store that didn’t cut corners, charged fair prices and always delivered the best quality work for the best price. Harrison & Riley was a store that valued their customers and treated them fairly and honestly. You could trust Mr. Riley’s word and you could trust Mr. Harrison’s work. Harrison & Riley was best tailor in Denver City, ask anyone.

Calvin heard a knock on the front door of the shop downstairs, ending his reminiscing of the past several years, all the twists and turns and tragedies and triumphs that led him here. His eyes refocused on the mound of blankets on the bed with the antler sticking out, and his ears tilted towards the staircase. Who would be knocking on the door today, he wondered. It’s Sunday, we’re closed today.

There was another knock on the door, this time louder.

“Now who could that be?” Calvin said to himself.

“Nnnh… doesn’t matter...” Calvin heard Flynn groan from underneath the blankets. “Tell them we’re closed...”

Calvin smiled and stood from the fine leather upholstered chair, pushing it back from the writing desk.

“I dunno, we could make an exception,” Calvin demurred playfully as he began walking out of their bedroom towards the stairs. “Know who it could be? It could be a couple young men who fell off a steamboat, wandered into town from the river, wearing rags and looking to buy a suit and a dress. We wouldn’t turn them away, would we?”

Flynn knew Calvin was just playing, but the words struck him. He pulled the blanket down from over his face, but by then Calvin was on his way downstairs. Much as Calvin had done a moment before, his mind wandered back to that morning in Cairo, the absurdity and recklessness of it, all the lucky breaks they had to have for that precarious moment to lead to this one.

He looked around the room, taking in the fine furniture and expensive paintings that now decorated the home above their shop that he and Calvin had built together. His gaze settled on the large painting on the opposite wall, a scene of a rocky stream flowing into a river flanked by deep forest. Far in the distance the river split in two, melding with the horizon. It reminded him of those endless, idyllic summer days in the river with Edward when he was young. It reminded him of how much he and Calvin had been through and how far they’d come.

How much did we pay for that painting, Flynn asked himself. Two-hundred dollars? Yeah, it was two-hundred. That’s as much as we paid the heron Cletus to take us from Pittsburgh to Cairo. It seemed like a fortune back then, an absolute fortune. Half of that seemed like a debt that I could never pay back. Now? We make way more than that every week now; we’ve had good days where the shop has made more money than that. 

Time. Such a strange thing, Flynn found himself thinking. Each change is so slight, so subtle and so slow that you don’t even notice. I thought ten dollars was a lot of money not ten years ago, living in a dirt-floored hovel in Tennessee with a father who wished I wasn’t his son. What if you told me back then that in ten years I’d be here, a thousand miles away, living with and in love with the man I’d only dreamed of back then? What if you’d told me everything would work out in the end?

With his eyes Flynn traced the path of the water in the painting. The stream that flowed into the river reminded him of those first nights deep in the Pennsylvania woods with Calvin, the first time they made love in the rain next to that secluded creek. The river reminded him of their time on the flatboat and their escape from Sultana. But it was more than that. His eyes had always been drawn to that split in the distance, the place where the two rivers merged into one.

Calvin had told him before that he thought the river in that painting was flowing towards the split. To him, it represented the choices they made that led them to each other, led them here. It was the decision to save Flynn instead of kill him. It was the decision to take him out of Chambersburg rather than leave him behind, to jump out that steamboat window, to stop fighting. The river split a hundred times before it led them here, each fork a moment he could never get back, a decision he could never change. To Calvin it was the permanence of choice and whatever mysterious, magical providence that had guided him to find his way home with Flynn.

But to Flynn, the water was flowing the other way. He thought that the two rivers in the distance were merging into one rather than splitting. Far in the distance hundreds of brooks and streams and tributaries came together, one by one, to form the powerful river. Further on its path, this river would merge with another, and another, and another, until it was as broad as the ocean. It would become a slow and steady current that every drop from every river was fated to join and become a part of, flowing together as one to the same destination or no destination at all. That notion was part of him, like a half-remembered childhood memory or a vision from another life.

At least once a month Flynn had the same recurring dream. He was back in Tennessee on an endless summer afternoon, swimming in the French Broad River with Edward. But it wasn’t just them; Calvin was there too, and Penelope, Jonathan and Emily, Henry and Abigail. As he looked down the river there were thousands more swimming happily in the river, faces of old friends he was certain he knew but couldn’t place, ancient yet familiar.

“Who do we know in New Orleans?”

Flynn snapped out of his daydream as he heard Calvin ask the question. Calvin was looking down at the bright yellow envelope in his hand as he walked back into the bedroom.

Flynn didn’t answer as Calvin walked back to the writing desk he’d been sitting at a moment before, eyes still on the envelope. They were used to getting occasional mail from some of the communities around Denver City, orders from customers who didn’t want to have to make unnecessary trips into town, but that distinctive yellow envelope was different. It was a telegram, hand-delivered on a Sunday. Whoever sent it must have paid several dollars to get it to them, so it certainly had to be important.

“New Orleans? I don’t know...” Flynn answered quizzically. He should have remembered; they both should have. But it had been eight years, and time is a strange thing.

“Well let’s find out,” Calvin said as he began to open the envelope.

It was then that Flynn noticed what Calvin was wearing. He saw him like this almost every day, a handsome wolf cutting a dashing figure for customers in one of a dozen three-piece suits that Flynn had tailored for him, so it didn’t immediately strike him as odd. But today was Sunday, and they both liked to wear much more casual clothes on Sundays. Much less clothing too, most of the time.

“What are you dressed up for? It’s Sunday...” Flynn asked him, rubbing the sleep from one eye, his voice still comparatively low and groggy from having just woken up.

Calvin paused from opening the envelope and looked at Flynn with a smile.

“But this Sunday we have somewhere to be… did you forget?” Calvin asked wryly.

Calvin watched as Flynn leaned up on the bed on one elbow, the blanket sliding off his blue-furred shoulder and exposing the white of his bare chest. God, he’s beautiful, Calvin thought. In the time they’d been together – close to a decade now – Calvin had to have seen Flynn like this a million times. But it never got old. He forgot about the urgent telegram in his hand.

“I must have,” Flynn answered with a measure of sleepy self-assurance. He thought he knew what mistake Calvin was making and he wanted to rub it in when he was proved right. “So tell me, fancy-pants, where are we going, dressed to the nines on a Sunday morning?”

“We have an appointment at the photographer’s studio, remember? And we’re supposed to be there in...” Calvin said calmly, still with a smile on his face as he pulled the gold pocket watch from his suit pocket with his free hand, “forty minutes. So get up, sleepy-head...”

Flynn tried not to laugh, and was barely successful. A few months ago a photographer opened up a portaiture studio a few blocks from their store. It was yet another sign that the town of Denver City was growing faster than anyone could have predicted even in the seven years since they moved here. Neither Calvin nor Flynn had ever had their photographs taken before, but they decided that a tintype portrait of themselves together would be a nice memento to have years from now, and they scheduled a Sunday appointment.

Flynn was trying not to laugh because he knew the appointment was for next Sunday, not today. Poor Calvin, he thought, woke up early and got dressed up for nothing. Flynn wasn’t going to let this opportunity to tease him go to waste.

“Mmm, forty whole minutes? Plenty of time to get some more sleep… or whatever we want to do, really...”

There was something about the way Flynn said it that let Calvin know that he was being coy, that Flynn knew something he didn’t and was toying with him. There was also the less than subtle way Flynn had pulled the covers back over him, making sure he exposed his and bare, blue-furred ass to Calvin ever so briefly, flagging his short cervine tail as an obvious invitation.

To be fair, this was how most Sunday mornings went – Flynn would lure Calvin back into bed, they’d spend most of the morning having sex, Calvin would knot him and half the time they’d be tied until near noon. But Flynn wouldn’t blow off their appointment with the photographer for that – they could do that later, after all.

“All right, what aren’t you telling me...” Calvin said with a smirk.

Flynn’s head emerged once again from under the blankets.

“What’s today?” he asked Calvin rhetorically.

“Sunday...” Calvin replied.

“No… what’s today’s date?”

“August the… twentieth,” Calvin answered.

Flynn bit his lip as he saw the gears turning inside Calvin’s head.

“And what date is the appointment?”

Flynn giggled as Calvin winced with the realization that he got dressed up a week early.

“Oh jeez, it’s next Sunday, isn’t it...” Calvin said, his hand going to the side of his muzzle as he looked down at the fine blue carpet in embarrassment.

“It is, it is. But hey, look on the bright side,” Flynn said without missing a beat, turning over in bed, sliding his hands underneath the pillow and stretching his legs, “now your morning is free, right? Come back to bed...”

Calvin looked up and, from between the fingers covering his face, saw that Flynn had once again pulled the blanket and bed sheets halfway off of himself, striking a seductive pose on his stomach with his head on the pillow looking up at Calvin. He could see the subtle lines of Flynn’s back, blue fur trailing down to his little blue and white deer tail. The sheets still covered his ass and his lower body, but his intent was unmistakable.

“Hmmm. Well, I suppose you’re right, my morning did just free up,” Calvin remarked with faux-pensiveness, pretending to debate what they both knew was a foregone conclusion. “I’m a bit overdressed for the occasion, though.” 

Flynn didn’t need to say anything, choosing instead just to hug the pillow tighter and watch Calvin undress. They both knew where this was going.

Calvin began to unbutton the jacket on his three piece suit when he realized he was still holding the unopened telegram. He paused for just a moment looking down at it, then up to the sexy blue deer waiting in bed for him. It wasn’t much of a decision; the telegram could wait for another hour or so, he thought. He placed it on the green felt of the writing table, next to the letter he had just finished writing.

He removed his jacket and draped it over the back of the leather chair – Flynn had trained him to be more careful with his clothes – then started unbuttoning his vest. There really wasn’t any fast way to remove a three-piece suit, something both he and Flynn were aware of, and it would be a few minutes before he got everything off and joined Flynn in bed.

“I finished writing that letter,” Calvin mentioned as he glanced back down at the writing table.

“To Henry?” Flynn asked.

Not long after they’d arrived in Denver City, Calvin and Flynn sent a letter to Henry and Abigail back in Missouri. They thought it would be nice to let them know that even though they got separated from Cody and didn’t make it to San Francisco they were okay.

A few weeks later they received a letter back from the Nix’s. They wrote another letter to the Henry and Abigail, and soon they were in regular correspondence with the badgers that had become like their family. Around the fifth letter they revealed that their real names were not “Edward” and “Alvin Pinkie,” which the Nix’s were already fairly certain was the case. As the topics got more diverse and the conversations grew deeper, it could be surmised that at least Abigail was aware of their real relation with each other, though she didn’t seem to mind.

For nearly seven years now they’d written letters back and forth, at least one a month, the envelopes always growing larger and larger as the conversations branched out. Earlier in the year the topic of holidays came up in one of the letters, specifically how much Calvin and Flynn enjoyed the Thanksgiving they spent on the Nix farm all those years ago. In the reply, Henry and Abigail said they should come back to the farm this year. A few years ago this would have just been a wishful thought, an impossibility, but at some point one of them realized that this would actually be possible.

The trans-continental railroad had been completed in 1869, linking the east and west coasts of the United States and rendering the covered wagons like the ones Calvin and Flynn had used obsolete. Just a year later the Denver-Pacific railroad was built, linking Denver City to the trans-continental railroad. Now, in 1871, it was possible for Calvin and Flynn to board a train just a few blocks from their store and ride it to San Francisco or New York, St. Louis or Pittsburgh. The journey from Pennsylvania that had taken them nearly a year could be completed in less than a week now.

The more they talked about it the more it seemed like a good idea. The store was so successful now that they could afford to close for a few weeks to travel. They decided to accept the Nix’s invitation, a few more letters were exchanged, and now they had plans to visit with Henry and Abigail for Thanksgiving. They were looking forward to spending a week back on the Nix farm in a few months.

But a regular letter to the Nix’s wasn’t the one Calvin was talking about.

“No… that other letter,” Calvin said, still unbuttoning his vest.

Flynn slid his arms from under the pillow and leaned up on his elbow again. Now he knew which letter Calvin was talking about.

Calvin had his excuses, initially. The first one, years ago, was that he was a deserter and he didn’t want to send the letter while the war was still going on. When the war ended, he said he thought they might still be looking for deserters; he didn’t want to do anything that might risk their safety, or hers. But now, so many years later, everyone knew that no one was looking for deserters any more.

She believed he was dead. That was the real reason. Calvin was afraid of what she would think of him when she found out he hadn’t died at Gettysburg, that he was alive and living in Colorado Territory and never thought to let her know. Would she think he’d abandoned her? Would she hate him for it? Could she forgive him?

But then again, she was the one who told me to run, Calvin thought. She was the one who told me to stop fighting a decade ago in that hay loft. And I made a promise to her. I promised Lizzie that I’d remember.

“I’m proud of you,” Flynn said, his tone more serious. “Lizzie will be too.”

Flynn had been trying to get Calvin to reconnect with his family back in Pennsylvania for a while now. He knew Calvin’s parents were dead, that he had no siblings, but that his cousin Lizzie had been like a sister to him. But he also knew Calvin’s life was split in two, a life before and a life after, and that those halves had never met. It wasn’t just that he was afraid of how Lizzie would react – he was scared of connecting those two parts of his life back into one.

“I hope so. I just hope she forgives me,” Calvin answered quietly as he continued to unbutton his vest.

“She will. She loves you,” Flynn assured him.

“I know. It’s just… it’s been eight years. I don’t know how I’d react if I got a letter from someone I thought had been dead for eight years, you know?”

Flynn knew the power a single letter could have to change your life. He learned that lesson when that Confederate army draft letter arrived for him nearly ten years ago. He imagined, just for a moment, what it would be like to get a letter from Edward, to find out that somehow he hadn’t died in that field in 1863 and that he was still alive.

“The years won’t matter. It’s never too late to reconnect with someone you love,” Flynn said.

“Yeah… you’re probably right.”

“I’m always right...”

There’s that sassiness I love about Flynn, Calvin thought. He glanced from the letter to Flynn, smiling warmly up at him as he unfastened the last button on his vest. Calvin took it off, folding it carefully and placing it on the writing desk next to the letter to Lizzie and the unopened telegram from New Orleans. He’d open the envelope and read the telegram later. It could wait.

Flynn stretched his legs again, groaning sleepily to get Calvin’s attention. He seductively let the sheet draping his body slide down to expose his sheath, the very tip of his pink cervine member just peaking out.

“Mm-hmm. So, Mr. always right,” Calvin said as he ogled Flynn and loosened the cravat around his neck, “what are our plans for the day now that an appointment with the photographer isn’t on the calendar?”

Flynn’s narrow shaft inched further out of his sheath as Calvin set the cravat on the writing table. Calvin reached down to his waist, down to the old brass US belt buckle he’d worn since they’d met. It didn’t match the formal suit he was wearing in the slightest, but he still wore it every day. It was a daily reminder of how far they’d come and how far they could go when they were together. The world around that US belt buckle had changed so much in the past ten years, and it would continue to change in the many, many decades to come. But just like the love between Calvin and Flynn, it was forever.

Flynn could see the growing bulge in Calvin’s pants just below the belt buckle that he was unclasping.

“It’s still early. We’ll figure it out when we get there like we always do,” Flynn answered, looking to Calvin’s face and seeing that smirk of desire he knew so well, the one where his left lip snarled ever so slightly, wrinkling his snout as his eyes narrowed.

“It’s still early and we’ve got the whole day together.”

- - - - - - - - - - -

‘Good For Nothing’ is the name they’ll remember me by.
I’ve done nothing with my life for no one, I’m just living to die.
I turned my back on the world, you know,
I’d given up on living ‘til I met you, girl.

I lie awake in the night just to see another dawn.
Used to be the sun was my weakness, but 
them days are gone.
I feel your lips on mine, oh,
would you meet me by the river, baby,
one more time?

I may have died, but your lovin’ raised me.

~ Lord Huron – Louisa

August 20, 1871
New Orleans, Louisiana

“I’m sorry Emily, I know I’m early, I apologize. I hope I didn’t wake you and Jonathan.”

“Nonsense! Come in, come in, we’re dying to hear about your adventures out west!”

Emily opened the door to the house she shared with her husband and their three children, a modest but well-appointed home near the intersection of Chestnut and 2nd Street. Her brother, Jack, thanked her, straining as he lifted the two enormous suitcases he was traveling with and shuffled into the house.

Jack had arrived in New Orleans early that morning by train, back from a trip to San Francisco. He was going to spend the next few days with his sister, her husband and other extended family members before boarding another train to head to Richmond to visit his parents. But the train was early and the sun had not even risen yet.

“Jack! You made it!” a voice called from the top of the stairs.

“Johnny boy!” Jack called up, dropping his suitcases in the foyer as Jonathan hurried down the stairs, still in his pajamas. “Good to see you! How long has it been?”

“Too long, come here,” Jonathan said as he hugged his brother-in-law.

Jack was the reason he met Emily all those years ago back in Richmond. Their families were members of the same church when they were growing up, and being the only two foxes their age in the congregation Jack and Jonathan became fast friends. As they got older Jonathan began to notice Jack’s sister Emily more and more, one thing led to another, and the rest was history.

Jack had left Richmond before the war began to seek his fortune out west. While Jonathan was fighting, he was prospecting. Around the time Jonathan and Emily fled Virginia north to Pennsylvania and embarked on their grand adventure on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, Jack staked a mineral-right land claim in California.

No one in their family knew exactly how much money Jack had from that California gold mine, but it was apparently enough for him to spend his days traveling across the continent and, indeed, around the world without having to work. It was certainly far beyond anything Jonathan and Emily earned, Jonathan working as a freight foreman at the docks and Emily working part-time as a teacher while spending most of her time at home with their three young children, two girls and a boy.

Everyone in their family figured Jack would settle down someday, but for now he seemed to enjoy his on-the-move lifestyle, and everyone loved the stories he told when he came to visit.

The stories he told! As the sun rose and cast light into the living room, Jack regaled his sister and his brother-in-law with tale after astounding tale of his travels. While Emily made coffee, Jack continued his stories to Jonathan. As Jonathan cooked eggs, toast and bacon for all of them in the kitchen, Jack enthralled his sister with tales of the wild west.

“And let me tell you, he probably needed a new pair of pants when that bear charged at him!”

Jonathan and Emily laughed as he finished a story about a prospector he was traveling with who ventured into a cave looking for ore veins only to be chased out by an angry bear.

“Oh, speaking of pants, that reminds me!” Jack said, apparently transitioning into a new story, “you’d be astounded at the quality of some of the clothing the sell on the frontier! And at such fair prices! You would think you’d get better deals here in the city, right? Not so! Why, there was this one tailor I stopped at in Denver City...”

Jack paused, catching movement out of the corner of his eye.

“Well hey, if it isn’t my favorite nephew! Come give me a hug!”

“Uncle Jack!”

Jonathan and Emily’s oldest child and only son came bounding down the stairs. He ran across the living room to his uncle, who scooped him up in his arms.

“My, my! Look how big you’ve gotten! How old are you now?” Jack asked the fox kit enthusiastically.

“Five and a half!”

“Five and a half already!” Jack said, setting him back down on the hardwood floor. “How time flies! You’re a big boy now, Flynn, you’ll be all grown up if I blink!”

Jonathan and Emily’s young son Flynn hugged his uncle’s leg again, then turned to his mother.

“Mama can I have some breakfast please,” he asked politely; the aroma of the bacon, eggs and toast his father had cooked filled the house.

“Okay sweetie, okay, I’ll fix you a plate,” Emily answered, little Flynn following her as she went into the kitchen.

After they settled in New Orleans and the war ended, and after Jonathan found a steady job, he and Emily decided to start a family together. When Emily was pregnant with their first child they spent some time thinking of what his or her name would be. They had a dozen different ideas about what to name a girl, but they decided quickly that if they had a boy they would name him after the blue deer that risked his life to save Jonathan from drowning, the one who taught them more about love and acceptance than any preacher ever had: their friend Flynn.

“So what was I saying?” Jack asked Jonathan, now that it was just the two of them in the living room.

“Something about pants, I don’t know what...” Jonathan answered with a laugh.

“Oh yeah! So as I was saying, you’d be amazed at the quality of some of the clothing out west. Here, feel this coat,” Jack said, standing up from the armchair he was sitting in and retrieving the jacket he’d hung on the coat rack in the foyer.

“It’s okay, really, I believe you.”

“Nope! Here,” Jack said, tossing it to his brother-in-law. “Feel that! Top-notch stuff, and would you believe it but here in New Orleans that coat would cost double what I paid for it in Denver City?”

Jonathan didn’t know much about clothing, but it certainly felt like a nice coat.

“Yep, sure is a good one,” he said, more to humor Jack then anything.

“Sure is! I lost a suitcase in Denver City, and when I asked around everyone told me to go to this one tailor’s shop to get a new set of clothes because they were the best in town, and boy they weren’t lying! What was it called...”

Jonathan turned the coat over and looked on the inside near the neck for the tag. At the same time, Emily came back into the living room from the kitchen while little Flynn munched happily on his breakfast at the kitchen table.

“Harrison and Riley,” Jonathan read.

“That’s the one!” Jack exclaimed.

Jonathan stared at the label for a few seconds. There was something familiar about those names, but he couldn’t place it.

“Jack… did you meet them? Harrison and Riley?” Emily asked from the doorway to the kitchen, her tone lower and more grave than he was expecting.

“I did! Nicest guys you ever met!”

It clicked for Jonathan then. Emily had always been more observant than him.

“This might sound strange,” Emily said, “but was one of them a tall gray wolf? And was the other a small blue deer with one antler?”

“Good heavens, yes!” Jack answered, bewildered. “How in all blazes did you know that?”

Emily and Jonathan looked at each other, their expressions a mixture of shock, excitement and relief, as they realized their friends were alive and well.

“They’re safe!!” Emily squealed.

“They made it!!” Jonathan yelled back.

“What the… who made what now? What on Earth is going on?” Jack asked in confusion.

Neither answered. Emily put her hands to her muzzle while Jonathan stuck his arm through one of the sleeves of the Harrison & Riley coat.

“What’s going on?” Jack repeated as Jonathan put on his coat, wearing it over his pajamas as he started for the door. “Hey, my coat! Where are you going?”

“They’re safe! They’re alive! I’ve got to send them a telegram!” Jonathan cheered as he ran out the door.

Jack looked up to his sister, looking for some kind of explanation for the bizarre outburst he’d just witnessed. Emily dropped her hands from her face, regaining her composure.

“Let me get you another coffee, Jack. I’ve got a story for you.”

- - - - - - - - - - -

I will make my way across the fields of cotton,
and wade through muddy waters one last time.
And in my dreams I come out clean when I reach the other side,
west of where the sun sets,

where rainbows never die.

~ The Steeldrivers – Where Rainbows Never Die

September 22, 1871
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The middle-aged gray wolf walked along the cobblestone road, his small suitcase swinging in his hand in time with his steps. It was only a few miles from the train station to where he was heading, a large brownstone townhouse in one of Philadelphia’s more affluent neighborhoods. She always told him to take a stagecoach, but after spending all morning on the train from Carlisle he liked stretching his legs.

He was pushing fifty now but he was still in good shape, the rewards of a lifetime of working with his hands. Still, the rewards of working with your brain instead were apparent to him as he neared his destination, the homes one both sides of the street so much nicer than anything he’d ever lived in.

The door swung open just as he started making his way up the front stoop steps. She was waiting for him.

“Pa!”

“Lizzie!”

He dropped his travel bag as they hugged at the top of the steps.

“So good to see you! Come on inside, don’t just stand here on the stoop! How was the train ride?”

“It was fine, it was fine,” Lizzie’s father answered, gathering his small travel bag and following her into the finely decorated home. 

“You didn’t walk here from the station, did you?”

“Of course I did! I’m still good for something! Don’t count me out just yet, Lizzie!” Lizzie’s father answered jokingly with a smile. Lizzie shook her head – she knew he was set in his ways.

“You’re the only one who still calls me ‘Lizzie,’ you know that?” she said to him with a grin, happy to see her father. Ever since she’d moved to Philadelphia she felt that she didn’t see him enough, though he always found time to visit at least one weekend every few months. It was always a delight for her to see him.

“Well, I ain’t gonna start calling you ‘Elizabeth’ like everyone else. Your my only baby girl, you’ll always be my little Lizzie.”

“Aww, Pa...” she said as she gave him another hug.

He was so proud of her. He didn’t tell her enough, but he was so proud of her. Look at her – a young wife of twenty-three with a fine husband, a mother with a newborn baby, a beautiful home, a bright future. It seemed like only yesterday she was still playing children’s games, running around in the woods with her cousin Calvin in the years before the war, before Calvin was killed. 

When the war started in 1861 and Calvin went to fight, Lizzie was still just thirteen years old. He sent her letters every few weeks for the next several years, seemingly always from somewhere new. She always wrote him back, but most of the time her letters came back to her, undeliverable since the army was always on the move and Calvin was employed as a scout. Still, she treasured the letters he wrote to her.

The letters from Calvin stopped coming in July of 1863. In August, her Pa received a different kind of letter from the War Department, bluntly informing him that Calvin Riley was missing in action and presumed to have been killed in the battle at Gettysburg.

Lizzie was inconsolable for weeks. This couldn’t have happened. Why did they let this happen? Was there anything she could have done that would have saved him? For months she settled into a kind of purgatorial depression, spending endless hours alone with only her thoughts. But by the winter of that year – just as she turned sixteen and about the same time the cousin she thought was dead was working on a farm in Missouri – she decided that if Calvin were still alive he wouldn’t want her to feel this way. It was too late to save Calvin, she thought, but she made up her mind that it wasn’t too late to save others.

With her Pa’s blessing she volunteered as a nurse’s assistant. By good fortune the government had established one of the largest military hospitals in the Union just forty miles away, the York U.S. Army Hospital. She was only sixteen on her first day with no experience of any kind, but the army was so desperate for volunteers to help treat the wounded and perform even basic unskilled tasks that they turned almost no one away. Besides, she told herself, sixteen was the minimum age to enlist in the army, and there were untold numbers her own age fighting and dying, so she could do her part for the war effort.

During the next year Lizzie saw the unfettered horrors of the war in that hospital, men mangled and broken and dying. But she also saw recovery, hope and healing, and knowing that she was doing what she could to help gave her a purpose that she thought she’d lost.

On April 9th, 1865, the same day the war ended, a gray wolf from Philadelphia named Gregory arrived at the York U.S. Army Hospital. He’d been wounded at the Battle of Sailor’s Creek three days prior, a Minié ball to his lower leg, and it had been amputated below the knee. He was assigned to the recovery ward where Lizzie worked.

Lizzie – who went by Elizabeth now – had friendly conversations with all her patients, cheering them up and bringing what solace to them that she could, but from the moment they first saw each other she knew there was something different about this wolf. Something special. Over the next few weeks their patient-nurse relationship changed into something else, and by the time he was discharged from the hospital they both knew they wanted to spend their lives with each other.

Gregory’s family didn’t approve of Elizabeth at first; his family was one of the more prominent and wealthy ones in Philadelphia, a long line of lawyers and statesmen dating back to before the nation was founded. They thought it was improper for him to marry someone like Elizabeth Riley, daughter of a working-class father with no wealth or status to speak of. But they were in love. They could accept it or not – that was their choice, Gregory sternly told them. But he was going to marry the woman he loved, that was that. If they made him choose between his parents and Elizabeth, he would choose Elizabeth.

Gregory and Elizabeth married in the summer of 1866. In the end Gregory’s family warmed to Lizzie. She may not have come from a prominent family, but they couldn’t deny that their son would be hard pressed to find any woman who was more genuine, loyal and kind than Elizabeth. It was impossible for them to ignore how happy she and their son were whenever they were together.

After the war Gregory enrolled in law school while Elizabeth continued to work as a nurse. A few years later when Gregory earned his law degree he went to work at his father’s practice. He and Elizabeth had decided to wait to have kids until they were more stable, so when Gregory finished school and began working, they decided the time was right.

“So! Where’s my grandson?” Lizzie’s Pa asked, breaking their hug.

“He’s asleep upstairs,” Lizzie answered. “The door’s open so if he starts crying I should be able to...”

As if on cue, they heard the three-month-old baby wolf pup in the crib upstairs start to cry.

“Sounds like he’s awake now!”

Lizzie shook her head and smiled again as her father raced up the stairs. This was only the second time he’d visited since the pup had been born and she knew he was eager to see his grandson.

She followed him up the stairs to her bedroom, the cradle with the baby close to the door. Her father was leaning over the crib when she walked into the room trying, unsuccessfully, to calm the crying baby.

“Shhh, it’s okay baby Calvin, I’m not going to hurt you...” he said gently as he stroked the baby wolf’s muzzle with his finger. “Shh, Shh, Shhhhh… it’s okay, it’s okay.”

Lizzie paused as she entered the room. Her father’s words seemed familiar, like a fragment of a distant childhood memory that she couldn’t place.

“That always worked when you were this age. Guess I’m out of practice,” her father chuckled as baby Calvin continued to cry, bringing her thoughts back to the present moment and leaving the scrap of a memory unplaced.

She’d always known what she would name her child if she had a son. Calvin’s death was the reason she’d volunteered at the hospital, and if she hadn’t done that she never would have met her husband. It seemed like the right way to honor Calvin’s memory, and there was no better namesake for her son.

“Well… he wants something you can’t give him Pa, so don’t feel too bad,” Lizzie said to her father.

He, in turn, only gave her a confused look.

“What I mean is...” she continued, looking down at the floor, slightly embarrassed, “that’s his ‘I’m hungry’ cry.”

“Ohhh...” her father answered, now himself feeling slightly embarrassed. “Understood… I’ll leave you to it then. I’ll be downstairs.”

He shut the door gently behind him as he left the room, then made his way back down the stairs. He sat down on the large, comfortable velvet-upholstered chaise in the parlor. For a moment he just looked around the room, taking it in. The stylized wooden banisters of the staircase, the regal red of the carpet, the paintings on the wall, the slow swaying of the grandfather clock – it was a far cry from the modest home Lizzie grew up in back in Cumberland County.

He had a few minutes to kill while he waited for her to finish breastfeeding the baby. He wished her husband Gregory, who he loved like a son, was around, but he knew that he was away at work.

He stood up, walking over to the grand piano in the corner of the room and pressing his finger against one of the ivory keys, the one farthest to the left. When he pressed it, the deep chord reverberated around the room.

Again he looked at the grandfather clock, the steady sound of the pendulum punctuating the piano note. He remembered that he’d picked up a newspaper at the train station but hadn’t had a chance to read it, instead stuffing it haphazardly into his small suitcase. Might as well read that to kill some time, he thought.

Lizzie’s father walked across the room and opened his suitcase. The newspaper was sitting on top of his clothes, but next to it was also something he’d almost forgotten about. He’d received a strange letter in the mail not long ago addressed to Lizzie. It was thick, as if there were twenty pages tucked inside, and the sender had overpaid on postage. The return address was in Colorado Territory, of all places, but there was no name to go along with it. He grabbed it along with the newspaper and returned to the chaise.

After about ten minutes he heard the door upstairs open again. He put down the newspaper and stood up as Lizzie walked back down the stairs.

“He’s already asleep again. One track mind, just like...” she started with a laugh as she entered the parlor. But before she finished her thought, she noticed the thick, unopened envelope in his other hand. “What’s that?”

“Not sure, bit of a mystery I guess!” her father said in the playful way he tended to say almost everything. “It’s addressed to you. Came in the mail about a week ago, guess they never got the message you don’t live back in Cumberland County any more.”

Lizzie tilted her head quizzically, a gesture common to her species when trying to make sense of a situation.

“Who’s it from?” she asked as her father handed it to her.

“Doesn’t say, no name. The return address is way out in Colorado Territory.”

Without saying another word Lizzie held the envelope in her hands. She felt butterflies in her stomach as she looked at it, though initially she couldn’t say why. Then she realized – the letter was addressed to ‘Lizzie,’ not ‘Elizabeth,’ and no one besides her father called her that. No one alive, anyway.

Almost in a trance she slid her finger under the envelope flap, ripping it carefully with her claw. When she’d torn the top of the envelope she gently removed the contents, several dozen trifolded pages. Gingerly, reverently, she unfolded them.

“What’s it say? Who’s it from?” her father asked.

But she didn’t hear. The focus of her entire being was on the first lines of the handwritten letter as she realized who it was from and what it meant.

“Dear Lizzie,

I pray this letter finds you and finds you well.

I want first to apologize. I always meant to write you sooner, but my life lead me further and further down strange and dangerous paths. I feared that contacting you would imperil you, and until now I didn’t feel it was safe to write you. I hope you can forgive me.

As best as I can, in this letter I mean to explain the events of the past eight years, but before I do I want you to know that your words never left me. I made you a promise that I’d remember your advice, and in the end I took it. I ran.”

In a daze Lizzie began flipping through the pages, one after another, her eyes trying to take in everything at once. Something about a river and a steamboat. A series of places, Cairo and Herculaneum, Missouri and Colorado Territory. The name Flynn appeared over and over again.

Finally she flipped to the last page. Her eyes darted to the last lines.

“I hope more than anything to hear back from you soon. I miss you and I want to be a part of your life again.

Love always,

Calvin Riley”

Lizzie felt her knees going weak, the edges of her vision beginning to darken as she started to faint. But her father caught her.

“Lizzie! Lizzie! Are you okay?!” he shouted as he cradled his daughter in his arms.

She felt her senses returning to her as she looked up into her father’s eyes through tears of shocked happiness. All at once a wave of emotions hit her. Calvin had not been killed eight years ago at Gettysburg. She was sure the voluminous letter would explain everything, but ultimately it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Calvin, the cousin she loved like a brother, was alive.

They had a lot of catching up to do.

- - - - - - - - - - - 

When I die, let the wolves enjoy my bones.
When I die, let me go.

When I die, you can push me out to sea.
When I die, set me free.

Oh, the world is dark,
and I’ve looked as far as I can see.
When the years have torn me apart,
let me be.
Let me be.

Daylight is waiting for you.

~ Down Like Silver – Wolves

January 28, 1872
Blue Ridge Mountains, Tennessee

The blue deer woke before dawn, the same as she did every Sunday.

In the cold winter air of her home she set her hooves down onto the dirt floor, sitting on the edge of her bed. She could see her breath as she lit a candle, the flickering orange light illuminating the small log-framed bedroom.

She kept the letter in her dresser, tucked safely underneath some of her clothes. She reread it every Sunday morning before she visited his grave, a weekly ritual she felt compelled to perform before the sun rose and she went to church.

Carefully she opened the blood-stained envelope that arrived at her home more than eight years ago. She’d always assumed the blood was her fiance’s, though in truth it was his best friend’s.

She sat at the same table where they had read the draft letter that came for him all those years ago, drawing him from his home and his family never to return. Delicately she withdrew the letter from the envelope. It was yellow with age, the three creases beginning to tear from years of folding, unfolding, reading, refolding. She must have read it a thousand times over the years. In the cold room by dim candlelight she read it once more:

“My love Penelope,

The indications are strong that we shall be on the move again very soon, perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel compelled to write lines that may fall under your eye if I shall perish.

Our movement may be one of severe conflict and death to me, and for a cause that I find no joy or pride in. My thoughts fall only on returning home to you, and through that prospect I am granted the strength and will to carry on.

Penelope, no matter what fate befalls me, know that my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break. The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. I pray that I shall return to you that these moments and memories should continue through our lives, but If I do not, my dear Penelope, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you from harm. But I cannot. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms and wait with sad patience until we meet to part no more.

But, O Penelope! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the brightest day and in the darkest night – amid your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours – always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Penelope, do not mourn me dead; think only that I am gone and waiting for thee, for we shall meet again. I am only ever waiting for you.

Forever yours,

Edward Finch

June 20, 1863”

A single tear trailed down the blue and white fur on Penelope’s face before falling on the cold wooden table. She slowly folded Edward’s letter again, carefully inserting it back into the blood-stained envelope.

After she placed it back in her dresser she put on her overcoat, the one article of clothing she had that was appropriate for the bitter chill and snow outside. But before she stepped out into the dark, predawn January cold, she stopped by the doorway to the third of three rooms in the small home.

She quietly crept to the bed at the far end of the room, shielding the light from the candle from his face. Kneeling down, she could hear him breathing as he slept. Penelope leaned forward and kissed her seven-year-old son, Edward Jr., on the soft blue fur on the top of his head between his antlers.

They had not yet married when Edward went off to the war; they’d planned to once he returned, but that day would never come. In the months after his departure for the war it became apparent first to Penelope, then to all, that she was carrying his child. She regretted, now, that she had never told him in her letters to him.

The past eight years might have been different if they had been married before Edward left – she would have been a widow, there may have been suitors, she may have remarried. But the simple fact was that without Edward, she was an unmarried doe who gave birth to a bastard son. The townsfolk understood her situation and she still had friends and family, but there had been no suitors, and there never would be.

She found solace in raising her child. Edward was gone, but he lived on through their son, and every day it seemed like Edward Jr. did something or said something that reminded her of his father in a new way. He’d been dealt a tough hand in life,  but Penelope’s life’s purpose now was to raise him as best she could, and she refused to fail. In her heart she knew that he would go on to leave the valley and do great things.

She stood up quietly, careful not to wake Edward Jr., and made her way back into the central room and to the front door. She opened it as narrowly as she could, hoping to keep what little heat was inside from escaping as she slipped outside into the cold.

It was a short walk to the church cemetery, just a few hundred feet. There was no wind, no sound at all except the rhythmic crunching of her hooves on the newly fallen snow. The full moon hovered over the mountaintops far in the distance on the other side of the valley. It cast a cold silvery glow onto the pristine white landscape.

Edward Finch’s headstone was like most others in the cemetery: a simple slab of Appalachian granite, a name with two years engraved below. Penelope crouched in front of it, her knees sinking into the snow. She bowed her head and rested her antlers on the granite as she always did in her weekly commune with her dead fiance, the way she rested on his shoulder when he was alive. Another tear fell and froze the instant it touched the snow below.

Penelope shut her eyes. For minutes she remained motionless, reverently kneeling before Edward’s gravestone in prayer, in thought, in remembrance – remembering who he was so that he would not be forgotten.

The minutes passed. Snow began to fall again, lightly dusting her shoulders and the tops of her antlers, the first spadeful that threatens to bury, in time, all that remains still. 

Penelope lifted her head, the snow fell from her antlers. The first hints of the coming day appeared, dull smudges of gray twilight on the horizon. As another tear fell onto the cold granite of Edward’s headstone Penelope lifted herself up onto her hooves. She placed her hand on the stone a final time before she started her walk back to her home and her son. It would be daylight soon and another day would begin.

From the woods not far away a pair of bright eyes had been silently watching. The feral wolf tilted his head as the blue deer stood, observing with no intent or purpose other than curiosity. As the sound of her hooves crunching into the snow dulled and her form faded away into the darkness, his gaze turned to the horizon. It was almost time.

The feral wolf turned, darting down towards the valley floor. No creature could match his swiftness as he leaped over fallen logs and sprinted effortlessly under low branches, following ancient deer paths and long-dead creek beds through the contours of the valley.

He turned to look over his shoulder when he cleared the treeline near the valley floor. It was getting brighter, the dull gray of twilight beginning to transform to deep purples and blues. Soon the colors in the sky would be reds, then oranges, and finally the brilliant white of dawn. 

The feral wolf looked forward again towards the creek that ran along the valley floor. He fixated on one spot in particular and, after a shot hop over cold water, arrived.

It was a secret spot that only he knew of, a magical place where waters joined, two streams becoming one. In the winter the feral wolf would go there every morning, and every morning the first brilliant rays of sunlight would pour into the valley as the sun crested the gap between two distant mountains. Before the warmth and golden light of the sun spread to every corner of the valley, it shone first on that magical place where the waters met.

The feral wolf smiled, in the particular way wolves do. He sat next to an icy creek and patiently waited for the first rays of sunlight to crest the hillside, heat his fur and warm his bones.

There was only silence in the valley.