Danny parked his rig at the farm and cut off the engine. The almost deafening silence greeted him first. No barking dogs, no chickens, only wind blowing through what was left of the CORNFIELD. Half of it was black stubble, burnt to nothing. The other half stood tall and green like nothing had happened.
Liam sat on the porch steps, holding a beer in his hand, gazing at him. Didn't get up, didn't wave. Sat there like he'd been waiting the last three years for this exact moment, following Danny's movement with DISTRUSTING eyes.
"TRUCK DRIVER now, huh?" Liam yelled out as Danny climbed down from the cab. "Guess that's an improvement from what you were doing last."
Danny collected his duffel bag walked over to the house. His brother looked older and thinner. The type that came from working too much and eating too little.
"Mom asked me to assist you with the harvest."
"Mom says all sorts of things." Liam countered. "Half the field has been burned down anyway. Not much to harvest."
They stood there for a minute, Danny on the gravel driveway, Liam on the porch steps.
"How'd it start?"
"You tell me." Liam's voice was flat, but Danny caught the edge under. "You're the one who knows about fires."
>>>
They heated up spaghetti in the kitchen and ate at the kitchen table that night. The house felt too big with just the two of them. Their parents' pictures stayed on the mantle, but everything else felt different somehow.
"Bank's been hounding me," Liam said, not looking up from his plate. "Insurance covered part, but not nearly enough. I might have to sell."
"To whom?"
"Some Developer is going to come along and build some fancy houses. I suppose city people want to live in the countryside now." Liam laughed, not that it was funny. "Guess our lousy little farm is worth something after all."
Danny played with his food. "I could help. I've been putting aside -"
"With money from drugs?"
There it was. The elephant they'd been going around the entire evening.
"I said I'm clean now. For the past two years"
"Right." Liam got up to grab another beer from the fridge. "Just like you were clean when you set FIRE on Mrs Smith's house."
"That was different."
"Was it? Because I recall you coming in drunk, talking about how you were gonna make them see, how you were gonna burn it all down."
Danny balled up his fists. "I never said that."
"You did. You said a great deal of things that evening. Just before you disappeared for three years."
There was a long silence between them.
"You think I set the fire here," Danny spoke slowly.
"I think you just seem to pop up out of nowhere, and then boom. Half of my field is gone. I think you've been running from something for three years, and now you're here because you have no place else to be."
"I returned because Mom invited me."
"Mom's been dead six months, Danny."
The words hit like a gut punch. He stared at his brother, his head spinning from what he'd heard.
"What?"
"Heart attack. December. I called you, left hundreds of messages but you never called me back."
The kitchen was spinning. "You're lying."
"Go to the cemetery if you don't believe me. She's buried next to Dad."
Danny scooted back in his chair from the table, scraping the floor. "Why didn't you... why didn't you keep trying to find me?"
"Because I got tired of running after someone who didn't want to be found."
That night Danny couldn't sleep, he was restless. He'd kept running through his head the last time he'd talked to his mother: a quick phone call in which she'd inquired if he was eating properly and he'd said he was fine, which he wasn't. He'd had in mind to call her back, but then there was always something, always an excuse.
At around three in the morning, he quit and went outdoors. The wind was chilly, with the smell of burned corn and earth. He walked to the edge of the field, the point of contact between the green land and the burnt area.
The fire had been hot and fierce. There was nothing left but ash.
He heard Liam footsteps behind him and turned to see Liam coming towards him with two beers.
"Couldn't sleep either?"
Danny grabbed the beer and popped the top. "Tell me about the fire."
"Lightning strike. Summer was dry, everything just caught fire. Occurred roughly a month ago."
"Not three years ago."
"No." Liam was silent for a moment. "Three years ago, you were stoned and furious and saying you were going to burn it all down. But you didn't. You just... left."
"I was afraid," Danny said. "Afraid of what I was becoming. Afraid I'd hurt someone."
"You hurt me by leaving."
"I hurt you by staying too. I was using, stealing from you guys, lying about everything. I was --" He stopped, looking for words. "I was becoming something SAVAGE. Something I didn't recognize."
Liam kicked a spot of black dirt. "I used to think you left because you didn't care about the farm, about us."
"I left because I cared too much. Because I knew if I remained, I'd mess everything up here."
They stood there in the dark, two brothers who'd spent three years lugging around the wrong story.
"Mom never stopped talking about you," Liam finally said. "Even when I was mad at you for not calling, she'd somehow find a way to mention you. She knew you were attempting to get clean."
"I should have been here."
"Yeah, you should have. But you weren't, and that's. that's what happened."
Danny stared out over the field, half dead and half alive. "What are you gonna do?"
"I don't know. Maybe sell to the developer or plant something else perhaps. Maybe just... see what grows."
"I meant what I said about helping. I got money saved up, clean money. We could replant the burnt section, try again."
"You going to stick around this time?"
"I don't know," Danny answered honestly. "But I'm tired of running. Tired of being afraid of what I might BECOME."
"Good," Liam answered. "Because I'm tired of doing this alone."
They sat silently sipping their beers, looking up at the stars over the cornfield.
Danny was thinking what it would be like to stay.
This story was written in response to the Literary Games writing prompts from
