It was warm and the smoke of the cookfire curled away into the sky, turning a bright full moon into a hazy phantom on the horizon. The cicadas were buzzing in their bushes as the soundtrack for the evening, with the occasional solo provided by the pop of a splitting log or the hiss of a kettle. The smell in my lungs was that of rich spices, tangy herbs, sour sweat, and dusky earth. It all mixed into the smoke creating a rare perfume with more delicate and pleasing notes than those carried in any department store.
I lowered my eyes from the luminous phantom above and turned to the others who had gathered around the fire. They were all alike in their solitude. A half dozen strangers sharing warmth and safety for a night before departing again onto their respective paths, without so much as a shared breath. Yet despite this definite and inescapable separatism, there was also the undeniable community that the fire brought. No matter what we thought or knew to be true, for tonight at least, we were all friends. All family.
The buck directly across from me is a banker from back east. He tells us stories of his trade, of the deals brokered and the fortunes made. He has a slight and quivering voice to accompany his equal build. He looks to each of us in turn as he tells his tales, looking into our eyes in what he no doubt thinks is a firm and authoritative confirmation of his greatness, but in this light looks more like the desperate search for a stranger’s approval. Like so many of his kind he wants only two things now: forgiveness and redemption.
Fortunes made are good only to those lucky enough to occupy the past along with them. I look into my own wallet to humor him as he reaches another crescendo in his hollow orchestration. To his disappointment, and no one’s surprise, it is not filled with crisp bills from my recent adventures in town, but with mud. When he looks at it he turns into a rapid decrescendo until he falls silent at the knowing looks from around the cookfire. Every family has a prodigal son.
It is the turn of the mare next to him now. She is a small thing too, but not in the way that the banker was. She is young, too young. I place her at ten, still blank, yet her face is lined with worry and undue wisdom. Her story is short, her gaze never leaving the depths of the fire. It is filled with more lies than truths, and we all know it, just as we know better than to name them, She has earned her secrets, and more, but secrets are all we can give her. Every family has an orphan.
We remain still for a time. The pot simmers, the food stews. I feel a breeze come across the plains and lean in to its tender kiss. The others follow suit, the banker making comment to its sweetness. The comment is coarse and fails to truly capture the beauty of the thing, and so it is ignored. When the stew is finished we share portions equal in size to contribution and need. The man to my left goes without.
He is a large stallion, densely muscled and frightfully quick. His legs are restless and he constantly shifts his weight on his pack. He does not want to be here. He flicks his eyes from side to side, face to face, without pause. He is not searching for redemption like the banker, he is searching for escape. He can not speak any language we know and so uses a combination of grunt and charade to get his points across. Still he posses surprising manners for one his size and apparent disposition. His fetlocks are bald and one looks like it was gnawed raw. Every family has a criminal.
Next in turn to tell their story is a buck of an age only a few years removed from mine own. He talks of his love out west, his striped queen. He talks of her brilliant eyes, how they shine like the crown jewels of legends long forgotten. He gets lost reminiscing in her voice, soft as summer rain and melodic as a chorus of angels. The inevitable pause comes when he reaches her smile, how it is more brilliant than any star, more pure than the holiest of saints. Young love is the most powerful, and the most tragic. Every family has a poet.
Last is an elderly mare, going to rejoin her family who has already gone to ‘Loosa. She shows us tintypes that they sent her via express and passes out ginger snaps she made before departing, The cookies are had but dissolve on the tongue after a moments savor. Her grandchildren are all adventurers born, she says, and will do well to be away from the evils of city life. Her son was lost to such corruption, as was her sister, but she will not see her grandbabies fall to the same seduction. Every family has a mother.
The eyes turn to me, in their own time. First the banker, expectant that he will be given the payment he feels owed. Next the criminal, perhaps thinking my tale will enlighten him as to where he is running and where he can finally be free. Then the Mother, smiling and expecting nothing but more of the company she has already been given. After her is the Poet. He comes over to me in search of consolation as much as for whatever advice on heartache i might offer. And finally the orphan. So quiet and unobtrusive, like the shadow she cast across the wide desert planes. She wants nothing but to go to bed and knows she can’t until my story is told.
I collect their gazes and count them. I take their expectations, their worries, and their stories into account weighing whether or not they are family enough to hear mine. I sit quiet for a while longer, meditating on everything before i rise. I extinguish the fire with a few kicks of sand, and go off onto my path. Every family has its end.