Outpost

This flash fiction piece was written as a story companion to the day 15 drawing prompt Outpost from the 2020 Inktober prompt list. Click here to see the drawing.

I could ask them about you, but I don’t.

I don’t want to hear it from them. I want to hear it from you. But your letters don’t come, even though I know you’re aware I’m stationed at this outpost.

They know you, here. Know your name, know your family, know your story. But not like I do.

And they don’t know us.

That’s why I don’t ask. Because whatever they would say would hit my ears wrong, would sound like a fairy tale of a life you won’t share with me.

I remember the day the militia pulled up and called for any eligible men to take up ranks, to defend the colonies from the Redcoats. As they marched through the square and I headed out to join them, you ran from the school house steps straight to my front door and said, Don’t go, even though we’d barely spoken more than greetings and pleasantries before.

A whole new world opened up to me, in that moment. A world where you felt and thought things about me that I had no idea about. Every interaction we’d shared was laid before me, to be picked apart and examined, to be autopsied now they’d passed away, and to find their cause of death or, perhaps, their cause of life.

Why did you wait so long to say something, why did you wait until you knew I would be leaving to open this door? Days, months, years before that, you could have revealed your world of secrets. It would always have been safe, with me.

I thought about it incessantly, as we marched, and trained, and marched some more. Maybe you did, maybe the answer was somewhere in those moments I let pass by as if they held nothing more than a hello, goodbye, good morning, or good night. Was there something I missed, had I looked harder, listened better? Should I have shown you my world, as well? The world full of questions I had about you, as you walked behind your family, long skirt trailing the mud, head down. I would pass you in the town square and tip my hat and wonder why does she stay at the back, why doesn’t she look up when she walks, what does she think about, is she really as quiet as she seems?

That’s when I remember that you did look up—when I passed. Once, I turned as your family passed by and watched you all walking for a time. Two other men came across your path, and yet your head stayed bowed, eyes firmly affixed to the ground. Then James or one of the others called to me and it went out of my head, replaced by how much grain to order in the general store, or where to find the extra set of horseshoes Old Man Chamberlain asked me to keep back last month.

Don’t go, you said to me, eyes stretched wide like you’d seen a ghost, the whites of them matching the pale of your skin.

What? Was all I could think to say. I had so many more questions in that moment. Thousands, perhaps millions.

How long had I known you? When was the first time I’d seen your face? Why did I somehow seem to think we’d always be together while simultaneously never noticing we were somehow inherently bonded? Why did it feel then, with your hands clutching desperately to the lapels of my threadbare coat, that we’d promised something to each other a long time ago without ever having spoken it aloud?

Don’t go with them, you pleaded with me and my life passed before my eyes. What had I been waiting for? Why didn’t I know there was a part of me that was waiting for you to say it first? But there was. I knew it then, and have felt it growing ever since, learning it, studying the seed planted at the center of me that bore your name.

I must do what I can, was all I could think to say. Your fingers gripped more tightly, then, and I could feel their frantic shivers through the cloth.

What if you don’t return?

Why should it matter to you? I wondered to myself at the very same time I felt the world fall out from under me at the idea that maybe you’d never see my face again, that I’d never tip my hat to you as we passed in the square, that I would never again watch your muddy hem skirt across the ground.

I should have told you, then, what I had realized, I should have said I understand why you don’t want me to go, but so many old things were being re-learned and it all happened so quickly. I realized the longing I felt for us to be together at the moment we were to be parted, perhaps forever, and I didn’t tell you.

We’ll be stationed at Fort Halifax. The postmaster will know how to reach us, was all I could say. I’d hoped, then, you would write and explain it all to me, share the world you had suddenly revealed through ink and pages and stamps and the Pony Express, and I would reveal myself to you as well.

But the letters don’t come. I sit up in the lookout tower for hours, rain, snow, or shine, with my rifle resting on my shoulder and my cloak pulled taut around my shoulders. The hood hides my pained expression as I search for answers within myself. My mind needles at me, tells me there’s a memory I’m missing, a conversation I can’t recall, that would explain why, despite our sudden desperation not to lose each other, neither of us reaches out.

And then I think about your face when I told you what fort we were marching to, and your hands as they fell from my coat just as I reached for them. You let me die while I stood before you, so you wouldn’t feel it later, so you could accept it early on, and not become someone who lost their love in the war. I think of your pain, waiting for me to more than tip my hat, and your pain, now, as a letter from me doesn’t arrive in your mailbox either.

I know I should send one before the battle, tomorrow. I should tell you all I’m thinking, and what I wish could be, and that when I get home, perhaps we’ll mend these dreams together.

But then I look over at the soldier’s cemetery, where an immeasurable number of little white stones dot the hill, and realize it would be cruel to tease you with dreams that will inevitably never come to pass. Breathing deep, I try to let it all go, even as your face swims in front of my eyes, as I know it will until I close them for the last time.