Tempting Fate

Twenty-One

Zeke walked down a dirt road to a quiet stretch of the slow-moving, muddy Cumberland River. He went right up to the edge of the water. It was a warm, drizzly afternoon, and he saw two boys out in a canoe in the middle of the river, heard them laughing and fishing, not caring about the weather or, he hoped, anything else.

He remembered Joe taking him out here to show him the spot where Mattie Witt met Nick Pembroke.

“Can’t you see it, Zeke? The two of them…”

Joe had howled with glee at the thought. That story was just the greatest thing to him.

Zeke lifted his pack off his shoulders and got out the simple container that held his brother’s ashes. Joe had loved the river. He’d loved Tennessee and the people of their small town.

Stepping just into the water, Zeke lifted the top off the container. There were no accusations or excuses within his brother’s ashes. No tales of heroics or cowardice. Just the remains of a man who’d died far from home.

Who’d died a hero to his men.

Zeke knew what he had to do.

Maybe people’s ideas about his brother would change now that the truth was out, but maybe they wouldn’t. Quint Skinner was dead, and Joe had been dead for a long time.

Zeke didn’t care about what other people thought. He only cared about what his brother had been.

He took out a folded bandanna and wiped the rain from his forehead and the tears from his eyes, and then he wiped his fingers until they were perfectly dry.

And as the boys in the canoe disappeared around the bend, Zeke laid his brother to rest in the river he’d loved.