“I’ll be back in time for supper,” Ephraim murmured, pulling on his coat and tying his boots. “I’m gonna be down in town; I have things to do.”
She didn’t reply, of course. She was still pissed at him. She was always pissed at him.
Ephraim let out an aggravated groan as he grabbed his ax and rifle from where they sat by the kitchen pantry. “Tell the boys to get outside and do something today. I recon it’ll be a nice one.”
His words were followed by nothing but tormenting silence. With her long, blonde hair falling down to cover her face as she relentlessly read the book in her lap, the one he called wife refused to answer him. Part of him wanted to stride toward her, throw down his ax and gun, brush away her silky hair and embrace her until they had forgotten everything that had ever come between them. But the other part of him wanted to run across the kitchen, fling his ax and rifle against the wall, and lift her out of her chair by her collar, shaking her back and forth until she was too afraid to ignore him any longer.
But, he did neither. Instead he simply rolled his eyes as he left his home, slinging his gun over his shoulder and tying his ax to a loop in his belt. His boots crunched atop the mid-march snow once he emerged outside, and the gentle breeze caused a slight chill down his spine.
Stuffing his hands in the pockets of his coat he soon escaped from the despair his wife’s silence had sucked him into and found himself humming along to nature’s cry for spring. The few birds that dare be in the mountains at this time of year called out to each other, bantering back and forth with their melodious voices. The soft wind whistled quietly in his ear and caused the branches of the tallest pines to collide, creating a calming aura. Ephraim continued to hum his joyous tune as he gazed around at the mountains in awe, his stride continuing to be strong and fast.
When he count finally see building off in the distance and could hear the faint drone of society after what felt like forever, he let out a sigh of exhaustion and lowered his pace ever so slightly. The buildings sat small and far between, making up a small town of few stores and few houses. The streets were covered in a thin layer of soft snow that had just fallen that morning, and the rising sun cast a delicate light down on the place that he had always called his own.
The streets of Leadville were rather empty that day, tread upon by only a few random pedestrians who looked at him nervously after glancing at his weapons before quickening their pace and walking off in some other direction. The people seemed to change every time he came in. Once things had been as they should have been; Women had worked at home, men had worked somewhere else, and kids ran about stupidly making trouble. The ladies were clad in long dresses and stayed quiet when their husbands were near, and no one had looked at him with concern when he brought his gun into town. But, once he had turned thirty things seemed to change; things weren’t like they were when he was a child. It upset the part of him that resisted revolution; it made him hate others, and nearly hate himself.
“Ephraim!” A husky voice shouted.
Confused, Ephraim spun around in his pot to find a man approaching him His belly bulging out further than it ever had before, and his come over looking even more unappealing now, Bill looked like he had aged 10 years in only a couple of months.
“Well, hey there, Bill,” Ephraim greeted with a hearty handshake and a half-genuine smile.
“Haven’t seen you in ages!!” Bill exclaimed, breathing heavily after what must have been only a short run to catch up with his friend. “Used to see you every day when you lived in town. Now that you live up further in the mountains you don’t eve hardly ever show your face ‘round here anymore.”
“It takes longer to get down here than you’d think,” Ephraim explained. “I can’t take horses up there; it’s too steep. And foot it’s nearly a three hour hike both ways. You may still be feeling fit and young, Bill, but age is catching up with me.”
Bill rolled his eyes but relinquished a slight smirk. “Still a smart one, I see.”
Ephraim shrugged his shoulders and smiled, shifting his feet uneasily, hoping to imply that he needed to go.
Bill let out a sigh and placed his hands just beneath the flab of fat that bubbled over his belt. “I still don’t understand why you had to move so far away in the first place.”
“It was just getting too crowded for me.”
“500 people is too crowded for you?” Bill began to chuckle. “Oh, buddy, you sure ain’t a people person, are ya? I’d love to see you handle a place like New York City; I hear they’ve gotten over the 50,000 mark as of a couple years ago! Only 1925 and we already got over 50,000 people in one place; what the hell’s gonna happen to us in 50 years? We’ll be living on top of each other!”
Ephraim didn’t reply and looked away without even cracking a smile.
Bill stopped laughing and cleared his throat. “Well, do you want to get coffee real quick? I ain’t got nothing on my schedule for the rest of the morning here.”
“I kind of do, though. Mrs. Landon asked me to come and cut some firewood for her out at her place.”
“I won’t keep you longer than an hour,” Bill urged. “That needy lady can wait.”
“She’s 63 and widowed.”
Bill shrugged. “My point still stands.”


“So, how’s that wife of yours?” Bill questioned as he finished off his last cup of coffee. “Has she even come to this town once since you moved up there?”
“She has no reason to leave,” Ephraim murmured, hunched over his coffee while watching the people of the diner with a curious eye. Men and women sat together, laughing, talking, and staring off in silence. Children sat with their families or ran around with one another, playing at the pinball machine or dashing in and out the door. His eyes rested on one woman in particular. She had short blond hair that was up in short curls, framing her perfectly porcelain face well. She wore a loose shirt and baggy pants that touched the floor. The silk cloth of her blouse fell upon her curves well, and it sent an uncomfortable chill throughout Ephraim’s body. “God, what is happening to this place?”
“What?”
Ephraim looked away from the woman and back at his friend, shaking his head as he did so. “Never mind. It’s nothing. Elizabeth is well, though. She takes care of the house and the boys.”
Bill gazed at Ephraim with concern before finally letting it go and relaxing back in his seat. “Well that’s good. And Joseph and George? How’re they?”
“They’re just fine.”
“Good… Good.”
Ephraim took another sip of his coffee and stared out the window blankly, watching as people crossed the streets and glaring as a large, black automobile slugged through, disrupting the snow and the peace. “How about Mary?”
“Mary’s doing well,” Bill replied. “She’s out of state right now visiting her folks.”
“And you didn’t go with?”
Bill shrugged. “Her folks ain’t never been fond of me, and, quite frankly, I don’t really like them either. So, I told her she can just go by herself. Besides, I got work.”
Ephraim stared at his friend –dumbfounded. “You let her go out of state without you? What the hell’s the matter with you?”
Bill, taken back, furrowed his brow and placed his elbows on the table. “I know it ain’t the… conventional thing to do, but I trust Mary.”
Ephraim raised his eyebrows and looked away, taking a sip of his coffee.
Bill sighed and checked his watch. “Well, it’s past 11. I’d say you better head over to that old broad’s house, don’t you?”
Ephraim nodded and set his cup down. “Yeah, I suppose I should.” He dug a dollar out of his pocket. “This’ll pay for what I got. Leave the rest for a tip.”
Bill nodded. “See ya whenever you decide to come back.”
Ephraim waved and left the building, his rifle hitting the door on his way out.
The walk to Mrs. Landon’s wasn’t far from the diner, and he only came across two other people as he did. One was a poorly clad man who gave him a courteous nod of the head as they passed, and the other was a pretty young woman, no older than 20, who looked at the ground with nervous eyes and hurried by.
The gate to Mrs. Landon’s squeaked eerily as Ephraim opened it, and slammed shut behind him. He knocked on the door heavily several times, untying his ax from his side and holding it firmly in one hand.
An old woman answered the door and invited him inside, brushing her gray hair out of her face and wobbling helplessly behind him.
“How much do you need today?” Ephraim asked, approaching the back door.
“Just enough to last the rest of the winter,” She answered in a high, sweet voice. “So, I really don’t need that much.”
A high pitched barking interrupted them as a rat-like creature came barreling down the hallway and flung itself at Ephraim. It started to scratch at his pants restlessly, biting at him with its tiny teeth and glaring at him with its beady eyes.
Aggravated, Ephraim shook his leg and sent that rat-thing flying.
Slightly shocked, the old woman hid her concern and ran to pick up her pet. “Don’t mind Charles,” he muttered, stroking the head of the ugly little monster that growled at Ephraim. “He’s not fond of visitors. I won’t let him bother you, though.”
Ephraim clenched his jaw and gripped the handle of his ax more firmly. “That’s alright,” he mumbled as decently as he could. “I’ll just be out back then. I won’t be out there long.”
“Okay,” the old woman said, following him as he opened the back door. “Don’t exhaust yourself. Come in if you need a break!”
Ephraim didn’t look back as he trudged across the yard and entered the woods that encompassed the house, having to only take several steps in until he found a small oak, begging to die. He swung the ax again and again at the trunk of the young tree, chips of bark flying past his face with every hit. It didn’t take long for droplets of sweat to appear on his face and saturate the thin layer of snow at his feet, and before he had even cut it down completely he had to take a couple of moments to breathe.
As he was swinging the ax and lapsed into a state of absolute solitude and concentration, he came to realize an aggravating growling coming from near his feet. Looking down slowly he saw a small, rat-like dog biting at the leg of his pants. Aggravated beyond belief, but trying to hold it all in, Ephraim lifted his foot up and swung the dog off hard enough to send it flying until it hit a nearby tree. With a shrill whimper it hit the ground and lay there for a long second until Ephraim finally turned away and went back to swinging his ax.
A newfound anger rushed through his veins without his consent, making him swing even harder. His face flushed red as beads of sweat raced down his cheeks, and the impact of his ax on the tree made his arms reverberate with intense force.
Then the growling came again. His face seemed to swell up like a balloon as it fumed red and began to shake. His dark eyes felt as though they were bulging from his skull, forcing his eyelids back before they would pop away from his sockets and fall like marbles into the snow. He couldn’t explain this anger that welled within, he couldn’t define it… But he tried his hardest to control it.
“You damn pest,” he growled back as he swung his leg to the side, sending the varmint flying once more. The thud of its scraggly body against the trunk of a nearby tree was even louder and more sickening this time, bring Ephraim a calming satisfaction that ensured his eyes a longer residency in his eye sockets, and allowed his face to return back to a state of semi-normalcy.
There was no hesitation this time when he went back to chopping down the oak. His arms swung with a speed and ferocity that he didn’t know he was capable of. Pieces of bark flew about his as if he were caught in the midst of the storm, and for several long seconds he was convinced he wasn’t even breathing. The world around him became lost, and soon it was just him and the tree before him. The brisk spring air suddenly transformed into fumes of hell, forcing the skin of his arms and face to prickle in uneasiness, and his lips to become numb. He never understood why this happened to him, and the thought of the unknown only made him more uncomfortable and enraged, forcing him even further into the recesses of hell in which he already so frequently resided.
When the growling came again he was finally pushed into oblivion, and the anger that had flamed within his soul had taken over entirely. Without so much as a blink of an eye his feet pivoted easily beneath his body, and his arm kept swinging his ax. It only took a slight change in the angle of his right shoulder, and the blade came smashing down hard into the ground. And it wasn’t until his face felt upon it the warm trickle of the animal’s blood that he realized what he had done. In a matter of seconds the air around him became brisk again, biting at his skin like microscopic leeches, the silence became absolutely unbearable, and the anger that had permeated his being has left him in a wash of panic.
The beady eyes of the lifeless rat stared up at him with disgust and sorrow, twitching ever so slightly with the minute amount of vivacity they still held. Ephraim watched in petrified silence as the glimmer of life slowly eroded from the beast’s pupils, and washed away onto the snow as rivers of red.
Unable to decide what to do, Ephraim did nothing more than turn back to the tree and continue cutting it down in a calm and dutiful manner, his face stoic and tight, and his eyes never averting from the point in which his ax hit.
The minutes passed by in hours, and it seemed to be days until he finally heard the relieving crash at the fledging tree fell to its ultimate demise. He proceeded to chop it into smaller pieces at the same unhurried pace, and carried those pieces towards Ms. Landon’s house.
When he heard the back door creak open he was filled with a shot of panic, but forced himself to hide it as best he could.
“Why, thank you so much, Ephraim,” he heard her sweet voice say, causing his panic to grow even deeper. “It sure does mean a lot.”
He shot a quick smile up at the old woman, and the sight of her grinning face, her gray hair blowing across her eyes with the breeze, and her frail frame finding it hard to stand upright made his guilt worsen tenfold. He quickly dropped his gaze as he set down the last pieces of wood and began to walk away.
“Oh, Ephraim, don’t you want any money?” The old woman called after him, waving her hands to stop him.
“No, it’s alright,” he assured her, forcing one last smile before he continued on his way.
“Well, thank you again!” she cooed. Her soft voice being carried away in the tender breeze, wrapping around his neck like a noose ready to take his pointless life.
He refused to turn around to say anything further. He kept his head down towards the ground as he tromped around the house and stormed through the gate, murmuring meaningless nothings to himself just to keep himself from lashing out again. He could feel it again. It was stabbing at the side of his soul, begging him to release it. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
Not again.
With his ax held firmly in his hand and his rifle bobbing on his back, he walked through Leadville with a determined pace, ready for nothing more than to be home. It had been too much, all of it. It was all too much. He needed silence. Peace.
“Ephraim! Well, how are you? I haven’t seen you in ages!”
The patting of his shoulder by some man claiming to be a friend of his was like a bullet wound to his heart. He had to clench his jaw and close his eyes before he could even bear to raise his head and look his fellow man in the eye.
It was a distant cousin of his, a man he hadn’t talked to in years.
“Hello,” he stammered, looking his cousin in the eye for only a split moment before averting them back to the pavement and attempting to pass him by.
“Well hey there, I haven’t seen you in ages, put ‘er there!” suddenly Ephraim felt his hand being clasped and shook firmly, and looking into the young man’s eyes made his soul feel naked and barren. The near stranger could see his every secret, of this he was nearly sure.
He tried to force a reply, but he found himself at a loss of words. The stranger’s name would not come to his lips.
“How have you been?” The man asked, letting go of Ephraim’s cold hand and taking a tentative step back, running his fingers through his slicked back hair while gazing at his cousin cautiously. “You don’t look so well.”
“No, no I’m fine,” Ephraim assured, rubbing his palm on his pants. “You just caught me off guard is all.”
“Whatever you say… How’s Elizabeth and the boys?”
Ephraim rolled his eyes. That question was overbearing. Every time people asked him that he had to keep himself from strangling them until their throat cracked underneath his fingers. It was as if his well-being wasn’t good enough. It was as if he wasn’t good enough for them. “They’re just fine.”
“Gosh, I haven’t seen Elizabeth in… Well, in years, I suppose,” The man sighed, placing his hands on his hips and looking up at the bright, blue sky. “And I haven’t seen the kids since they were not even big enough to crawl. You’ll have to bring them down sometime. You can bring them all over for dinner at my place if you’d like.”
Ephraim glared into the large pupils of his cousin’s eyes, grinding his teeth and clenching his fists to simply keep himself from bursting. A small part of him wanted to do nothing more than take the ax in his right hand right to the man’s head. He wanted to scream and shout in delight as the man thrashed helplessly on the ground, staining the pure, white snow with his blood. He wanted to watch as the man’s eyes flickered back and forth in a frenzy of panic right before his last breath wheezed out from in between his teeth… But, instead he simply forced a strained nod, relinquishing a whispered “sounds great” before he stormed off, brushing roughly against the man as he did so.
The air was bitter, the snow was crunchy, and that ax had never felt heavier to him than it did right then.


The walk home was not as relaxed as it had been for him that morning. The birds’ voices were annoying and grated at his ears, and the breeze that had brought dreams of spring now only brought images of death. Every tree he passed seemed to be staring at him, judging him. Everywhere he turned he could feel eyes on him, and he found himself walking with his ax held tightly in both hands, his head spinning back and forth to try and keep a gage on his surroundings.
He tried to calm himself by thinking of home. He pictured the small table and his reclining chair. He pictured the kitchen with his rifle sitting beside the counter, and the rocking chair that sat facing the big living room window. He pictured his boys lying in their separate beds, facing the wall. Their small bodies were curled up in fetal position with their hands underneath their porcelain faces. He pictured his beautiful wife sitting by the window, staring out at the mountains with glistening blue eyes. He could see himself moving towards her, reaching out a hand to touch her, to bring her into his embrace. Before his fingers could brush against the soft silk of her dress she turned, piercing him with her gaze. Her eyes were filled with a sorrow and longing that he knew would never be cured, and as if she were God she brought him to his knees without lifting a finger. A lone tear ran down her pure face, and as his soul died right there on the stone, cold floor, she turned away and went back to staring out the window at the bountiful mountain.
“What in the hell’s got you so on edge?”
The voice came so suddenly that Ephraim didn’t have a moment to control his reaction. A deep scream came from his throat as he heaved his ax high in the air and brought it flying down in the direction of the words. His attempt was immediately brought to an end, however, as a pair of hands grabbing him firmly around the wrists as his ax was still high in the sky. After he had a moment to recover, Ephraim allowed himself to open his eyes and see the man that stood before him. At least in his 50’s, the man was several inches taller than Ephraim, and possessed a full head of white hair and a thick beard with streaks of grey. He wore a thick coat, heavy boots, and a double barreled shotgun that was slung across his back. His grip was strong, and it wasn’t until Ephraim relaxed that he finally let go.
“What are you doing here?” Ephraim immediately demanded, taking a large step back and regaining a strong grip on his ax.
“Calm down, buddy,” the man said with an almost mocking tone, holding his hands out in front of him as if he were approaching a mountain lion cub. “I’m just up here hunting, ain’t that what you’re doing too?”
“No,” Ephraim snapped, taking a step back every time the man took one forward. “I’m headed home. And you’re not allowed around here. All of the 20 miles surrounding my place is my property, and you’re not allowed on it. You have to leave.”
The man furrowed his eyebrows in confusion before spinning around slowly, looking over the entire expanse of mountain. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, buddy. There ain’t no houses around here. I’ve hunted here my whole life. Ain’t nothing but mountain here… Listen, you sure you’re alright?”
“Yes, I’m alright!” Ephraim snapped aggressively. He could feel his cheeks heating up and his palms beginning to sweat. His heart was starting to pick up speed, and it took his deepest concentration to keep himself under control. “And I know what the hell I’m talking about, buddy. This is my property, and I want your ass off of it right this second.” He lifted his ax up high enough so that the blade was only inches away from his own face. He glared at the man and watched as he took a step back, a sudden expression of panic flickering across his eyes. “And, I am not afraid of taking the punishment of trespassing into my own hands.”
“Listen, I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but…”
“It doesn’t matter who I am!” Ephraim shouted, his voice reverberating through the entire forest, bouncing off the trunks of the trees and rebounding off the rocky precipices. It silenced the few birds who had dared to sing, and nearly brought the old man before him tumbling onto his back. It took every ounce of his soul that yearned for God’s approval to hold back the demon within, making it hard to keep from racing forward, swinging the ax like he were playing a game of baseball. As he stood there breathing heavily, the old man began to cower, sinking closer to the ground with every one of Ephraim’s pants. “It only matters what I’m going to do to you if you don’t get your ass off of my land right this seconds. I suggest you don’t stick around to find out what that’d be.”
The man heeded his advice, staggering to his feet and running off in the direction of town. It took several minutes before Ephraim’s heart went back to normal. Eventually he was able to lower his ax and bring one foot in front of the other to start bringing himself home. The rest of the walk was accompanied only by utter silence, even the breeze had ceased to aide him. He was all alone, and he couldn’t have asked for better timing. For just a moment he felt as though her were in complete control again. And when he came to find a dark cave engraved in the mountain side, he was nearly able to smile again.
As he entered he let out a sigh of relief, throwing his gun and ax down before sitting down next to his wife and kicking his feet up.
“Baby, you ain’t never gonna guess what happened just a while ago,” he mumbled, taking the tattered hat from his head and playing with it. “I met some dumbass wandering through the forests hunting. I told him he was on my land and he had the guts to tell me he was wrong! He told me that there aren’t any houses up here, that nobody lives up here. Can you believe that?”
Ephraim let out a snort of laughter as he shot a tentative glance at his wife. His foolish grin giving way to an aggravated frown, he rolled his eyes. Her face was still down in that damn book. “’course, you don’t think we belong ‘round her neither, do you?”
There was still a silence.
“Well, we had no choice,” he grumbled, focusing on his hat again. “If we would have stayed down there someone would have found out. They would have realized that… Well, we just couldn’t stay down there any longer, you understand? We moved here so that we could stay together. Otherwise, they would have taken you from me, do you get that?” His eyes searched his stoic wife for some sign of understanding, but all emotion was masked from him by a curtain of stringy hair. “They would have taken you, Joseph, and George, put you in boxes and buried you under dirt. And don’t even ask what they would have done with me. They would have done much worse with me, I promise you.”
Elizabeth remained impartial, remaining motionless in her age-old rocking chair.
Letting out a sad sigh he got up from his seat and kneeled down next to his love. Staring miserably at the unmasked bones of her body, he grabbed her cold, unearthed hand, throwing the book to the floor. The faint stench of death suffocating him, he leaned forward and kissed her the bones of her cheeks nonetheless. “I’m so sorry I did it,” he admitted. “I love you so much. I love you more than anything in the world. If you just hadn’t made me so angry… If you hadn’t made me angry we’d never be out here.” He tried to keep his tears back but one escaped and rolled down his cheek anyway. “I just wanted to keep us together. I didn’t want them to take you away.” Ephraim wrapped her skeleton in his arms, nuzzling his face in her neck, allowing the few tufts of hair she still had left to envelope his face in their deadly embrace. “But don’t worry,” he assured her, letting her go and smiling at the blue eyes that seemed to smile back. “We’ll make this work. You’ll like it up here eventually, I promise.”