Ever since Conrad Bell could remember, he had never felt alone. This feeling was not a warm one, of connection with his fellow man, or all-encompassing love from a parent or loved one. No, these feelings were as foreign to him as those of solitude. He felt, always, as if he were being watched. As if something in the darkness of the vast, dusty plains of the ranchlands outside his cabin, or nested in the deep shadows under his bed, or even just out of sight, just faster than his eyes could catch, was waiting for him.

It was an unseasonably cold summer night as he stood on his family’s creaky wooden back porch, listening to the wind breathe and sigh as the sun finished its long descent into slumber. He felt the usual, dull sense of mourning as he watched the sky darken crimson and the shadows from the distant mountains grow long over the hardscrabble landscape. He tried to keep his mind from the creeping feeling, starting at the base of his spine and slowly clawing its way upward as the world turned inky and unknown, the pinprick of light from the stars useless against the sprawl of darkness. The flickering, feeble light of the oil lantern abruptly swallowed up by the great black beast.

He took a step back from the gathering night towards the warmth of his house. Through the dust-caked window, he could just make out the shape of Papa’s broad gut rising and falling in the telltale rhythm of a sleep. The half-empty bottle of Papa’s favorite “Anti-Fogmatic” next to him assured Conrad that this was a deep slumber, and that Conrad should be clear to escape from the night into the safety of the indoors. A pang of regret hit his gut as he slipped the door open in the careful, practiced manner he’d developed over countless times executing this maneuver. He knew he was supposed to be out there, watching over the ranch, protecting the family, standing boldy in face of the deep night. He didn’t want to be afraid, and Papa thought the only way to make a man out of him was to make him face his longest-held fears.

Papa was a man of the law, who trusted only his eyes and his hands, and not foolish tricks the imaginations could play on the unalert. He told Conrad to quit his ruminations. That there weren’t nothing out in the darkness except the coyotes he’d seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears, and that they were just as unconcerned with him as dust bunnies, which were the sole occupants of the space beneath his cedar bunk bed.

As Conrad snuck the door open, he stole a glance at his slumbering father. The wisdom and quiet strength inhabiting the deep lines in his face. His hands, folder over his broad chest, rough like granite, but his fingers quick and precise as a spider spinning silk. Conrad remembered years ago, his father’s meticulous fingers dancing stitches into a long gash on his leg. He had gotten it caught long, snaring branch as he ran through the deep woods to the west of town. He told Papa he was chasing a jackrabbit, hoping to bring it back home for stew. He remembered his father’s eyes gleam, proud his boy was eager for the hunt. The truth was, Conrad fell running scared, desperate to escape nothing more than that feeling of eyes in the long shadows. Papa doesn’t look at him like that anymore.

Lost in this thought, Conrad misstepped as he entered the house, cursing himself but unable to stop the floorboard from squealing in disturbance. Conrad froze, a statue in the flickering hearthlight. But Papa didn’t stir, his breathing slow and steady and whiskey-laden. Conrad let out a sigh of relief, continuing to tiptoe back to the sleeping quarters. When suddenly, a voice froze the blood in his veins.

“The ghosties out there again, Connie?” Conrad winced, Papa’s nickname cutting him to the bone like always. He turned slowly to his Papa alert and upright in his chair, not a shred of his evidence of his earlier slumber in his taut face.

“It’s cold, I was getting my gloves.” Conrad replied, thinking quickly, but knowing it was no use.

“That’s a tale.” Papa scoffed. “You need me to send Jack out there again to hold your hand?”

“No.” Conrad shot back, indignant. “I wasn’t scared, just cold I said.”

“And you’re lying and we both know it, I said.” Papa leaned forward, his gaze boring into Conrad. “How many times I gotta tell you ain’t nothing out there? Jack and I stay up keeping watch every damn night and you can’t do it once or twice, every now’n’again to help us out?”

“If there’s nothing out there, then why do we need to keep watch?” It was a question that had kept Conrad up for many sleepless nights now, the thought growing in his head like ivy, feeding his doubt and uncertainty of the safety of the night.

Papa thought for a moment, his massive hand stroking the grey-flecked beard clinging tight to his jaw. He seemed to be sizing Conrad up. Finally he nodded with a grunt, come to some decision, and leaned in close to Conrad. “You want to know the truth, boy? Why we need to always be keeping watch over our land and our flock?” His tone was hushed and deliberate, his eyes wide.

The hairs on Conrad’s neck shot up, an icy current slicing through his whole body. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the truth. “Y-y-yes. I want to know.”

Papa stared at him gravely, his mouth stretched into a tight rope across his face. “Alright, I’ll tell you. Come close here, boy.”

His breath caught in his lungs, Conrad stepped closer, the fire crackling fiendishly, casting deep shadows across Papa’s face. Papa’s eyes darted around the room, thought it was just the two of them. “Closer” he whispered. Conrad and Papa were eye-to-eye, Conrad’s breath frozen in anticipation.

“The reason we keep watch every night...is because I SAY SO YOU DERN FOOL!” His bellowing voice startling Conrad, causing him to yelp and trip over his own feet, sprawling onto the hard floor. Papa reared back in thunderous laughter. Conrad could feel his face heating up in a red bloom as he struggled to regain his footing, failing.

From the back of the house, swift and precise footsteps clacked on the floorboards as a figure hurtled from the sleeping quarters at the back of the house.

“Everything alright?” Came the voice, though there was no hint of panic in the words.

“Oh yeah” Papa choked back the laughter, “Everything’s just dandy Jack. You’re brother’s afraid of his own shadow again and needs you to make sure he doesn’t wet himself out there.”

Embarrassment took a hold of Conrad as Jack’s hand, felt the smoothness and warmth of the skin. He was pulled up with a mighty tug to become face to face with Jack, the true recipient of Papa’s adoration and pride.

Conrad could not have been more different than her. Jacqueline (referred to endearingly as ‘Jack’ by Papa, in the same way he un-endearingly called Conrad ‘Connie’) could ride and shoot and spit tobacco with the best of them. She’d stare down a mad-as-hell bull and snort and stomp right back until it was the bull that started thinking twice.

Despite being born only three minutes his senior (or so the story goes), Jack stood eye-to-eye with Conrad, her shoulders broad and tanned from her work out in the ranch, lifting hay bales and wrangling cattle on her trusty gunpowder black mare, Betsy. Her hair was as red as the setting summer sun, as wild and untameable as her spirit, and her piercing blue eyes and freckled-button nose made her a source of great romantic interest amongst the local male youth, except for the fact that they were too intimidated by her, and the looming threat of Papa right behind her, to attempt to court her in even the most gentlemanly of ways.

Folks tended to leave Conrad alone, but for quite a different reason. If there was one word they’d use to describe, Conrad, it’d be: Who?

He was small and slight, with a shock of black hair that would not and could not be conformed into a “proper” style for a man. His features were unremarkable, and where Jack’s eyes were an icy blue, his were a greenish/grey, resembling deep swampwater, trapping light intstead of reflecting it.

She dusted him off, a playful smile creasing her lips. “Maybe he was just grabbing an extra coat. Looks mighty cold out there.” She said. Papa scoffed.

“Come on, I’ll keep ya company for a little while, my legs need stretching.” She said to Conrad, gently turning him towards the door. She saw the gratitude in Conrad’s eyes and winked, never one to make a bad situation worse for anyone.

She ushered him outside, and like it was every time he had Jack by his side, suddenly the dark didn’t feel so dark, the cold not so biting. She closed the door behind them, and made her way to the end of the long, raised porch, standing on the edge, the splintered boards halfway to her feel, rocking back and forth the way he did, her arms splayed wide. It made Conrad nervous. The back porch well away into a narrow, steep gulch, peppered with rocks and sticks and snakes and god knows what else.

“I’m not always gonna be here to help you, ya know.” She said quietly. “Gonna have to learn to face the dark on your own sometime.”

Conrad shuffled his feet. He knew she meant best, but her kind words could strike him to the core, even more so than Papa’s taunts and jabs.

She lifted her foot off the porch, never looking off balance for a second. Conrad inched forward, away from the lantern light, towards his sister, a fiery-haired beacon in the dark.

Without looking back, or even so much as swaying, Jack reached back for his hand. It looked so pale and slender in the moonlight. Her fingers remnded Conrad of silverfish.

“You gonna take it or what?” She said impatiently.

“I don’t want you to fall.”

“I won’t. If you stand firm, you’ll help me anchor.”

Conrad took it, and no sooner had his fingers clutched hers she yanked him forward, sending him hurtling towards the edge. He did his best to let out a yelp, his arms flailed as his vision teetered over the edge, the rocky ground dropping away into the shadowy gully. But Jack had him, and held him firm. He found his footing and she pulled him close.

“I ain’t never gonna let you fall, let something bad happen to you.” She said, her words sweet and calming. “But if you learn to stand strong on your own two, I won’t need to always be there. Hell, may be a time I’ll need help, and I’ll need you then.”

They stood there in the silence for a while, Conrad choosing to keep his gaze up at the glimmering stars, floating along in the high, wide sky.

“Think she’s up there somewhere, like on of them stars?” Jack’s voice broke him from his gaze, Conrad felt all the warmth drain from him.

“I don’t know. Why does it matter?”

Jack shrugged. “It’d just be nice, you know. To know she’s up there somewhere, watching over us.”

She felt Conrad’s silence. His eyes now firmly glued to his feet. She put her hand on his shoulder, her touch gentle.

“Connie, stop. It was both of us she was bringin into this world when she died.”

Conrad sniffled, he could feel the tears welling up in his eyes, as they always did, and no amount of willpower could force them back down. Finally, he spoke through grit teeth. “You were already here, She was fine ohen she got yout out Papa said. It was giving birth to me that killed her.”

The tears fell, pattering on the dust of the timber boards beneath his feet. “And for what? Good for nothin’, yellow runt like me.”

Jack whipped him around, her gaze and tone hardening and stern. “You stop that talk right now Conrad Bell, those ain’t your words. They’re his and he don’t mean ‘em either.”

“Well what then? What good am I to anyone ‘round here?” He felt his cheeks burn.

“When storms come and the horses thrash and whine, who’s the only one who can calm ‘em down? When Bright Eyes was having that hell of a fit and kicked Papa clear across the barn, it was you who got her quiet, got her layin down, mighta saved his life.”

“I meant what good am I to people.”

“Don’t matter, we all God’s critters and those animals respect you, they trust you, and animals got purer hearts than any damn person.” Conrad couldn’t help but smile. It’s true. Maybe he did have some use after all. The cattle would follow him anyway which way he wanted to lead them, and the hounds, even stubborn old Rusty, obeyed his commands like he could speak their language.

They moved back from the threshold and sat on the porch in silence, Conrad drifting slowly off to sleep, Jack’s vigilance unwaning until the sun climbed purposefully over the distant peaks.

Next Chapter: 2