The Killing Place

Pain is no good bootless

“Pain is the ultimate teacher, but without love it warps us. Some spend their whole lives searching for lost innocence, only to wither—empty and alone. If they only knew it was always there in the raising and the rearing; in their own flesh and blood… cold, hard experience, refined by love.”

The Killing Place

Pain is no good bootless. My great-great grandfather was killed at the age of 31 after falling from a hay wagon, the iron tire snapping him like a splitting maul. He left behind a handful of kids, a grieving wife, and barely a penny to his name.

My great-grandmother saw it happen. She was just small then, but to her dying day she could recount every second to the slightest detail: the wagon pitching, horses groaning, the terrible sound he made; the smell of hay and fear in the late summer heat, and her mother's sobs piercing the still of the night.

A cold place in the mountains would take the broken body, while flashes of memory and bits of his spirit would mingle forever at the spot where the wagon did the killing—at least for her, anyway.