Assistant Editor Connor Yeck: After the death of his brother, the rural winter is transformed through a young boy’s search for meaning. Balancing tranquility and brutality, nearness and vastness, Ramspeck offers a journey in which everything—animals, trees, shadows, and snow—might become a symbol if looked at with enough belief.
To hear Doug read his piece, click below:
Rune
The winter after his brother drowns, the boy sees his father carrying a deer out from the woods on his shoulders. And the boy imagines that his brother is the blood on the snow and the four legs that droop in the way the boy’s own legs droop on the nights when his father carries him on his shoulders up to bed. Or maybe his brother is the snow that falls into the deer’s open eyes, which are lacquered black. Or maybe his brother is the moonlight after dark or the shadow of a winter crow on the dead grass or the way the days blink on and off like summer fireflies. And sometimes after dark, the boy stands at his bedroom window and peers down in the direction of the river where his brother drowned, and the moon above that river reminds him of a bone buried in the sky’s mud. And the stars above that river are scattered like thrown bones. And sometimes the boy hears the voices of his parents arguing in the walls, and sometimes the boy wakes to those voices and imagines, for a moment, that his brother is there in the room with him, that his brother is asleep in his bed. And the boy’s breaths feel like something hollowed out. And the nights remind the boy of the way squirrels fall from tree limbs each time his father takes him into the woods and pulls the trigger on his .22, the slack weights dropping through the air before the creatures bounce on the ground. And the boy imagines that the severed heads of those squirrels on the kitchen counter are his brother, and his brother is gazing at him with forlorn eyes. And the boy imagines that those severed heads arrange themselves like runes. And later, when the boy sneaks out the kitchen door, he notices how shadows bisect the yard and dead leaves shuffle primitively beneath him as he follows the deer path toward the river. And the boy listens to the language of those leaves beneath him, leaves that whisper in the secret voice of his brother. And somehow that language seems older than the clouds or the moon or the stars. And the boy stands by the river where, in summer, the minnows in the shallows will be shadow ghosts. And those ghosts, when the warmer weather arrives, will be his brother. And the boy leans against a winter tree and wonders how it holds itself in place for so long, remains motionless as the planet turns and the years accumulate like falling snow. And the boy knows that the dead tree is his brother. And the boy leans against it and studies the frozen river that holds its breath, and that held breath must be what his brother dreams, and the skin of the snow atop the river is also what his brother dreams, and the day breathes in and out like pale clouds.
Doug Ramspeck is the author of eight collections of poetry, one collection of short stories, and a novella. Individual stories have appeared in Iowa Review, Southern Review, Georgia Review, and others. His flash fiction piece “Snow Crow” received first place in the Bath Flash Fiction 19th Award.
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