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Fate
Three boys played in an open wheat field, kicking a stone back and forth between each other. Such was the usual pass time for kids of this particular age, the age where mother let them go out and play. Among those three boys was a kid by the name of Tristan, son of Samuel and Molly, and the youngest of the three. There was a particular hierarchic arrangement which punished him for it. It wrought jokes, being teased, and also being harassed for not playing “well enough”. This such day was a repeat of the same. However, this day revealed something different.
The rock bounced off of Aaron’s shoe, then onto Eric’s, then back to Tristan, who kicked it back to Aaron. Such was the game, and however repetitive the game itself might have been, for Tristan, it wasn’t about the game at all. It was a sad thing, but Tristan’s concern was to live up to the older kid’s skill in the game. When he thought he succeeded in this, he allowed himself to be confident, and his reward was equality. Then there was those times when he missed the rock, like this particularly breezy evening, which could only mean…
“Tristan I thought you said you have been practicing…what’s going on?”
“I’m sorry ok? This is just a game” Just a game. This was a quote from his parents. However true it might have been, Tristan was too hard on himself to accept it.
Eric stood next to Aaron, who still remained puzzled. Tristan started off the circle again and it passed on to the two others. Tristan ended up clipping the rock with his toe, sending it spinning back towards Eric, who grabbed it with his hand. A smile came over his face and he started tossing the rock up and down in his hand. “You know what they say about losers…. they say the redcoats like to kill them first.”
Eric, reading Tristan’s expression, “Haven’t you heard?”
A voice sounded behind him. It was his dad calling him in for dinner. Eric handed Tristan the rock, whispering in his ear, “practice”, right before leaving the two of them.
Aaron sort of stood there with his hands in his pockets, smug expression on his face, and when Tristan offered to play with him, “With you? I cant the redcoats might mistaken me for the loser, and not you.” There it was again, the redcoats.
“W-wait the redcoats? Who are they?”
Aaron snorted, “Are you serious? Have your parents not told you anything?”
“Tell me wh…” A strong voice interrupted his query. It was Aaron’s turn to come home. Aaron turned and left without any regard to his question.
“Wait!”
Though Aaron had already disappeared into the evening shade, not a sign that Tristan had ever asked him a question at all. A door creaked open, the closest house to his right. A yellow glow shone from inside, casting his mother’s form in shadow. “Its time to come in, Tristan” He turned and did so, gaze fixed at the ground in a disappointed contemplation. What did they mean? Who were the redcoats?
As he walked in the door his curiosity plagued him, and so when his mother asked him to wash up for dinner, which was already on the table, he could not but ask.
“Mother.. Today when I was playing with Eric and Aaron, they mentioned something about…redcoats? They said they liked to kill losers. What did they mean?”
His mother stared wide-eyed at him for moments, then her head sunk in her hands, which brushed over her hair. “Tristan …wash up”
“But mom who are they?”
His father came from around the corner, responding to the question as if it were asked him. “Son you will do exactly as your mother says.”
Disappointed as ever, he bit his lip and washed his hands in a bucket set in the corner of the dining area, murky having been used by his father. A towel rested beside the bucket. He dried his hands off, and sat in a chair next to his parents, who had already sat down.
His father started grace a moment later, “Bless us Lord, and keep us safe through the night, that no danger might come to us. Thank you for a good harvest this year, Amen.”
Amen repeated twice, stronger from Tristan’s mother, and a faint whisper coming from Tristan.
Both his father and mother started eating, without a word, and they ate like it would be their last meal.
Tristan did the same, but his curiosity nagged at him every time he looked at his plate to observe his parents. Their behavior, it seemed to him, was the only source of information he would have.
A look of strain came over his mother’s face, then a brow so furrowed it blotted out the humanity in her eyes, then tears like none Tristan had seen. His father put a hand on her shoulder, “Molly…we will hold out the night. It will be ok.”
Tristan could not believe what he was hearing. Just before he was going to ask the question one last time, his mother’s voice, like a gentle stream starkly contrasted to her strained expression, “Tristan can you go to your room for a minute?”
Tristan nodded, and went to his room. Though, something was strikingly wrong. It was his father’s prayer, asking for protection. It was his father telling his mother that they would hold out the night. Most of all, it was his mother crying like she had just seen Hell, giving Tristan a dry mouth beyond anything he had felt before. It was his mother sending him to his room. They didn’t want him to know something.
From behind his door, in his darkness of his room, he stood listening. The faintest murmur, what could it mean? A harsh sound from his mother, and then a word that sounded only too familiar to “shot-gun”. Why would he mention that? Tristan knew of the shotgun his father kept in the cabinet, in fact his father had taught him how to shoot it. The only reason why he would be mentioning a gun, was if he wanted to shoot it. At that moment, in an overwhelming circle of connection, it all clicked. Tristan slid down his door helplessly, crying so hard he was sure his parents had heard. Though he didn’t care, his mind was someplace else. A few moments later, a new urgency plagued the boy. He had to get away. If the redcoats were coming to his house, him and his parents had to leave, and fast. Before he opened his door, it was opened for him on the other side.
“Dad! We have to leave! Come on lets go!” He tried to run over the table to grab some leftovers before they left, but his father held him still.
“No…Tristan…” When Tristan still struggled to break free, his father held him stronger. “Tristan! They have us surrounded. There is no way out. Lo….”
A series of gun shots gave them both a severe flinch, and Tristan buried his face in his father’s shoulder, crying uncontrollably. “Look at me Tristan” He did so, cowering from what could happen that very next second. “Promise me…” The door started rattling and his mother grabbed a kitchen knife with shaky hands, barely getting out, “They’re coming!!”
His father’s gaze was fixed on his son, “Promise me, my boy…That you will not fear, and that you will learn to love even people who hate you.”
The door burst open, hinges creaking under the redcoat’s cruel neglect, bayonets protruding rigidly into their home, their hearth. His father threw him to the side, and slammed the door shut, reaching for his shotgun. Twice, the shotgun fired, a final roar of his family’s spirit. A barrage of rifles quickly followed. Silence, and then footsteps towards Tristan’s door, which opened swiftly. He then stared into the eyes of one of them, a redcoat. It was his eyes that caught him first, not the poised circle of his rifle barrel. The red-coat then took a deep breath…
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I agree, good buildup.
The story flowed.
Nothing seemed forced.
The title works.
I was going to ask the same thing as far as why the parents didn't leave sooner.
Also how did they know that they were surrounded?
Was it just them or the whole villege... (
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