Phone call from winter.

a very short non-fiction story based on a small event in my life. I lay this on the forge to be vaporized,purified and eventually condensed."Phone call from Winter"Fall would soon be knocking at our front door, but its winds had already come around the house to find my father and I sitting in the back yard. They were soon making a game of running over our bare feet, arms, necks, and past our dry lips where they met with our expelled breaths to cool off and play. Charcoal, the family mutt, trotted over to meet us. An elderly dog, 84 in his own years, he struggled just to sit. My father, man of about 60 with grey hairs on his black head, looked at the ground with the red dead leaves in the lean green grass.With the last of my strength I scanned the final words of a copy of The auto-biography of Malcolm X lying in my lap before slouching back in my seat. Malcolm had returned from his Hajj to Mecca with an outlook on the world that contradicted his entire life leading up to that point and as history would have it, that old life of his would come back to end him.As blank pages at the end were blown closed by the wind, I turned the book over to its back to read the summary and reviews.My father looked at the old dog lying on the ground and asked”you tired?” to that the dog glanced at him and yawned. “Me too” He replied. I looked over to them with an entire life story rolling in my head and said “Me three.” With all members in agreement we nodded off to sleep.As we slept, Dusk and Midnight silently traded post in spite of our awareness and concerns.When I awoke in the middle of the night I was jolted to my feet by a severe chill that had crept up on me like a phone call from Winter. Dusk had gone without even a wave. I slept as the sundry glow silently eloped with the sunset. I was about to run back to the house which my mother had left well lit and warmed to Receive Fall, but realized my father was still asleep. He was sitting there very still and quiet not two feet from the old mutt who was just as still and quiet. I saw that his situation was shrouded in darkness and cold and it disturbed me to witness his quiet contentment.I roused him from his stillness and directed him back to the house. As we were going in through the door Charcoal brought me the autobiography which had fallen from my lap in my waking. Having fetched the book as he had once done in the games of his youth, the old boy was now in a good humor.No sooner had my father and I closed the door behind us that a chipper new chill blew in to greet my old dog. The wintry whelps enthusiastically lapped at his maw, and he received them with a gentle pant that related to them how there were days when he too had been a pup.

The FORGE

Phone call from winter.

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