Windward Review Volume 19 (2021): Empathy and Entropy

“Why don’t you guys like me?” Budda asked through tears.
Eddie thought the question was just in his own head, himself asking that
when he was young and his finger on the trigger. Their uncle laughing in reply,
“Well maybe if you kill the damn thing, you’ll be better.” If he wanted it dead, he
should’ve done it himself.
“You’re our little brother, we love you,” Asher said. “But you gotta man
up. Just kill it and you’ll feel better.”
The crack in the dark air resonated through all of them as the whimpering
stopped. The pistol end smoked until the breeze took away the wisp. Budda
hadn’t even touched the trigger on Asher’s pistol. His bewildered face must have
wondered if he did though. Eddie lowered his arm that held the pistol that just
fired. He holstered it and took away the gun from Budda, shoving the butt against
Asher.
“What the fuck, Eddie, he was supposed to do it?” Asher said.
“Fuck you.”
Asher shoved Eddie down and Budda started to cry. Eddie ran at Asher
and tackled him, knocking him to the ground and hitting him twice in the jaw
before Asher blocked the next one and threw dirt into Eddie’s eyes. Eddie stood
up wincing and was met with a hook to his ear. Eddie fell and Asher advanced at
him, but a kick to his already twisted ankle splayed him in the dirt next to Eddie.
Another kick to Asher’s face quieted him and let Eddie get on top. He pulled him
up by his shirt and hit him again. His knuckle sliced open on a tooth and sent
blood spewing onto Budda’s shirt. Budda pushed Eddie off of Asher. The three
brothers laid in the dirt, breathing in the dust, while an owl hooted above them.
“It’s this way,” Eddie said, sweeping the flashlight around on the ground.
Budda was behind him with Asher in the back, limping and quiet. The sun was
a memory now, the shadows consumed them as they walked in the dark of the
moon. Coyotes howled to break the silence at times, Eddie imagined they found
the one dead in the canyon. Other times he thought they might be calling out to
them, angry, sad, wanting revenge. There are worse things out here though.
“Are you okay?” Budda asked.
“I—” he stopped when he realized that Budda was talking to Asher. Eddie
kept moving forward, not wanting to look back at his big brother. He didn’t
want to argue anymore, he just wanted to go home.
“I’m okay,” Asher said.
“Are you okay, Bud?” Eddie asked Budda.
“Yes… I’m sorry I was scared.”
“You don’t have to be sorry about that,” Eddie said. “We all get scared
sometimes. Just have to learn from it.”
“He’s right, Budda,” Asher said.
Eddie still heard the slur in his speech. He ignored Asher and focused
on getting them back to the truck, but the land seemed to change at night.
The landmarks he remembered as they were tracking the coyote felt switched
around, as if someone had come and turned everything just a little, enough to
get them lost.
“Do you think mom and dad will be mad we’re not back yet?”
Eddie didn’t like when Budda referred to his dad as all of theirs but
thought better not to correct him. “Nah, she knows it might’ve taken all day.
Don’t worry, we’ll get to the truck and I’ll call them and just say you wanted to
spend the night with us and our phones died or something. We won’t get service
until we get closer to town anyway.”
They walked with the quiet deafening them, tense and thick, only the
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