Cuhlyn's Tale

The Crossroads

 CUHLYN'S TALE - THE CROSSROAD

by Joshua Cejka

Rat held his porous cloak over his head and watched Finger stuff his fat sodden face with the last of the mutton. The cloak wasn't doing much. It never had, but now it was creating a trough right over his head which spouted a steady waterfall right in front of his face and into his disintegrating boots, festering his puckered toes inside their woolen stockings. Finger - so named because he'd once knocked out a small farmer with one thump of his huge finger - didn't seem to mind the rain. You could see the huge fat drops smash against his fat bald head with such force that a little misty halo of exploded droplets ringed around him. He dropped his elephantine rear on a fallen tree on the other side of the crossroads. The force of him sitting travelled through the ground and up the stump Rat was sitting on, jarring him.  

"Lookit that fat bastard."

"Eats like a king he does." Scab agreed from his own makeshift shelter, cobbled together with a lattice of bare branches and held like a sultans shade over his own head. 

"Remind me again why we keep him around?" Rat itched for a smoke but the rain wouldn't let up. For the eightieth time that morning he dragged his gaze around the hazy dark sentries of the forest for any little place that might afford shelter from the downpour to light one up, but there was nothing. What little leaves there were were clinging like quivering children to late autumn branches as a steady cold wind dragged down from the mountain passes with desperate claws. Most of them had given up and settled into a thick mat of sodden crap all over everything. 

"Ee's my sisters cousin. And he's big and scary looking."

"If'n the eedjits only knew he had the temper of a big fluffy bunny.."

"Aye. And the grace of a drunk ogre with a belly full of beans."

Coal sloshed into the frame made by the waterfall cloak and glanced over at the big man, now tossing the bone from his mutton over his shoulder. 

"I don't know, Rat, my friend. There was that scrap at The Smoking Pig. He was pretty good in that."

Rat peered around the waterfall at Coal. The slight adjustment altered the course of the river such that it ran straight down his sleeve and over his formerly dry chest, chilling his heart. Coal was smoking, he could see. He was cupping a hand over the bowl of his pipe, protecting it from the downpour. It was producing a pretty nice smoke. He also noticed that Coal seemed, of the five of them, the driest and most cheerful which only made him want to stab him more. All the young gals back at the home place - who couldn't endure his grin with any sense of personal propriety - loaded him up with treated gum blankets and warm cloaks and liners. Compared to the rest of them, he looked like a dandy. A dry and happy dandy. 

"Gimme a piece of that pipe, Coal."

Coal immediately tucked it into his chest, his well wrapped hand still cupped over the smoldering bowl. A little simpering hurt look washed over the little mans dripping face. Rat hated that look. It kindled something mean in the bleak pit of his heart and made him want to punch it in but, Coal was his nephew and he'd never hear the end of it. Apparently, his wife was not immune to the boy's charm either.  

"Ain't my fault you never switched to pipe, Rat, my man. Bet you don't have such as a scrap of dry leaf left to you." Coal took a draw from the pipe to emphasize his point. 

"All the more reason to pinch yours. Gimme some."

"Darby portioned it out fairly. Ain't my fault you cain't smoke your'n. Next time we hit the Pig you buy yerself a pipe off my man Forsmyth. You'll thank me."