Keeping Watch 2

 Keeping Watch 2

Corvin leaned against the charred porch post that once had his name carved into it, and looked out over the smoldering ruin that had been his cabin.

That had been his home.

They had broke camp and rode through the night towards the flickering orange glow, hoping it wasn’t the cabin.

The only thing left standing was the brick chimney. Once red, now blackened by the fire that had consumed everything else that he loved.

And maybe everything that he loved.

“They may have gotten out, Corv.”

He turned and looked at his father, still sitting on his horse. His voice was gentle and reassuring, but Corvin noticed the old man’s eyes kept darting from tree to tree, and he never took his hand off his gun.

Corvin didn’t say anything but walked to where his door used to stand. Brigit had begged him to use an unbroken piece of oak and then had him carve the intricate image on the front of it. Loops, and circles that went on and on in one continuous line, with a bulky and odd looking cross in the middle of it all with a shamrock in the middle of it.

He had never been terribly religious, and it wasn’t a traditional cross, but Brigit had been insistent and said it was named for the saint who she was named after.

So he sweated from the labor, and the fear of messing up the carving under her watchful eye. Between her drawn lines, and his steady hand, he was able to get it done to her satisfaction. He then at her insistence nailed horse shoes over it.

And now it was gone.

The horse shoes blackened and scattered in the mess all that remained of the doorway. He stepped through the openness where the door had once stood, his boots crunching on the still smoldering wood. His eyes scanned the floor, around the fireplace, and in the kitchen. Twisted items that he could identify, some he could not, but none of them were Brigit or the kids.

“You seeing anything, Corv?” his old man hollered out.

“No,” Corvin replied after a long sigh. “I..I don’t think they were here.”

“We probably shouldn’t stay too long.”

“I ain’t going nowhere till I find ‘em.”

“That ain’t what I meant, son.”

His dad looked at him, and Corvin knew that he was right.

“Alright, I just…”

He paused, eye catching a glint in the charcoaled rubbish. He knelt down and carefully plucked it from the ash. It lay in his palm, surprisingly cold given the heat coming up from everything around it. He rubbed his thumb over the medallion modeled after the Brigit’s cross that held her initials. His old man had made the medallion, and Corvin had given it to Brigit the night that Tom was born. She had given it to Jessy when she turned five.

“What’s that?”

Corvin almost jumped at his father’s voice. He grit his teeth and slid it into his chest pocket as he stood up.

“Best get to your place and get some supplies, pop.”

He mounted and as they turned the horses to ride towards the old man’s cabin, he pulled his horse up short and stared up into the tree line where his cabin door, lay in the boughs of the oak tree.

The door looked as though it had been plucked from the cabin and positioned carefully in the tree, its iron hinges and handle shining in the morning sun.

“How in tarnation…?” His old man followed his gaze. “How ya reckon that got up there?”

“I don’t know,” Corvin said. “But I damn sure intend to find out.” 

© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved