Wiry Fellows
an excerpt

“Out, Isaac Farrel, and may God have more patience with you than I!”
Sister Donnelly shoved Isaac roughly through the front door of St. Jerome’s orphanage, and out into the frozen yard. A small boy, playing in the thin dusting of snow that had fallen the night before, looked up to see Isaac take an awkward step on the slick ground to catch his balance.
Isaac glared back at her. “Fine! I don’t need this danged place anyway!”
“You’d best watch that mouth!” Sister Donnelly shouted, flinging a small canvas bag at him. The bag, containing the entirety of Isaac’s worldly possessions, landed in the snow at his feet.
Ignoring the bag, Isaac demanded “Oh, and what are you going to do about it?”
Except for the four years living under Sister Donnelly’s thumb, in which time Isaac had come to know her every mood, he’d have missed the subtle flash of pity that, for just an instant, showed on her face. She still glared angrily at him, but he knew the look was mere sternness now, and not true anger.
“I’ll give you one more word of advice, Isaac, if you’re not too mule-headed to hear it. This world has done you some hard turns, ‘tis true, but neither does it suffer fools gladly. You’d best learn to check that temper of yours before you get yourself in real trouble. I can’t help you any more, Isaac. Only you and God can do that now. I’ll pray that at least one of you has the sense or compassion to do so.”
Isaac bent down to pick the bag off the ground. He couldn’t help but notice how light it was. He spat in her direction.
“I don’t need your pity or your stinkin’ prayers, Sister.” With that, Isaac Farrel turned away, catching just a glimpse of irate redness returning to Sister Donnelly’s cheeks.
“And happy birthday to you!” she shouted, just before he heard the door slam.
As he passed through the gate and out of the orphanage’s yard, the small boy who had been watching ran up to the fence.
“Where are you going, Isaac?” the boy asked.
Isaac stopped for a moment, and turned to look at the boy. “I don’t know, Ben,” he snapped, “but I ain’t staying here no more.”
“How come?”
“I just can’t, that’s all!”
Ben pursed his lips, trying obviously not to break down in tears. After a moment, he asked “When I turn sixteen, will I have to leave too?”
The words ‘yeah, if you’re lucky, kid,’ died on his lips. Ben was a good kid, and had always looked up to Isaac. Ben didn’t deserve angry parting words. Isaac felt a lump grow in his own throat and knelt down to look at the boy between the fence rails.
“Yes, Ben, you will. That’s the rule. But that’s not for a long time, so don’t you worry. You listen to Sister Donnelly. Try not to be so much trouble like me. You’re going to be just fine.”
He knew it was the right thing to say, and he even believed it, but Ben looked as sad as before. They looked at each other, their breath making little clouds that rose slowly in the cold air.
“Now go on inside, Ben, and warm up by the fire,” Isaac added. “It’s cold out here!”
Ben broke into tears, turned, and ran back inside. Isaac watched him go. “Some birthday,” he muttered to himself.

With nothing to do, and nowhere to go, Isaac began walking. He wanted nothing more than to get as far away from St. Jerome’s as possible. The problem was there wasn’t much of anywhere to go. He could see, a mile or so across the plains, the buildings of Fort Laramie in the distance, so he went that way.
He had been there a handful of times during his life at the orphanage. Isaac had learned how to drive a wagon on his family’s farm, and since Sister Donnelly was skittish around horses, she’d been happy for him to drive when she needed to go to the fort to buy beans or blankets or whatever the orphanage needed.
He looked idly into the canvas bag as he walked. Except for one thing, he almost wondered why he had even bothered to pick it up. It held an extra shirt, a pair of old pants that was a hand-span too short for him now and worn clean through at the knees, and a pocket watch. It had been his father’s, and had come down from some ancestor Isaac couldn’t even name.
He took the watch out of the bag and put it into his pocket, fingering it as memories flooded over him. Memories of his father and mother, of his life before, on the farm. Memories of helping his father build a corral to hold the cows, before they got a proper barn built. Of digging endless post holes and setting logs upright in the dirt, like a ring of giant matchsticks. Memories of his mother laughing when Isaac would surprise her, of how she splurged on sugar to make an apple pie that his father yelled about but then said was delicious.
Memories of waking in the darkness before dawn, to the smell of smoke and the sound of his mother screaming. Of jumping out of bed and dashing outside in time to see his mother rushing into the burning barn, screaming his father’s name. Of rushing there himself only to be beaten back by the searing heat of the flames. Of cursing himself for not being able to pump water faster into the horses’ trough, faster, faster, after he’d emptied it by bucketfuls onto the side of the burning barn. Memories of—
Isaac snapped himself out of his reverie, unwilling to remember the rest. He fingered the watch again—the only thing he had bothered to take with him after the fire—and looked around. Fort Laramie wasn’t in front of him anymore, but the surroundings looked familiar.
It took a moment before he recognized the signs of old wagon ruts his feet were following. Never strong to begin with, the snow and four years of grass and rain had made them difficult to see, but these were the tracks he and his own father had made with their wagon, on occasional trips to Fort Laramie to sell meat they’d raised and potatoes they’d grown. Yes, the soft rolling hills and some of the trees were familiar to him. The farm was no more than a couple of miles away.
“Why not?” he muttered, deciding he may as well go there as anywhere. And maybe, he reflected, that wasn’t such a bad idea. When he had been sent to St. Jerome’s after his parents’ death he had intended never to go back to that farm, even though a captain at the Fort had said the farm was Isaac’s and that they’d hold his father’s claim on the land for him until he was grown. Now that captain’s promise came back to him, and maybe after all it wasn’t such a bad idea.
Isaac hurried his pace a little, wondering what he’d find when he arrived. He reckoned that there probably wasn’t much left of any value. Surely when word got around, looters would have gone to the farm and carted everything decent away. But the house would still be there. If he could just get started, somehow, then maybe he could make it work.
Isaac’s lost himself in thought again as he walked, this time making plans and speculating, until he reached the slope of the last hill and saw that old oak tree that marked one corner of his father’s claim. He ran up the slope until the farm came into view.
His hopes were immediately dashed. The barn was nothing but a smooth rectangle on the ground, white with snow except where blackened bits of wood poked through. He had expected that, of course, but the house was a shambles. The roof had fallen in, and had pulled most of two walls down with it. The fallen walls had pulled cleanly away from the stone chimney, leaving it standing all by itself at the edge of the mess.
There was no way he could live here. Not in the winter.
But he had walked for some hours to get here, and the January sun was now low in the western sky. Isaac knew night wasn’t far off, but Fort Laramie was.
“Too far to go back now,” he muttered, cursing himself for wandering and coming here instead of going to the Fort. There was nothing for him to do now but to continue on and see what shelter he could arrange for the night.