The Tracks

All I’ve ever seen is the tracks. One foot after another, stepping over steel rails and rocky beds, evenly placed wood planks like ribs embedded into the earth. The tracks we all followed sat between two vast stretches of fields—there was no green or brush. Only yellowed and dried weeds. Sometimes we’d pass a tree or two, growing distantly in the plains. On the nights we rested, I dreamed of those trees. Feeling bark under my hands and leaves in my hair—tripping on the roots and splinters lodged in my fingertips. The scent of the sap and the sound of wind rustling the branches.

My best friend as a child, Bram, was born with a limp. He had a quick way with words and could tell the time of day just by the shadows on the ground. I’d rely on him to know the hour, the season, how many days that passed as we walked. I only ever knew time when he was alive. He loved to listen to me talk about my dreams of the trees. How I hoped at the end of the tracks, whenever we finally arrived, there would be a forest—-a woods so great and vast. The Heaven all our elders told us about, the warm, lush, and sacred place waiting for us, I didn’t care so much for the idea of warmth or lushness. I just wanted there to be trees.

Bram dragged his left leg behind him like an anchor. The elders hated him for it. He hated himself for it. He was smart but also frustrated. He walked behind the group, trailing behind thirty feet or so. I’d turn around every now and then, just to check he was still there. He’d stagger, sweaty, and exhausted. With a face heavily laced with what seemed like anger and desolation. Eyes low and shadowed, staring at the legs that wouldn’t carry him. And lips in a tight line, like he was trapping words—or even a scream behind a barricade of teeth.

The day I turned my head and saw he wasn’t there anymore, but tumbling down the rock hill and into a ditch, I stopped walking. He must have tripped on the railing. I had never taken a step backwards before, when I did, the elders struck me on my head, making blood drip down from my ear. I waited for Bram to crawl back up, to meet me back on the tracks, but he never surfaced.

I left Bram in that ditch. The group never mentioned his name. Afterall, we had somewhere to get to. I stopped dreaming of trees after that.

What seemed like a short time after Bram’s death, based on the slow moving shadows shifting across the rails, a young Buck began following our group. There was something odd about the thing. It kept a short distance between me and it, like it knew me but didn’t trust me. I’d stop walking, just for a moment so the group wouldn’t notice, to listen to the Bucks footsteps. They’d pause—maintaining that distance with me. When I’d turn my head to look at it, it stared at me, almost with a knowing expression.

When the elders discovered the Buck, they hated it. They wanted to kill it. They asked me to. But I had argued that the Buck will maintain the distance no matter what. I couldn’t step backwards, there was no way I could face it. Let alone get close enough to kill it. Afterall, The Heaven we’ve been promised was waiting for us to arrive. There was no turning around.

I tried my best to ignore it. It began hitting the rail—clanking its antlers against the metal as if it was demanding attention. Ramming into the steel bars head first, over and over again. The wall I had built in my mind to block the Buck out crumbled when I watched its antlers fall to ground! I observed in absolute bewilderment as the antlers, which nearly looked like branches of a tree—sturdy, large, strong…fell off like they were as fragile as a small water droplet. Blood seeped from the bony rim where the antlers once grew, dripping down its face and onto the rocky bed beneath. When I stared, it stared back. It looked at me with the same knowing expression—but this time more gauntly—like it could see beyond my flesh and into some dark unexplored part of my soul. And it didn’t like whatever it saw. I nearly walked towards it then.

I began having dreams of the Buck. Dreams of holding its antlers between my hands. Staring into its eyes. I’d wake up with an odd feeling in my legs, like my muscles were taut like the strings of a guitar—-ready to snap. The elders began questioning my behavior. Why I kept turning to look at the Buck, why I walked at an abnormal pace, why it had suddenly seemed as if I didn’t care for The Heaven.

I didn’t have many answers. I’d walk, same as I did, along the tracks of which had not changed since the beginning of this journey. I’d stare off into the distance until the tracks began to blur and merge with the never ending horizon. I couldn’t see The Heaven.

The blood on the Bucks head dried and turned a dark, earthy brown. The sound of its footsteps sounded less fluid—suddenly turning irregular and inconsistent. The sound of its hooves dragging across the wood planks was a jarring, almost crushing sound. It taunted me the more we walked. It made me angry. Uncomfortable.

I thought it was dying. The way it huffed, dragged its legs like they weighed a hundred pounds each, wobbled on its hooves as if the earth was titled. I’d whisper under my breath, asking it to go. To leave. To stop following me.

The dreams only increased. Running from the Buck, only for it to find me no matter the distance. Screaming at it, only for it to remain where it is, unmoving.

The elders couldn’t wait for it to die. I’d turn around, just to see if it was still there...

Then suddenly, I heard the Buck collapse against the ground. The sound was soft, nearly unnoticeable. But I heard it. I could feel my heart pounding on my inner walls—it echoed in the cavities of my soul. The elders quietly cheered at its final demise. I turned to eye the Buck, to perhaps say my final goodbye—but it began pulling itself up from the ground. Its legs buckling back and forth while never breaking its stare with mine.

Its eyes were shadowed, yet glossed with what seemed like determination but also a longing I hadn’t recognized since I last saw Bram. It huffed, its whole body moving with each breath, a small cloud billowed in front of its snout as it exhaled.

The Buck stomped its hoof. Then again. And Again. I stepped back, it stepped forward. An elder told me to keep walking, the Buck would die soon anyway.

But I knew. It was never going to leave.

I didn’t move. Maybe it’s better to describe it as I couldn’t move. This angered the elders—the group yelled for me. I yelled for the Buck. The distance between me and it was large, but small enough for me to reach it in just a few steps.

An elder struck the side of my head, so forcefully the world began to spin—my foot caught the side of the rail, knocking me off my feet. I began tumbling down the rock hill and into the ditch.

When I came to, the group swarmed the edge of the track. The world rang and spun. I began feeling rocks hit the top of my head and shoulders, as if someone was climbing down into the ditch.

Suddenly, the Buck met my eye. Once again, staring at me with the same knowing expression—yet its gaze now seemed open, inviting, familiar. The dense yet vague visions in the reflection of its eyes morphed and moved—splitting and sprouting, growing like a seedling into a tree.

I stood up on my feet and for the first time since the Buck arrived, I stepped towards it. Then again. And again. Until it was only mere inches from me.

I watched the growing tree in its eyes. The branches reaching and the leaves rustling. The roots digging and tangling. In that moment, the existence of The Heaven lived within the Bucks eyes.

And then I stepped past the Buck.

I had no certainty of what ahead of those tracks, to the left or right. I hadn’t even a clue of what was beyond the sea of dead weeds but I ran into it like I had. The elders yelled for me once again, telling me The Heaven was waiting for me. But I simply could not wait. I was going to find the trees I saw in the Bucks' eyes.