Leaving the cold interior of the boulder, Ben walked into the abrasive heat of the high, afternoon sun. He stood among the disjointed herd of cattle that obstructed the narrow trailhead belonging to the unforgiving path which had claimed nearly half of the herd his sons had begun their trip with. Cows lined Malice's thoroughfare, making it nearly impossible to traverse. Adam and Joe stood toe-to-toe in the center of the street, the surrounding animals stifling their ability to converse with a more comfortable distance between them.

His sons were exhausted, Ben saw that clearly. Both Joe and Adam's clothes and what could be seen of the parts of their bodies not hidden beneath them were beaten up from the trail, scratched and torn open from a horrible, demoralizing trip which had taken a little too long. They had arrived in Malice in need of a long, hot bath, a good meal, stiff drink, and a good night's rest. What they received was something else entirely: a deserted town, which appeared to have been left abandoned for years, and a thoroughfare more stifling and restricting than the calamitous trail that had led them to it. It had been a bad trip, Ben knew that. Things would only get worse for his sons from here, he knew that, too. The claustrophobic herd would impede them from walking away from each other should either want—or need—to. Observing them from a short distance, Ben did not need to have heard what particular grievance had begun their argument to know it was headed south.

"I've had just about all I'm going to take out of you," Adam warned Joe. His voice was deep, gravelly, and dangerous; his index finger was raised high, hovering mere millimeters from Joe's nose. It was obvious his warning was not to be taken lightly, dismissed, or ignored. His agitation and frustration had been simmering inside of him for a long while, and even Ben could see that he was quickly approaching a point where it would no longer be controlled. The point where he would have pulled his sons away from each other if he had the ability, his interference in their escalating arguments never really meant to protect Joe as much as it was meant to protect Adam from the power and fallout of his own escalating fury. He did not anger quickly, easily, or often, but he was precarious and formidable when he did.

Standing tall, Adam seemed to loom over Joe, his hazel eyes lustrous with a conflagrant rage. Joe, lost in his own heightened outrage, was unbothered by the threat of his brother's stance. Forcefully shoving Adam's finger away from his face, he moved closer to his brother and stood tall, squaring his shoulders, and elongating his spine, forcing himself up on tiptoes in an attempt to level their nearly touching noses. They were standing too close now. Too close for comfort. Too close to lead to anything good.

"Back off, Joe," Adam said firmly.

"No," Joe said, his voice just as firm. "I'm done taking orders from you."

"If you don't back off I'll—"

"You'll what?" Joe gruffly scoffed.

"Walk away," Ben whispered, the silent plea remaining unheard and unheeded by his sons.

The elders' allegations against Adam sprung to mind a little too quickly, as he watched his oldest son regard his youngest. He did not know what had begun their fight. He wasn't even sure such a detail really mattered. At the moment, the only thing that seemed to matter were all the things he could not do. For his sons. For himself. It was torture to have to watch this interaction without being able to intercede, if not to force his sons away from each other, giving them ample needed time for their tempers to cool, then at the very least to comfort them somehow, to help soothe some of their frazzled nerves, jagged expressions, and vicious words. "Walk away," he repeated purposelessly, knowing he could neither influence nor change events of the past.

Adam and Joe did not walk away from each other. With the cows clustering the thoroughfare there was no place they could have gone should they have wanted to. Their rigid bodies, alive with agitation and savagery were proof enough that neither wanted nor intended to back away. Ben was uncertain what had begun this fight, but he was certain it had not been the first they had engaged in during their outing. If Joe's account of what had taken place between them was to be believed, it would not be their last. This fight was only a precursor to the one which the elders had advised left Joe brutalized and Adam confined behind bars. Ben had always questioned the factuality of their account, but it wasn't until he watched his sons' interaction unfold that he began to question Joe's.

Joe shoved Adam, the violent, terse action initiating their physical fight. Body swaying only slightly, Adam took a step forward, forcing Joe to take a step back, his lower body pressing up against a cow whose girthy, steadfast body blocked him from moving further back. Ben watched, his heart feeling like it was lodged in his throat as Adam lifted a fist and hit Joe. The contact was so forceful and powerful that had the cow not been there to bolster his weight, Joe would have been knocked to the ground. Blood spilled from both of Joe's nostrils, a sure sign it had been broken. Swearing, he hit Adam back, His fist connecting with his brother's left eye socket. The brothers continued to trade punch for punch, trapped in the center of a herd of cattle that could not be moved. If it wasn't for the cattle, Ben thought, things might have turned out differently than they had. If it wasn't for their stifling, rotund bodies, trapping both men where they stood, then maybe neither Joe nor Adam would have lifted a fist at all. Of course, that didn't matter now. All the conjecture in the world was meaningless when faced with what really was.

Ben stood still, rooted in place by the surrounding cows and his apprehension regarding what would happen next. Helplessly, he watched Adam's eyes glean with pure, unadulterated fury as he took a firm hold of Joe's shirt, and he watched his youngest son struggle to break free from the hold. He watched his oldest son lift his fist once more, and he watched Adam punch Joe in between the eyes. Knees buckling, Joe's feet came out from beneath his body immediately. As he was rendered unconscious, the only thing that kept him from falling on the ground was the intensity of Adam's grip, the bizarre strength of his older brother's hand still clenching the material of his shirt tightly.

Stomach turning sickly, Ben was unsettled by a sentiment he could not readily place. Judging by the power of the blow he had endured and the extended, cataleptic flaccidity of his body, it did not seem likely Joe would awaken any time soon. It was a troubling notion in more ways than one, the largest of which was because this interaction seemed to negate what Joe had told Ben had taken place.

Little Joe had said he and Adam had engaged in their physical altercation at night, after sundown in a dust-ridden room of the decaying building they had argued about lodging in. But it was still daylight, and the fight that had resulted in Little Joe's unconscious state had taken place in the street. The interaction the elders has shown Ben could have been the fight Joe remembered or he could have been recalling a different one. He could not say which option was more favorable—or worse: the idea that there had been a second, later altercation between the brothers or the notion that the injuries Joe had sustained had rendered him confused enough to greatly obfuscate the details of what he recalled.

"I hit him, Pa," Joe had said, his bottom lip trembling, his eyes shining with fear and shame. "And he hit me back. I don't remember anything after that."

With the memory of his youngest son's confession circling his mind, Ben was taken by the dreadful notion that Adam may not have been the only one of his sons who could be perceived by the elders as being deliberately untruthful.

TBC

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