A New Story Most Thursdays

This Edition of Thursday Stories Features Hard Literary Fiction

Happy May, Friends and Neighbors, and welcome to Thursday Stories. Looking back over my dusty herd of short stories, I realize that some of these rascals haven’t seen the light of day in quite a spell. Time to let them romp a bit! And so—drumroll please—I give you Thursday Stories. I’m not guaranteeing a new story every Thursday, but I will do my best until all the archived tales have been set free.

You can find all of my stories and more at the Marco Etheridge Fiction Website:

Marco Etheridge Fiction

This week’s edition of Thursday Stories features One Last Hill, a literary fiction short story forged hard as coffin nails. Here is the tale of an aging man, his dead wife, and one last hill to climb. The genre is dark literary fiction. This story first appeared in Flora Fiction, published in 2024. Now, without further ado, I give you another edition of Thursday Stories. I hope you enjoy it.

One Last Hill

by Marco Etheridge

The man climbed the sedge grass hill, treading a path cut into the hillside by thirty years passage of his boots. He owned the land beneath his boot soles, insomuch as any man can claim ownership of a piece of this earth. His land and his name; Karl Nilsson.

He wore a duck canvas jacket over a denim shirt, both buttoned to the neck to keep out the fog. A Winchester Model 70 hung from a sling wrapped over his right shoulder. Years of wear had polished the canvas a darker brown beneath the webbed sling. Across his back, he carried a rucksack containing the last of his worldly goods.

Nilsson paused at a switchback. He raised the brim of his battered slouch hat. Pearls of fog beaded on the green felt. The face that peered from beneath the hat brim bore the crags and lines of seventy years.

He squinted against the milky glare, reading the sky. The ceiling hovered low and thick, a solid blanket of dirty white drifting in off the Pacific. Not far above where he stood, the trail climbed into the swirl and disappeared, as if the crest of the hill did not exist.

He turned away from the sky. The trail below his feet twisted down to a narrow valley bordered by slide alder, hemlock, and fir. Beyond the trees lay open meadowland. A thick pillar of smoke rose from earth to sky. At the base of the smoke column, orange flames leaped and flared as the inferno consumed a log house.

Nilsson could just make out the line of logs nearest the earth. Flame and smoke engulfed the rest of the structure. Five years of work and thirty of living, all of it wiped clean in an hour.

The smoke column disappeared into the low cloud ceiling. Maybe an hour before someone spotted it. Another hour before the volunteer fire department rolled out of town. By the time anyone arrived, there wouldn’t be much to do except watch the last of the fire.

Eventually, someone would find the body or what was left of it. A charred skeleton of blackened bones. The boys would call the sheriff, and the sheriff would call the coroner. They might figure it out in time, but he would be long gone.

Nilsson turned away from the conflagration, set his eyes on the path, and resumed his climb. The rifle and rucksack weighed against his shoulders, familiar and bearable. Much harder to bear was the burden of memory. The past clung to his wiry limbs and threatened to crush him to the ground. He pushed his lean body into the next step and the next. He only had to make it over the hill and down to the river. Then he would lay all his burdens aside.

The fog ceiling grew nearer, a hidden refuge just above him. He pushed aside the weight of the past as he pushed his boots higher. Nilsson was alone, but not alone. He carried his wife Martha in his heart and mind. She walked beside him, though she was two years and more in her grave. Everything he had done, all that had led up to this moment, he’d done for her.

My Martha wasn’t two years in her grave when they let that sorry bastard out of prison. Claimed the man had paid his debt to society. The law’s a joke. Sonofabitch erased a life, Martha’s life. Her driving home from her book club. Same book club she’d gone to for twenty-odd years. Worthless drunk crosses the centerline, kills my beautiful Martha, and walks away with a few bumps and bruises. They say justice is blind. The fools must have meant blind drunk.

Nilsson paused his climb where the trail ascended into the ceiling of fog. Gray tendrils swirled. The fog obscured the coil of smoke pouring into the sky. A great gout of yellow-orange flame spouted as some part of the cabin collapsed, the roof or a section of wall. The last remnants of his life going up in flames, and the crematorium for the scumbag who murdered his wife.

Might have turned out different if the miserable bastard had shown some sign of remorse. But that ain’t what happened. Fresh out of prison and right back to the bottle, drinking and driving the county roads with no license. A murderer looking for another innocent victim. There’s such a thing as right and wrong, with a clear line running between the two. I did what I did, and the law be damned.

Nilsson turned away from the burning cabin and climbed the last of the slope. He did not look back. The fog swallowed him. Cold bit into the exposed flesh of his face and hands. Beads of water dripped from the brim of his hat. The trail leveled off as he crested the hill. There was no sky above, and no valley below. An army of gray ghosts swirled around him, blotting out everything except the trail beneath his boots.

He thought about the dead man burning to bones.

Nilsson had stalked his wife’s murderer in the manner of a hunter. And as a hunter, he had killed the man, shot him with the rifle he now carried over his shoulder. He took no joy in the killing, nor did he burden himself with remorse. He’d had a job to do, and he’d done it.

After carting the body back to the cabin, Nilsson had laid the dead man in the great room near the woodstove. He’d arranged the corpse’s stiffening limbs; a man overcome with smoke and fallen to the floor.

The rest was simple. A fire kindled in the woodstove. Too much dry fuel and the stove door left unsealed. A trail of kindling from the open stove to the floor. An accidental fire and another cabin burns to the ground. Happened every year.

He’d waited out of sight under the alders until the cabin began to blaze. Once sure of the flames, he had started up the hill.

The trail faded into the fog. He gained the highest point, felt the trail dip beneath the soles of his boots. Ghosts swirled and danced. Somewhere below lay the river and his destination.

His body paid attention to the slippery footing while his mind ran back to the valley he’d left behind. The volunteers would find a burned-out cabin and one blackened skeleton. He wondered if anyone would bother putting two and two together. Would the sheriff take it any further than that?

Poor old Mister Nilsson wasn’t the same after his wife died. His mind started wandering. Yes, a sorry business all around. Well, looks like he let the fire get away from him. Sad way to go.

A rock slid under his foot. He stumbled and only just managed to keep his feet.

Pay attention to what you’re doing, old man. You want to tumble five hundred feet down to the river? That would ruin everything. What’s behind is behind. You’ve got one more thing to do.

Nilsson focused his mind on the task at hand. The trail switched back upon itself as it snaked down the slope. The sedge glowed gray green under a blanket of dew. The ghosts of trees appeared through the fog, marching beside the trail. Then he dropped below the ceiling and saw the river winding silver below his feet.

The slope gentled, running down between stands of slide alder and then into the fir and hemlock. The trail ended in a clearing beside the river. A weathered boathouse stood near the cut bank. A pair of steel rails ran from the boathouse and disappeared into the swirling water.

Nilsson walked around the boathouse and fished a key from the pocket of his canvas pants. He fitted the key to a padlock, snapped the lock open, and slipped it from the hasp. For a moment, he weighed the thing in his hand. Then he threw the lock and key into the river.

He opened the plank doors. A cedar drift boat lay on a trolley atop the steel rails. Stepping into the shadows, he unslung the rifle and laid it in the keel. The rucksack followed. He reached above his head and lifted a pair of oars from a rack attached to the wall. With the oars shipped, he took one last look, then reached for a trip catch beneath the boat. There was a metallic clank and the drift boat slid down the steel rails.

Nilsson stepped out onto a short steel grating, grasped the gunwales, and eased himself aboard. He felt the current tug at the drift boat. The oars clicked into the oarlocks. He rowed into the bank, cut loose the winch line, and back-oared away from the bank. The boat danced out into the current. A sweep of the oars and the bow pointed toward the Pacific.

The river ran two miles to the ocean. The water shone gunmetal gray under the low clouds. Overhanging trees cast shadows over the riffles and pools. Nilsson let the boat drift, keeping to the center stream.

The keel danced over a deep pool. Concentric rings broke the silver surface. Steelhead, a big one by the look of it. Nilsson smiled.

You’re safe, my friend. I will fish no more.

The river slowed and widened as it broke out of the trees. Nilsson swung the prow to the ocean. The drift boat dragged its keel on a sandbar, broke free, and caught the outgoing tide.

 With his back to the west, Nilsson dipped the oars into saltwater and pulled. The boat rode over the slight swells. The beach and the hills behind it grew smaller. The receding horizon widened. Nilsson rowed on.

 The beach appeared empty, but this may not have been true. Perhaps the ghost of an older woman searched the sands, combing the tideline for glass floats. Shading her eyes against the glare, she looked out across the ocean.

The ghostly woman might have spied a tiny boat receding into the distance, a faint shape that faded into that place where fog meets the sea. One raised hand, a wave. Then a shimmer, a trick of the eye, and the boat vanished.

finis

You can find Flora Fiction here:

https://florafiction.com/

That’s it for this week’s edition of Thursday Stories. More stories are coming your way. How will you know when a new story breaks? Glad you asked, Friends. Read On! Drumroll and… Meanwhile, don’t miss any upcoming stories. You can stay tuned for all the latest by following the MEF blog:

https://bro.uxw.mybluehost.me/whats-new-in-marcos-world-the-blog

And… if you desire more short stories, look no further than my collection Power Tools: