misadventure karasu He and his brother had been riding back and forth from the cities to the frontier towns since the day they had been old enough to leave the place where they had been born. the tired little flood plain along the missisippi where the steamboats only passed, never stopping on a quiet night you could hear the combined noise of the drinking and gambling and paddle wheel slapping its way along the river mother had died giving birth to their sister, who was stillborn, on a stormy night the boys wanted her books as something to remind them of her. father would have none of it he became even more erratic and unpleasant than he had been before she died even she had once confided to the boys, who, though young, had always been very perceptive, that after she had married him, he seemed to become more and more agitated with each passing day "Don't ever tell him i said this," she whispered, "but the only time he was the same man i fell in love with were the times when he and i were bringing you boys into this world." he woke and looked across the cave to see his brother and their two new friends asleep around the fire by the firelight, he glanced at the slim volume of poems he had stolen from the pyre that father had built for the roomful of books that she had left behind her handwriting on the brittle yellow pages comforted him in the cold night on the high desert without blinking or wasting any motion, he reached out with a gloved hand and caught the small rattlesnake by the head and flung it out of the cave entrance the juvenile rattled and hissed in the distance before slithering away into the night 010624 what's it to you? who go blather from