Brighter Days

~The path hemmed and hawed its way through tree lined latticework, mountain laurels and magnolias, bloodroot and bluet crowding for space in the meandering dirt and stone strewn expanse. Larger rocks and stray boulders some cleaved in two stricken perhaps by lightening or from earths great hellish heaving’s during some long ago terrestrial cataclysm and then pitched down the hillsides hither and yon to stand randomly like sentries from another world. Marauding old and twisted knees and elbows of larger trees broke up and through the surface of the lane as if requesting help, pleading their case. An occasional glimpse through wrecked and fallen timbers displaced a thick and gauzy haze exploding heavenward from out of the earth itself, silent, erect and vertically swirling, smoke-like apparitions, the ghosts of morning dew, damp fire pouring forth from the dawn of the newly baptized day, as if the mountains themselves were aflame and retching out some demented and forsaken anguish.

~The Old man snatched up his cards and ferried them broadways across the table to the dealer. He’d stayed long into the night and the time to leave this place had long since passed. He scooped up the tokens that were his and counted them out stacking them orderly by color and pushing them forward towards the man whose shack he and the rest had been sharing the evening with. The host recounted the stacks setting them back neatly into the stained   and leathered box that housed the chips and cards along with an old worn Texas Instruments calculator he’d used to total up the dividends of many an evening past spent. The host tallied up the count and uncoupled the hasp of the old cigar box that he’d used to ferret away the notes and coins which the players had traded for earlier in the evening and as necessary throughout the game. He pulled out a small sheaf of bills and a handful of assorted pocket change and handed the folded notes and coins to the old man. The old man crumpled up t