Dennis Must Tracks He discovered them early spring. His father had passed away one week before Christmas. Sometime before then, and following the first heavy snowfall, John Hubbard had taken a stroll out to the copse of poplars, then swung back toward the house. In April the footprints would be erased. Elijah sat in the kitchen the morning of his discovery, waiting. "They look fresh," he thought. Clearly the imprint of the Wellington sole was the deceased's. How often had he tramped behind his father in wintertime, stepping in his prints, sometimes up to his knees? Back into the poplar stand hunting rabbit tracks. A double-barreled Boss shotgun cradled in his father's left arm. Soon he'd hear the boots stomped free of snow, an audible shiver, the mackinaw landing on the clothes pole. Then, "Elijah? Is coffee up?" The perked aroma couldn't mask the stale odor of the dead man's rooms. Elijah took the mackinaw off the hook. Sitting on the mud room bench, he pulled on the Wellingtons and tucked his pant legs inside. In the wide expanse of field behind the Tudor, John Hubbard's were the only markings. Elijah stepped with care so that every seating was precise. Thirty yards out he stopped. The right and left foot tracks were aligned together, like shoes parked at the foot of a bed. "What do I do now?" he thought. A blue jay flew overhead, the leafless canopy crackling in the March wind. "What was he looking at?" In the snow glazing, a vertical slit--as if John Hubbard had taken a stick, stabbed, then pulled it back towards him a foot. "A gash in a wedding cake," Elijah mused. Off to his right, the Wellington dance chart: left forward, right forward, glide sidewards and stop. Beyond this, the tramp resumed back toward the house. Elijah dropped knee-first into the snow to explore the slash. "Was he drawing a word? And why the erratic Quick Step?" Where it appeared his father had withdrawn the marking instrument, several perforations followed in one and two inch intervals. Elijah glanced up through the limned poplars and began laughing. "He heard no word. No sudden knife of wind making him pause. It was the damn Java!" Unzipping his trousers, he studiously intersected his father's cut of months earlier. Only his trajectory of the snow cross bled yellow. The tracks back to the house were closer together now, not the relaxed gait that led them both into the copse. "Father's trot, all of scarce seconds--had he known that instead of rabbit tracks, I would find his?" Stamping the snow off the Wellingtons, he threw the mackinaw on the hook, and called out through the empty rooms: "Is the coffee up? Elijah?"                                                              ~~~ When Elijah related the story to me, I, like he, was haunted by the image: father interred, only to discover, months later, tracks outside the kitchen door heading off into the woods. I've followed my brother's and my father's wake. It's not unusual for me to hear one of them calling at night. "Just over the ridge. Over here. What the hell's the matter with you? Are you blind? Here, goddamn it, over here!" I move in the direction of the voice, but when I think I'm there--nothing. A meadow of alfalfa and goldenrod, or a clothes closet stuffed with suits and shoes. A meadow because that's where my kid brother immolated himself. Well, off to its side, before he ran through the hay aflame, trailing a scar down its center. His car had run out of gas, and he'd borrowed some from a nearby farmer. While priming the carburetor, he spilled it on his pant legs; before he stepped on the starter, he lit a cigarette. That's when the ball of flames blew him out of the front seat. God know's where he began running--perhaps to where he thought he heard Father's voice. I haven't seen either of them up close yet. Suspect I will soon. John Hubbard summoned his blue-eyed Elijah into the copse of poplars. Except our old man never carried a shotgun. Could have cared less about rabbit or deer tracks. Spiked heel markings, yes. He'd follow those anywhere, hearing their clicking on a sidewalk, or up a set of stairs. I trail the scent of women into some dusky bar or a roadside tavern. Huddled in the corner booth with one hand on a drink, the other on a knee or thigh, he greets: "This way, Son. Just over the ridge." Brother James echoes, "Pap, Westley can't see." As if death was a fiery stranger, he took it into his arms and kissed its mouth until his red hair caught orange. "What's wrong, Westley, you afraid what's over the ridge? It's just the old man and me." Father never rebukes James' taunts. "This way, Son, over the ridge." Darkness all about me, I pull myself forward, grabbing onto exposed roots, their soil eroded by torrents of spring. As I get closer, his voice becomes more distinct. "That's it. Keep climbing." I hear James laughing. "He won't do it, Pap," he rags. "He hasn't got the balls that you or I did. Watch you don't slip, Westley." But at the sky stands Father's clothes closet. Suit jackets I'd slip on as a boy, imagining how many lifetimes it would take before my hands grew out of their sleeves. And in its drawers--one with a checkbook and stack of bills he'd been meaning to pay; below,  monogrammed handkerchiefs; then the sock and underwear drawer; finally, one containing a metal box, always locked. The suits fit fine, except they're decades old. Creditors long since deceased. And inside the cache box--an Elgin watch, its alligator strap seared, handed to Father the day of James' immolation On his closet floor, a pair of golfing shoes, caked with mud. I bring one to my nose. A scent of smoldering earth lingers at its cleats. Wandering off the golf course that afternoon, he tramped the lesion my brother left in McClusky's hay.   Like changes of skin, the garments hang in an orderly row--the dark wool giving way to light poplin. All facing west. Squeezing them in my arms, I ask, "Where are you? Your tracks stop here." "Over the ridge," he answers.                                                              ~ ~ ~ This morning I look down at my hands, and see telltale signs of his taking form. As I work my way through each day, I no longer must stand alongside women to recall the sorghum of life, sweetness of coupling--the dying of a thousand times in one's arms . . . on this side of the ridge, I savor the bouquet. Each is none the wiser of my theft. Oh, he is growing inside me. I've become the fecund loam in which he's rooted. The eyes, soon they, too, will skim over like sour milk. But he always saw clearly. When he couldn't--he felt and breathed. James--my salamander? That slash he burnt in the meadow? Nothing's grown there since fire dripped off his legs and hands like blood. Seeding the grasses, alfalfa and goldenrod, with his intrepid will to fornicate the earth back alive. To dance with the sun until it dimmed, to ride the spikes of the stars until they broke into spears of ice. We'll meet up in due time. He'll have man-stories to tell, heading out long before I considered it was time to put my mind to it. But first the metamorphoses must occur. When I see tracks in the snow one of these winters, when I plant my feet carefully inside each as I walk toward the copse in our woods up the rise, when I see where they hesitate, and a line--perhaps the first stroke of a word--is scratched in the snow, and when I see the simple two-step illustrated alongside . . . I'll know I'm close. It is then I'll remove my shirt and pants, place my shoes under the nearest poplar, and write with orange ichor the color of my brother's yes, before vanishing over the ridge.

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