Late night stories

Just something I wrote, and the quote that inspired it:

"Kids like Henry need a hero--courageous, self-sacrificing people. Setting examples for all of us, everybody loves a hero. People line up for them, cheer them, scream their names, and years later they’ll tell how they stood in the rain for hours, just to get a glimpse of the one who taught them to hold on, just a second longer. I believe there is a hero in all of us that gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride. Even though sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most, even our dreams. Spiderman did that for Henry. He wonder’s where he’s gone, he needs him."



“Take a seat, I hope you don’t mind waiting while I prepare some hot chocolate, it’s cold out tonight. It’s a cold season and I need the warmth. Please, sit, I won’t be but a moment. Here, have a mug, its not just these old bones what are cold on a night like this. Hear that; the wind, howling past the chimneys? It’s night like tonight that make an old man gather kin around and tell stories of time long past. Well, I don’t have any kin, so you’ll have to do.
“What would you like to hear? I’ve been around a long time, I’ve been in the thick of many things, some what seemed small at the time but which have been made great over the years. You see, life’s made up of small things that become great. You think that Washington living through it thought the war great? Perhaps, perhaps you sometimes get a glimpse—like Washington on the Potomac—that you are about great things. But still, the wind bit just the same.
“So, what will it be?
“Ahh, so you know a little about Luke do you? My grade school mate he was, a good man. You’d like to hear his story? Very well, sit down and make yourself comfortable it’ll be a long spell this weather and shut us in through the night and this is the perfect night for such a story.”
The old man sits, staring into his mug, before saying softly, “You’ll be knowing about Luke then. He was different, a tad different from the rest of us. You see, Luke wasn’t the smartest; he wasn’t the fastest or the strongest even. But he was a good man, the kind of man people like to be around. He made you feel important just by listening to you. There was something about him, an air perhaps he sensed in himself the power that was beginning to take shape. He always used to smile as we would fantasize about becoming great men in the world.”
“Would say, “Braden, I don’t think heroes care too much for their own adventures, they just do what needs to be done.” Oh yes, he said that a time or two. I see the look of surprise on your face, the books tell it a little different now don’t they? Lucas the Lumient always calm in the face of danger. Always there with the solution to every problem.”
Again the old man pauses to take a long swallow from his mug. Looking up as the whistling of the wind picked up again. “’tis a bitter night, the wind runs foul. Luke always said you could tell the day by the wind, but he heard things on the wind that normal folk don’t. I wonder what its saying now?” A long pause as the old man stares out the window listening to the ragged howling outside.
“I don’t suppose I’ll ever know, not the way Luke did.” A sigh, “No, I don’t suppose I’ll know quite like that. Luke would always listen to the wind, said it whispered in a language he could almost understand. Like when you could hear your parents talking through the door on Christmas Eve but could never quite understand what they were saying.”

* * *

Luke glanced up with a smile as Braden came rushing in his hair sticking every which way, “How’s Jenny?” He asked not really waiting for an answer before delving into his book.
“Good, good, how’d you sleep?” Lopsided grin grows beneath the helter-skelter hair as he dashes into the back room for a second coming back with both arms full of various food items and cooking utensils. “Anyway, gotta go, she’s waiting for me!” Braden shouts as he dashes out the door again and down the stairs, gone before Luke ever even registers the words.
The smile spreads wider on his face as he stands up to glance out the window to see Braden sliding his lanky body into the car waiting in the grey mist of it’s own exhaust. He turns back and throwing his book on the sofa walks over to the cupboard opening it he stares at the package of spaghetti and old cereal bars he bought months ago. Grunting he closed the cupboard door again, slumping back into his seat on the sofa.
Just as he did the wind rattled the windows.
“Kazoku ve irikitai len.” He sighed listening to the wind, puzzling over meaning. Always the wind spoke the soft swift words which seemed almost magical drifting to him through the shutters. Words he could almost understand, almost taste the meaning of.