Taken By The Bull

Steve’s hand had been on the door when Seth started to speak. He remained perfectly still, looking the other way.

“Oh, Seth. You don’t remember much of it, do you?” Staci felt something strange as she looked at him, standing uncertainly on the stairs; protective, and exasperated all at once. It was a feeling she hadn’t had in a long time, not since her own little brother had been taken out of the world. “It’s okay, Seth. You don’t have to apologize to me.” A slight smile pulled at the corner of her lips. “Steve’s the one who took a horn to the chest.”

“Oh.” Seth blinked, an expression of pure horror crossing his face in a slow wave. “Oh sh*t! That actually happened? I thought I dreamed it!”

Steve turned his head slowly, and looked Seth in the eye. “It’s all good. No lasting damage was done.” He reached his hand into his pocket, and stepped past Staci, towards his brother. “We got some things to discuss, later. About the Championship, about Dad. But, that can wait.”

“Steve-” Seth started to say, but stopped as Steve pulled his hand from his pocket and passed him something. “What’s that.”

“Dad told me to give this to you, once I was sure you were wise enough and smart enough not to go losing the thing.” Steve dropped something into Seth’s outstretched hand; Staci saw the familiar silver shine of a ring on a chain with a busted clasp. “Truth is, you were that man a long time ago. And me, well, I was finding it hard to let go of the old thing.”

“Man…” Seth’s voice trailed off as he stared down at the ring in his hand; the ring that had belonged to their father. “You should – you should probably keep it, you know? I mean, look at what I did last night.”

“Look at what I did last night.” Steve reached out, and patted him gently on the shoulder. “Truth is, I ain’t wise enough and smart enough to remember something like, taking the damn thing off before changing shape, either. That’s how come you’ll be needing a new latch doohickey for it.”

Seth didn’t say anything for the longest time. He stood perfectly still, looking down at his hand; then he slipped the ring from the chain, and slid it onto the index finger of his right hand. It fit, perfectly. Then he handed the chain back to Steve. “Now, we each got something to remember the old man by.” He smiled slowly; looking so much like his brother in that moment, they could have been born as twins. “And you gotta be needing a new latch doohickey.”

“See, you’re wiser’n me.” Steve put his arm around Seth’s shoulders; only briefly, before releasing him and stepping back. “I gotta get this lady back to her hotel, so she can find her way to Jackson to start making plans for the weekend. You get yourself some breakfast, and kick that hangover’s ass.”

Seth nodded, stepped past, and headed off to the kitchen, rubbing at his temple as he went. He probably had quite the headache. Staci didn’t say anything until she and Steve were outside, at her car.

“What’s so important about that ring, anyway?” She realized that she was almost whispering, as if an enemy or a stranger with ill intent might be listening. She felt a little silly as she cleared her throat and slipped into the driver’s seat.

Steve didn’t reply immediately; instead, he waited until he was sitting beside her with the door closed, before he reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. The old leather creaked as he opened it. Carefully, he pulled out a faded, yellowed old photograph from the compartment at the back: Wordlessly, he handed it to her.

It felt so fragile in her hands, and she was afraid to do anything more than cup it, unwilling to press her fingertips down to feel the old dry paper. She looked down into the face of a youngish man with an old-fashioned haircut and an impressive handlebar mustache who stared into the lens of the camera in a commanding manner; one of his hands rested on the shoulder of the slender young dark-haired woman seated on a chair before him, the other hand on the butt of an old hunting rifle. There was a child perched on the woman’s knees, little more than a baby. “Who are they?” Even as she asked, she had a pretty good idea of what he was going to say.

“The old feller is my grandfather,” Steve said slowly, eyes fixed on the image in Staci’s hands. “The kid on his momma’s lap is my dad.”

She was about to voice another question when she saw the ring seated on the man’s index finger; despite the quality of the old picture and its sun-bleached pallor, she recognized it immediately. “Oh… So it belonged to him?”

“And to his grandfather before him. It’s a… a family thing. My dad didn’t keep a lot in the way of personal things; the old man never even wore a watch. When he went, he left us this place, the family ring, and the chain he kept it on. And some old books and clothes too, but he told us to pass that along to Goodwill. We kept the books, though.”

“And you got the ring.”

“And I got the ring.” He nodded his head in slow confirmation as she passed the photograph back to him. “Just about the only personal thing my dad ever owned – that, and the chain Mom bought him, that he kept it on.”

“I guess I can see now why it was such a big deal. For a moment, I half expected you to say it had some kind of magic powers.”