Introduce your short story

Trying too Heart

A young man stands by a street corner with a note in his hand. Along with it is the ripped up envelope it was sent in and written on it is nothing else but the sentence “Meet by the pancake house at noon, I want to see you again – Love Mark.”  

“Welp, this is when I’m supposed to be here at least,” the man said to himself. His name was John Edwards, and the man he was waiting for was none other than his brother Mark, which he had not seen in 3 years since he moved off in order to live on his own in Tennessee. They were close as children but fell estranged as many children with age differences that large do.

The road was barren. John looked both ways down the straight country path for any type of automobile but it was silent both directions. He glances through the front glass of the pancake house in order to read the clock they have, it reads 12:05. He sighs and sits down on the sidewalk. All of the sudden the distant roar of an engine becomes more and more apparent. He sees a bright yellow Camaro, thundering down the road, leaving a giant cloud of dirt in its wake. John jolts up from his seat and eagerly awaits the car, which he assumed to be his brother’s due to the speed. John and Mark grew up in Shady Oaks, Oklahoma, which only had a population of about 500 and was a very quiet town, so he knew that if anyone was driving that recklessly it must be his brother. The car screeched to a halt and a heard a familiar voice yell from inside it

“Get in! My bad for being late by the way. Was held up late at work and didn’t get much sleep,” Mark explained from within the car.

“Wasn’t really surprised anyways.” John replied snarkily.

“Haven’t seen you in ages! How’s it been little bro!” said Mark. They then hugged and exchanged greetings before the car lurched into action.

“So what have you been up to.” said Mark

“What have I been up to? Why would you want to know that! I haven’t seen you in years. I want to hear about you first.”

“Well I’ve been working up at the lumber mill where I live and making my earnings through that, besides going to work all I really do is fish!” Mark said, while promptly chuckling to himself

“So you don’t wrestle anymore? Whats up with that I thought you were going to University to wrestle!”

“Well, uhhh, about that…” Mark swallowed nervously and then continued, “Things don’t always turn out like you think they will John, and university just wasn’t the thing for me. Whatever you do just don’t tell mom and pop, they’ll kill me!”

John held back his frustration and finally replied, “Well I guess if you are making a healthy living I can’t really be all that mad at ya.” They both looked onward at the ever expanding open road, increasing speed ever so slightly.

“You still wrestle?” Mark asked.

“Pfft, ‘you still wrestle?,’ are you even listening to yourself? Of course I still wrestle! I’m the best that’s ever come through Leland High in ages!”

“Then what’s this I hear from mom about you not being able to be on the wrestling team last year?” Mark replied.

John’s expression immediately soured, for he knew he was going to talk about his least favorite subject. “Oh, that’s just uhhh, you know… grades. I didn’t make grades last year and they had to kick me off the team.”

“Come on John you are better than that! I know how smart you’ve always been and you just need to apply yourself that’s all, I believe in you man you just have to put some work in like you do with your sports,” Mark wisely remarked.

“Yea yea yea good like with that one I’ve heard that a thousand times, I’m just trying to work at the Johnson’s farm anyways. Been working there for two years now and I get a decent pay.”

“You still are friends with the Johnson’s? How are they doing?…”

The conversation went back and forth like this for hours. The drive was long and they had nothing but time to spare. The brothers enjoyed catching up on time they had spent away from each other and for the first time in a while they were truly having a connection. John eventually drifted to sleep and Mark didn’t disturb him since he knew he could use the rest.

“Rise and Shine!!!!” Mark yelled. John Immediately jolted awake, hitting his head on the ceiling of the car.

“Ow! Not funny man!” John exclaimed angrily

“Sorry, it’s just that we are almost here that’s all, I had to wake you up at some point,.” Mark replied.

John wiped the crust away from his eyes and gazed upon a whole new landscape, there were large pine trees all around and puffy billowing grey clouds overhead. He sat there for a while just soaking it in.

“We are just about here” Said Mark, as he drove further up the mountain.

Up ahead was a basic country house, stilted up slightly for flooding and what couldn’t have been more than 3 rooms. That wasn’t the great part about his estate however, for directly to the right of his house stood a vast expansive lake that had to be at least five miles across.

“Wow, I’ve really never seen anything like it. I can see why you are fine with this life now.” John replied.

“Yep, nothing beats just sitting up here on my porch during the summer. That is unless we are including fishing. In fact I Barely have to pay for my own food since it ain’t too hard to catch salmon on the lake. That’s actually the reason I took you out here.”

“Really?” John replied in a confused tone, “I thought it was just to reconnect.”

“Yea dummy, what’s a better way to reconnect than catching a few fish and just talking with your favorite brother! Let’s get some rest and we can head out in the morning.”

And with not a word more they did just that. Both exhausted from the long ride they stomped from the car into the cabin and promptly fell fast asleep, eager for the day ahead of them.

In the morning they both gathered their fishing supplies, bait, lures, fishing line, anything you could possibly think of was accounted for.

“Here you can borrow my old rod,” Mark said while handing John his spare fishing pole.

“Where are going to fish exactly?” asked John

Mark just pointed onward to a crude dock with shabby rowboat tethered to it.

“That piece of junk. Are you serious!?” John bickered

“What are you calling a piece of junk! My boat is perfectly fine as long as you can get past the soreness of rowing. Last one there has to bait the hooks!” Mark belted out, while simultaneously getting an unfair head start.

Half an hour later they were calmly drifting along the water, fishing lines in the water, just looking up at the sky and chatting. They did this for what seemed like forever

“Soooo… does it always take this long to catch a fish?” John asked

“Sometimes it a whole day before you can get a bite” Mark replied, not even caring to lift his head in order to address him

And just like that, with perfect comedic timing John’s line started untwining at an alarming rate

“Grab it, you have a bite!” Mark yelled.

John sprung to action and grabbed the line with his mangly fingers (which had been broken many times over due to wrestling) and started reeling in the fish.

“It must be a big one, it’s pretty strong!” yelled John. But after what must have been a 5 minute battle he threw the fish out of the water and into the boat. It was what had to be over a two foot salmon.

“Woah what a great catch!” Mark replied, inspecting the fish ever closer. “Now if we want to catch any more we have to row over to a new part of the lake.” Just as Mark said that however he noticed one of the oars must have floated off in the commotion. Him and John start scanning the area for it and saw it about 10 feet out, floating calmly on the water
“I’ll get it!” Mark exclaimed as he dove into the water, too quickly for John to say otherwise. This was something that was well within the ability of someone like Mark, who was athletic and had no known health problems, but as Mark was swimming back something odd happened. His freestyle stroke abruptly turned to thrashes in the water, a symphony of gurgles accompanied his panic.

“You okay?” asked John. Noticing that his brother was no longer swimming. “Mark?!”  His body was now sinking below the surface, and John dove into the water in order to try to save his brother. He swam deeper and deeper until he thought his ears were about to explode. He was able to get a hold of him and drag him back up to the boat. But when he went to check his pulse it was no longer there. John didn’t say a word, and rather just sat there with his brothers body soaking in what had happened. He may have endured great physical pains in his life but nothing quite the magnitude of losing a loved one had occurred in his lifetime. What happened… he thought to himself. There was no sign of injury even on him. He just stopped all the sudden for seemingly no reason. There was not a single sound but the chatter of riverbugs, John couldn’t soak in the reality of the event that had just occurred.

John amateurishly paddled the boat back to shore with one oar and called the police. They immediately rang up his parents to arrange for him to be picked up. “It’s okay son, they say it was a heart attack. He had an oversized heart none of us new about, there nothing you could have done,” his Father would explain to him, but the event kept playing over in his brain. There was nothing he could do now but honor the memory of his brother, from this point forward he was determined to do what his brother never could and wrestle for him at university. What was going to be a fun outing with his brother became the most tragic and life changing event in his life, but he was not going to let that get to him. John would go on to be nationally ranked wrestler, and after every match he would pray to god and memory of his late brother.