I'll Burn With You (MXM)

ACT I : Chapter 1 : Benjamin

ACT I
september, 1893

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments,
but what is woven into the lives of others."
– Pericles

~ ~ ~

He wished the only thing he saw was his father approaching, yet Ben's reflection – a blank face with eyes that had seen the defeat of hope one too many times before – watched the glare on his parent's face grow more contemptible. "Benjamin," he grunted, grabbing his son's collar the same way one grabs their dog. "Sorry, ma'am. My son's a touch slow."

He spun on his feet at the motion, heels digging into the still-wet mud. His father's knuckles pressed on his skin. He could've moved; why hadn't he moved?

"Apologize, Benjamin."

The boards underneath the shop's porch groaned as the woman shifted. "He's not disruptin' business 'r anything, so don't concern yourself, Mr. Price. Your son's a sweet – "

"Regardless, I apologize on both our behalf, ma'am," he said again, tightening his grasp on Ben's collar. As they passed the butcher's, he shoved him forward. "Go deliver that like you were supposed to. Do not come back until you've done it." His father sighed, lips twisted into a frown. He turned and moved back towards the general store.

Ben watched him leave, the cool autumn air cutting through his thin clothes. The boy adjusted the package, wrapped tightly in brown paper and tied with twine, in his arms. He kept his eyes low, coldness creeping back through him. "Sorry, Papa."

Using his knee to balance the parcel, Ben turned, heading towards the Durmont post office. The further he moved away from Broad Street – more a muddy road than the brick street laid just a year ago – the more he found his breaths easing. He kept his eyes down. People saw him. They nodded their heads, and he to them when he could make eye contact. Benjamin Price did not smile. People deemed him "sullen". "Withdrawn". "Slightly touched". "Slow".

Everyone seemed to linger, specters ever watching.

He moved a little faster, trying to ignore the poor night's sleep creeping in.

Like the rest of town, the post office was much loved and much neglected, its colors worn from years of sun, rain, sleet, and snow. The building, a squat two-story structure, sat nestled, crooked, into the side of the Durmont River Railroad Inn, the hotel's pointed roof standing nearly as tall as the town church. There was never a day where the stables were not busy, crowded with passengers and deliveries moving between the train station in nearby Norton back to Durmont's farmsteads due east.

In the distance, a locomotive's whistle cried out. Ben glanced towards it, watching for the signs of its presence on the horizon. He did not care for the trains themselves, yet he still wished he could watch the boxcars loaded and unloaded with a multitude of goods. Boxes and crates of produce, livestock, perishables, bags of mail, special deliveries, all from a world larger than his own.

He tried not to linger.

"Mr. Price?" a man called, his blue-gray uniform appearing as he emerged from the darkness of the post office, treading down the front steps, a lopsided smirk adorned his lips. The outfit, wearing down with age, appeared immaculate despite the buttons scratched and his hat, a structured flat cap with black brim, in a similar condition. One black star hung on the postman's sleeve.