Tina shoved her hands in her pockets and walked through the late fall air into her mountain town, and who was the first person she saw sitting at the bar but Drake Brown? She'd never made the association to a mallard before.
"What's so god-damn funny?" he asked, and she told him and he added, not in a mean voice, not in a judging voice, "Tina, you are one dumb chick."
After she moved out of her husband's house and into Drake's little cabin, she figured she really was a dumb chick to get herself hooked up with a man who was dying. She drank freshly squeezed carrot juice, took natural vitamins she sold at the health food store, and brewed herbal teas, ones she hoped would rid Drake's body of whatever it was that made it sprout tumors.
"Your turn," his wife had said after she figured out Tina and Drake were sleeping together. Drake was younger than either of them, a few years away from thirty. "You can drive him to Denver for his chemo. You can feed the horses when he's too sick to get up."
His wife packed her bags. To celebrate, Tina and Drake bought Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby and Wheat Newtons.
For Christmas, his sister Maura sent Drake a portable Scrabble game which was so tiny it fit in your pocket. Tina didn't like to play.
"But, my hot potato," he said, "I can't play by myself."
Drake called Maura and asked her to visit. He handed Tina the phone when he went to hurl. Maura said, "He cheats."
"At Scrabble," Tina said. "I know."
For the rest of the afternoon, Tina slouched in the padded rocker and embroidered.
"Tina, babe," Drake said. She twisted so she was looking into the light and stuck the needle repeatedly through the cloth, ignoring the black outline tracing its way around his body.
He peeled the little plastic letters apart and arranged the ultimate game on the miniature board; then he shook the letters off and started over.
*****
They didn't look much like brother and sister. Maura was as tall as Drake, but had wispy, brown hair and pink glasses. While it snowed, Drake and Maura played Scrabble on the big board. Tina embroidered and looked up words in the dictionary.
"Maura," Drake said, fiddling with his tiles, "I never cheated. Just because I'm smarter than you."
She removed four tiles from her tray, forming esemplastic.
"That's not a word."
Tina looked it up: shaping diverse elements into a whole.
"I kept hearing mice feet," Maura said, yawning. "Right next to my head."
"There aren't any mice." Drake gnashed his teeth. "Cat eats them."
"Then it's the cat."
Tina knew Drake wouldn't banish his cat because his sister couldn't sleep. Weekly, he pasted a new photo from his stack of old climbing and skiing magazines on the refrigerator above Cat's dish.
Drake had encouraged Maura to bring her skis. "Let's ski," she said.
"You can ski out to the horse barn," Drake said, getting out the Risk board. "Feed the horses." Maura was afraid the stallions would rear up on their hind legs and trample her to death.
The next morning, before Drake was up, Maura settled into a mismatched kitchen chair. "He's not in remission anymore," she said. "He told me there's a tumor on his spine."
"But it's shrinking," Tina said before bad vibes could penetrate the kitchen.
Maura stared as Tina rinsed glasses that had already been washed and dried.
"One thing he isn't honest about," Maura pointed out, "is his illness."
Tina rinsed the last glass and set it in the dish rack.
*****
His other three sisters were big blonde city women. Their mother stood straight, but whenever someone whispered how sorry they were, she sputtered into tears. One of the sisters slipped the magnetic Scrabble game into the purse tucked under her arm.
Drake's mother's blue eyes rested on Tina. "You're the little friend that helped with the horses. Go ahead, take a memento."
"You think truth and death are related?" Tina asked a sister later as they walked to the bar. The horses whinnied and kicked, racing along the back fence. "Maura does."
"Maura," the sister said, "can't make it to her own brother's funeral, and she has the audacity to link truth and death?"
*****
Sometimes Tina imagined the sisters rearranging the little plastic letters from the game, messing up all of Drake's words. Sometimes when she was sitting in a bar alone, she traced out words in the moisture on the countertop. She'd write out truth and death and love, and try to use his name to connect them. Sometimes she'd write love and end with a question mark, even though she knew questions weren't part of the game.
C.A. Cole lives in Fort Collins, CO and has taken classes at various colleges in the vicinity. Work has (or will) appeared in flashquake, Noneuclidean Cafe, Perigee, Kalliope, Cataraville, and Hobart.