I died the way every honest man ought to hope for.
Not in a hospital with machines hollering and strangers pushing on my chest. Not in some shining moment anybody would bother writing down. I died in my own bed, under a quilt my wife had pieced together years before her hands started failing her, in a room that smelled like cedar, leather, and enough Vicks Vaporub to fumigate a horse barn.
Outside the window, the wind moved over the pasture. I could smell wet grass, dust, and cattle.
That is a fine smell, in case you have never had the privilege.
My family was in the house. I could hear them trying not to cry in the way folks do when the end is standing in the room with them and everybody is pretending not to stare. One of my grandkids sniffled in the kitchen. Somebody shushed them. A coffee cup got set down too hard. Floorboards creaked. Life, even then, kept making its ordinary little sounds.
I remember thinking, plain as day, that I had done all right.
I had raised cattle. Raised kids. Buried people I loved and kept going after. Watched more sunrises than I had any right to. Spent my last years spoiling my grandchildren rotten and calling it wisdom. I even lived long enough to meet my great-grandson, Augustus Wilcox, which is a fine strong name for a boy. He had already learned to say Pop-pop before I went. His little sister was on the way. I had land in a trust, cattle in the pasture, money set aside, and enough sense to know my family would be all right if they kept their heads and did not sell anything to fools.
I had spent a lifetime trying to make sure of that.
So when my life started passing before my eyes, I was not especially offended by it. Mostly it was what you would expect. Good days. Hard days. Fences. Storms. Babies. Funerals. The whole honest mess of a life.
What surprised me was where the reel slowed down.
Of all things, it stopped on the face of Might Duy.
Now, if you had told me at sixty that my final thoughts would include a badly dressed man from a Japanese cartoon, I would have told you to stop drinking whatever somebody left unlabeled in the barn. But old age makes room for strange developments.
My oldest granddaughter at some point decided I needed "better hobbies," and somehow that turned into weekend anime marathons with the grandkids piled around me on the couch while we ate steak and hollered at the television.
My favorite had been Naruto.
Too much shouting in that show for my taste, but I respected the work ethic. I respected men who built themselves the hard way, and that green fool had done exactly that. Might Duy was ridiculous on the surface and solid where it counted, which is more than can be said for most people. He died protecting his son.
A man could do worse than leave the world like that.
So there he was in my final thoughts: Green outfit, manly facial hair, and all.
Then the reel sped up again.
My daughter came in and took my hand. My granddaughter laid her head against my arm. The room felt full and far away at the same time. I knew what was coming. They knew too.
"You can go if you need to, Grandpa," my granddaughter said.
That near broke me.
So naturally, with the last bit of breath and dignity left in me, I told them, "Don't you go selling the black heifer cheap."
If your last words cannot be profound, they ought to at least be useful.
Then I died.
Which, frankly, should have settled the matter.
It did not.
The next thing I remember was warmth and pressure and the deep, violent certainty that something had gone badly wrong with death. Then there was light. Cold air. Noise. A world too big all at once.
And I was screaming.
Not from fear, mind you.
From the simple indignity of being a baby.
Let me tell you, there are not many insults greater than surviving nearly ninety years with your pride mostly intact only to come back unable to hold up your own head.
Then I heard a young man shout, at a volume no newborn should ever be exposed to:
"HE IS MAGNIFICENT! THIS IS YOUTH!"
And that was when I found out the universe wasn't quite done with me yet.
AN: Did a quick rewrite of the first few chapters to help them flow. My writing was too systematic at the beginning and there were complaints of AI. So I figured I'd spend some time fixing the flaws.