Trail Boss   At first I didn’t want to go. I tried to explain — the unknown isn’t my thing. I’d heard about the perils — people died doing this, killed by snake bites and bee stings, bad water, bad food all along the way, bad hombres around every bend. And nobody ever comes back. You couldn’t pay me, I started to say . . . but in the glow of candlelight, and the glow of the wine, they worked on me. We need you, they insisted. No one else can do this, can’t you find it in yourself to —                                But I wouldn’t listen — not till they beguiled me with that title. I began to reassess the crossing, with myself as prairie potentate. Oh, they had me with those words — trail boss.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont February 2020