Two Mugs of Cider

by TheTobacconist

Chapter 1

Big Macintosh trotted along, pulling a cart with a blanket covering it behind him. He kicked up dust along the dirt trail, and came to a stop at a green pasture. He unhitched himself, and walked to the back of the cart, tossing back the blanket. In it sat a cask of cider and two tankards. He scuttled the cask and filled the mugs to the brim. He placed one mug on the tombstone beside him, and sat down on the cart with the other mug in hoof.

"Hey, Pa," He tossed back the cider and wiped the froth from his muzzle.

He came here often, perhaps more than he should. He supposed he should feel guilty over leaving his sister with so much work back home, but this was his weekly ritual. The way he figured it as often as he stood in for her so that she could go camping with her friends, they were even. At the very least he wanted to think that way, but he knew better than to let such a skewed world view alter his thinking or damage his relationship with his family. His father had taught him better than that.

"They hit me first," Big Mac yelled in the kitchen, "So now we're even"

"Fighting, Macintosh. Really," His father shook his head, "Listen to me, now. There are many ponies who obsess with getting even. And that's all they ever get. Give them better than they deserve, and put them in your debt. They will be in your debt, but you will be in their heart. You can only get ahead in life by giving better than is deserved."

Big Macintosh refilled his cider. He drank heavily and licked the froth from his lips. That lesson had been the most difficult one to apply. Over the course of his life he had found multiple caveats to the rule, and discovered that it worked best to keep it in mind when intentionally subverting it. He considered saying something to his father, but enjoyed the silence. His own silence was something he had learned to appreciate.

"Talking in class?," His father frowned as he looked over the teacher's note, "Big Macintosh, you know better."

"Everyone else was talking," Big Mac objected.

"Big Mac I'm gonna give you a few rhetorical questions," His father chuckled, "How many ears do you have? How many mouths do you have? And most importantly, why?"

Big Mac thought for a minute. He tapped his head and scratched behind his ear. He looked at his father and shrugged.

"You'll get it boy," His father walked off, "But you can't speak until you do."

Big Mac had spent the majority of that night thinking about the little riddle his father had given him. In his silence he noticed a certain quality to his father, he seemed to always let at least two ponies speak before him. Big Mac rubbed his temples, and then smiled. He went into the living room and tapped his father on the shoulder.

"Do you understand?" His father asked.

"Eeyup." Big Mac answered.

Big Mac refilled his cider. That had been an important lesson for him. It had stayed with him ever since. You have one mouth and two ears, because you should always listen more than you speak. While it may have annoyed someponies over the years, he found that it added a certain charm to his interactions. He had not yet passed it on to his siblings, but he tried to be the best example to them that he could. He had always tried to be a good example.

"She just follows me around everywhere," He complained to his father, "It's annoying!"

"Do you know why Applejack follows you?" His father asked.

"Nope," He stated.

"She admires you," His father chastised, "She's not trying to annoy you, son. She's trying to be like you. So, when she's around, don't do anything you don't want her copying."

Big Macintosh pressed on the tap, and the cask gurgled as the soporific liquid poured into his mug. He had originally wanted to disagree with his father, but later learned better. His father had definitely been right about that lesson. Applejack had copied him for years.

He patted the tombstone. Big Mac thought it was a fine location for a grave. He had picked this field at his father's request. Not that his father had requested a specific location, but he had specified as to where he did not want to be buried.

"No," His father lay in bed, shriveled and weak, "Don't bury me at Sweet Apple Acres. That will just make the mourning longer and harder. Bury me somewhere down the road, a good distance off. I don't want anyone seeing my grave every day. This'll be hard enough as is."

Big Mac had to fill out that request the next day. They didn't have much time to mourn, applebucking season had been just around the corner, and their relatives had their own fields to tend to. The work had made mourning that much more difficult. There was no closure for him.

Big Macintosh reached to fill his cider and received nothing but a few measly drops. He sighed, rolled the cask on its side, and rested his head on it. The world spun around him as he closed his eyes and relaxed in the cart.

The moon hung high against the dark sky by the time Applejack trotted down the dirt path and into the lush field. The only noises she could hear were the crickets chirping and Big Mac snoring. She stopped by the grave, tipped her hat, and turned to her sleeping brother. She placed the blanket over him, and hitched herself to the cart. She began a steady trot back towards the farm. He stirred in the back but continued to breathe heavily.

“Yeah,” Applejack looked over her shoulder, “I miss him too.”

Comments

[lmagine]

Not bad, it has alot of grammar mistakes. Other than that, not bad.
Also, good luck on the One-Shotober!

[TheTobacconist]

3245047
Yeah, I really need to pace out my writing and editing. It seems that if the writing is still fresh in my head my brain just auto-corrects it to what I thought I wrote. Thank you.

[CartsBeforeHorses]

Great story. Really explains a lot about Big Mac's character. All I have to advise is that you clean up your grammar. Treat the italicized thought dialogue just as you would regular dialogue, and add in commas where you have breaks.

[TheTobacconist]

3245075
Thanks Carts.

[TheExhaustedBrony]

Wow... My feels... They hurt. They hurt a lot! (Great story!)

[TheTobacconist]

3245150
Thanks Exhausted. That was kind of what I was going for.

[JBL]

This was....... okay. A little too bare on the details.

[TheTobacconist]

3360875
Would you like to recommend corrections and offer copious amounts of advice, suggestions, and constructive criticism to the point where I may begin pulling my hair out?

[JBL]

3360891 Hmmmmmmmmm.......... nnnnnope.

On a *slightly* more serious note, when you said:

Big Macintosh thinks long and hard about the pony he is, and the pony who made him who he is.

I was expecting a story with a more in-depth introspection, which 1000 words can't really deliver. He doesn't exactly think long and hard about his father, unless he's an idiot and can't grasp certain concepts, which I do not believe is true. All we really get is a few brief snippets of Big Mac's dad giving him advice. Now, while I believe that it may have help influence him in some ways, from what you've written, it's nothing really significant, nothing that really jumps out at me to say "Yes, and THIS is how Big Mac's dad made him the way he was." Now, you might say that it's all the little things he did for Big Mac and that it's more intangible than anything you could quantify, but again, it's hard to do so in such a short story.

Now, take for instance this story:
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/113376/sires-days

Now, I don't like to make comparisons between other people's stories (since they tend to get pissed the hell off), but in this one, you can clearly see how certain events in Big Macintosh's past has affected his present actions/behaviour/state of mind. While the grammar and punctuation is poor, the emotions are there for you to grasp. In your story, things were more..... perfunctory than anything else. I didn't feel anything, and the story offered no real sort of emotional connection for me, except perhaps the last paragraph. Perhaps you were trying to make them more intangible than trying to hit me with raw emotion and I suppose for a short story it would be a better approach but it didn't elicit anything for me. At the end, my reaction was, "This was nice." That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

[TambourineBlossom]

3360989
"This story about Big Macintosh was too brief and to the point."

Kinda the point, is what I'm trying to say.

Also I would argue that a thousand word snapshot is fundamentally different than a twenty-thousand word... almost character study.

[Papa Krell]

My balls ache; unrelated fact.

This was a good read,