Redcoat

A young man, more than anything, desired a new fur coat to prance about in and make his friends jealous. He went to his father to ask for money to buy such a coat, but the old man chastised him: "Don't you think of anything but what you wear? Come back again when you have more thought for your fellow creatures."

Angered, the young man went for a walk and, seeing a wolf, took his gun out and shot it. The young man shimmied his knife between skin and flesh as the wolf whimpered. Returning to his father, he handed over the skin and said, "Look, after our talk the other day I saw this wolf attacking an old woman, and shot it. But for me, the old woman would have died, and here is the skin of the creature as proof."

Mollified, the old man paid for the skin to be fashioned into a coat and telephoned his second son: "You hear how brave Redcoat is? How come you never do anything like that?"

The second son stabbed out his cigarette and strode out into the darkening city; from the opposite end of the his street, Redcoat stumbled out of a bar. Dizzied with drink, he dropped to his hands and knees almost crawling, his clothing slurping up the dirty puddles on the paving slabs.

Seeing something with a wolf's dark fur crawling along the street, the younger brother jumped back. "A wolf," he thought, "here in the street? I will never hear the end of this if I run away!" He grabbed the revolver from his pocket and fired at the thing. The bullet screeched from the barrel. The thing reared up on its hind legs. Warmth radiated from the wound in his chest; the gun splashed into a cold, gleaming puddle as Redcoat whimpered down at his emptying side.