When the noisy clock sounded nine times, the open bar was drained to a trickle. This roadside bar in the middle of the woods was the last thing I expected in my long ride. There must be a hamlet nearby, I thought, and parked my car beneath the giant banyan.
Just two of us—a stranger and me—dipped our sadness in our brimming glasses. He finally broke the silence between us: Would you play a game, gentleman? I didn’t offer a second glance.
and pretended to put my head in the glass. Game of dares? It’d be fun! His voice as loud as the clock, as close to me as my shadow. Then the touch of his arm in my shoulder.
I’m in no mood to play, I shrugged.
Your face reveals you’re also broke. Why not lessen the load a bit? Let’s make it a deal of interest. The one who fails will pay the bills.
My reluctance yielded to his relentless pestering.
He then took out an empty bottle and gave it an angry spin. It danced on the table for a minute or so and finally died, pointing its head toward him.
Ask me anything and I agree to oblige, he said.
I had no idea in my head. I wished him to go away. But I didn’t dare to flare his fury!
Walk on the bonfire if you can, I said instead, pointing my finger to the outside.
He followed my instructions like a zombie and gingerly walked over the fire as though it was a carpet of roses. No frown, no fear, no agony—he was completely insane!
My shock had no time to culminate.
Let’s start it again, he said.
The bottle poked its finger to my face and he jumped from his seat: half in excitement, half in madness. It’s my turn now to test your prowess.
He took out a knife from his pocket like a nice little secret and kept it on the table.
Stab me, he said.
What the fuck? I am not playing anymore.
You can’t quit. Rules are rules.
I was trying to escape in haste but he held my hand in his grip. The smile turned to ferocity. Rules have to be obeyed.
You never said, one can’t quit, I bawled with indignation.
I may have forgot. But rules are rules.
I yelled for help but the bar owner and the lone waiter were nowhere.
I nervously picked the knife, closed my eyes, and tried to thrust it into his belly. The knife went through him and pierced the leather as if he was a shadow. His body was only air.
His smile reappeared with ghostly intensity. You can’t kill a dead man, can you?
Debasish Mishra is a Senior Research Fellow at NISER, India. He is the recipient of the 2019 Bharat Award for Literature and the 2017 Reuel International Best Upcoming Poet Prize. His recent work has appeared in 𝑁𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝐷𝑎𝑘𝑜𝑡𝑎 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑦, 𝑃𝑒𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑟𝑎, 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤, 𝐴𝑚𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑑𝑎𝑚 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑦, 𝐶𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑎 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑦, and elsewhere.
The party would have been over, if someone hadn’t brought along marshmallows as a party food, which in turn, brought up the suggestion that when the sun would set, and it would start getting dark, we would build a fire, and roast the marshmallows above the open flame. It was in town, this party to which I had been invited for some reason (as it was not customary for me to be invited to any shindigs, and so, was not in my habit to attend), and most of the attendees were military brats.
And a good deal of them were army air cadets – a sinister organization into which I once had been drawn. Being a metalhead I fit in very little with their spit-and-polish types. The type of people who pretend to be cleaner than their neighbours, and who judge you on sight. Who think that shaving means that you are respectful, and who see disagreeing as a criminal offense (as, in the military, it often tends to be).
(When I say I had been drawn into it, it was for a rather short period, as when looking at my shaggy black hair they said “above the ear”, and when I had it cut to “above the ear”, it still was not short enough to their liking; they postponed giving me my uniform leaving me singled out, most purposefully – noticeable, that one who doesn’t have a uniform, doesn’t have a buzz cut, and wears metal band Ts – and that day they wanted us to parade around for some officer, behind the Foodland by minus forty, I said “no sir, enough of that!”, and never went back. I had been lured in by the prospects of a free piloting license – because the government is willing to spend money on youths to have a free piloting license if they spend hours every week drilling, but it wouldn’t do the same for youths who spend their time reading, or studying. But a free piloting license wasn’t worth the wasted hours. One of the last times I had gone to cadets, was one time we could finally do some shooting. They handed me an air riffle and a pair of protective glasses, to shoot targets at the end of a range, while lying flat on our fronts. Some pipsqueak leading air cadet half my size was assigned to supervise me (to be a Leading air cadet, one needed no qualifications, one needed only to be with the organization for at least six months). I was laughing. “What’s funny?” he asked. “What the hell is this?” I replied, “I’m from the countryside, I’ve been shooting with live ammunition since I’ve been ten. What’s the deal with these glasses when we’re gonna shoot pellets at the end of a range?”. “They can bounce back and hurt you” he said. “How do you suppose it could bounce back from the end of that range?” I insisted. Smart mouth, the L.A.C. said “Either you comply or you don’t shoot”. Fun stuff – so I was lying down with my glasses becoming foggy from my body heat, and I was trying to aim properly. After a first shot that hit somewhere along the blue line, I took off my glasses to wipe them. “Put those back on! You need to have your glasses on at all times when on the range!” he yelled. “I’m just wiping them clean – they’re foggy; I can’t see shit!” I said, showing him the goggles. “Okay, but do it fast” he whispered. As soon as I had put them back on, it started all over again – it was damn hot, how they were heating that building in mid-November! Another half-miss. I had enough of that – I reloaded, stood up, took off my glasses, and shot. Dead center! That’s how hillbillies do it! I went back and turned in the “weapon”. That was it for me and the “air cadets”).
And here was I, outside a house in the town suburbs, with a bunch of those fanatics, and we were going to start a fire. They – the owners of the house – had a fire pit all ready, arranged, prepared. “Perfect!” I though, until the cadets went in, to try to apply what they had learned in “survival training”.
During the first ten-or-so minutes, they argued about how to set up the wood. “We have to put all the branches in one direction, so the wind gets through! The flame needs air!” said the first. “No! We have to Cross them in different directions, so that it leaves room in between! Air pockets!” Said the second. “No, the branches should be standing, I mean, they should be like a cone, like a teepee. That way there’s room underneath, and the flames are high” said the third. Impressed by this elaborate design, they got to work. Standing there, I remarked “It all depends on the weather you have, but none of it really matters as long as you get it started right”. “Shut up” they said “we got this. We passed our survival training. This is easy”.
And so, I sat at the table where the ladies were steering clear from the macho quarrels, or admiring them. Another excluded male, whose name was Gabriel, honestly stated “My grandad always got his fires started with a gasoline mix. That’s how he showed me. Said it helped, like with barbecue fluid. So don’t ask me nothin’ about building a fire other ways!”. Clean, unassuming, honest. He stayed seated and chatted with the ladies.
It was a hilarious scene where the distinctions between the expected typical males and the expected typical females were put into stark contrast. These scenes, we’ve all had them. I recall a story from my school music teacher with whom I got along, because neither he nor I fit into an “expected typical” category. Once after class once, he reminisced about a soiree he had been at, while explaining to me how Schoenberg’s 12 tone method worked. “All the men were in the living room, talking about cars, hockey, and boobs, so I went into the kitchen where the women were, who were talking about gossip, tv. series and books, which in comparison was vastly more interesting, but they shooed me out because they didn’t want any guys there, so I had to stay and be bored, listening about cars, hockey and boobs”.
In the backyard, where I was, the girls, who were all of military upbringing, were fundamentally different. Maybe because of the branches in the military. With only one of them, Sophie, was I acquainted – we had been in after-school clubs, and I suspected it was through her that I had been invited. Her family was military, but worked in Search and Rescue – so, not cannon fodder. Actually, I had a huge crush on her, and not only because she was one of the rare girls who talked to me. I wouldn’t have asked her out because I valued her friendship too much, and I feared the same thing would happen as with this other girl called Jenny. She and her best friend Marie had started hanging out with me and my friend Peter, who was nicknamed Peter built because we both expected to become truckers, and he was so large that he had something of a peterbilt. They had hung out with us some, and we had enjoyed their company, until Peter, who had more guts and more self confidence than I, asked Marie if she would like to go on a date with him, maybe even, if Jenny wanted to, a double date, the four of us. She politely declined, and they ignored us for the rest of the school year.
And so I valued Sophie’s friendship too much to ask her out, which is ridiculous since she stopped talking to me anyways. She stopped talking to me largely due to another girl who was there – named Daphne – who was as superficial as they can come, all the opposite of Sophie. As that evening was one of the only pleasant encounters I had with Daphne, I would have never suspected her – the low-witted make-up covered gossip queen – to become friends with the socially engaged and very literate Sophie. Nonetheless, the worst is often to happen. I’d never know why Sophie preferred Daphne’s company. Maybe they went to some same church or something – I wouldn’t know about any of that.
Two girls remained, and they were Angel – a tall black girl, who was an air cadet, yet instead of the air of superiority most of them hailed, was a shy and polite girl, who liked to take pictures, and who envisioned becoming air reconnaissance photographer (or something along those lines) –, and Jane, a short baptist who was very nice as long as no one mentioned any religious subject (I learned that surprisingly enough, she would later convert to Catholicism and become a nun). We sat there, and joked for a while, about trying out Gabriel’s technique, about driving a car around for a few blocks and roasting the marshmallows under the hood, or about going to the beach to roast the marshmallows, as it would take less time than waiting for the dudebros to succeed in building a lasting fire.
The three dudebros huddled around the fire pit had abandoned the idea of arranging the sticks like a cone. In fact, they had found other ways to rearrange the wood, so that it would supposedly burn better. They had debated matches; safety matches (or Swedish matches as they’re sometimes called), vs. other matches, or a lighter.
“Does anyone have a lighter?” asked the main alphaalpha – the kind of guy who you knew would peak around our age – “I forgot mine. I didn’t think I would need it”.
“I can just get the fire started,” said I.
“No, screw you, we’re doing it,” he affirmed.
“Okay,” I backed down, relaxed, largely also because I thought it was funny to watch them try, and put so much effort into it.
“Just let him do it,” sighed Sophie.
“No, Sophie, we’re gonna have it lit soon,” said the second one.
So we sat pretty while they used up a pack of matches, and we talked about projects, about activities, about cooking, about food, about the fact we were hungry, about night that was getting dark, about mosquitoes… And the dudebros talked about how they could place the sticks they had gathered as firewood, and I was asking them if I could do it, and they gave me the same response “No, screw you, we know how to do it”, and I tried to give them tips “Place some of those dry leaves at the bottom, get some more fire starting material”, and they would tell me to shut up, and Gabriel would make jokes about getting some gasoline, and I would say that build small fires it all the time on the north mountain, and they would ignore me. Daphne wanted to go in to sing some Karaoke, and Sophie wanted to go to the beach; Angel and Jane wanted to go home, but they didn’t have a ride. “I can give you a ride” I told them. “How do you know where I live?” asked Angel not shocked, but amused. “Don’t you remember? You saw me coming out of Nanette’s place – she’s my band’s drummer, that’s where we practice”. “Right!” she said, before Daphne asked “You’re in a band?”. “Yes” I answered. “Oh”.
And as we were about to leave I asked for the last time “You sure you don’t want I should do it?”, about the fire, to which the dudebro who had non-verbally established himself as the leader of the pack, burst out “Fine, you think you can do it, go ahead!”, and the third one warned me “It’s these matches, the problem”, though they were using up a second pack, as the first one had been used up.
Not changing how they had placed their wood, I stuffed dry leaves wherever I could – as dry leaves were all over the ground, no more fire-starter needed to be found ; I lit a match and put it to the middle of the base I had established. Within a minute a fire was roaring, and I handed them their matches, of which one single I had used. Frustrated but glad to have a fire, and for the party to have come back to life, the others gathered around the flames, sticking the marshmallows on sharpened sticks. One of the guys only muttered to me “You redneck bastard”, to which I didn’t care. Having a sun-burnt neck means that you work hard under a harsh beating sun. You work hard, you also know your stuff. And you need neither to show off, to be called leading cadet, or to wear a uniform. All I had needed was time in the country to try things out for myself, and if I didn’t manage myself, to ask from people who knew. If the government wanted to invest into these military brats, who went from town to city to town, and give them free piloting licenses in exchange for standing straight in lines, and getting haircuts, then my behind would stay in the country without any of their privileges. At least I knew how to build a fire.
Born in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1993, Thibault Jacquot-Paratte writes in both English and French. Recently he has served as literary editor to the anthology Il y a des bombes qui tombent sur Kyiv. His novel A dream is a notion of and his short work collection Souvenirs et Fragments were published in May 2022. Previous publications include his poetry collection Cries of somewhere’s soil, and three of his plays. More of his work has been featured in reviews and anthologies. He enjoys spending time with his wife and their daughter, and finding new creative projects. He is a regular contributing journalist to Le Courrier de la Nouvelle-Écosse, his play Il y avait des murmures sous le sol will premier in February 2023. He is currently employed as Script writer at Bored Panda Studios.
The father’s breathing sounded like marbles rolling on a hardwood floor. The boy had heard this comparison used to describe the death rattle before. The old people always said this, like people on the news always said that a tornado sounded like a freight train. The boy had heard tornados that sounded like trains and now he heard death that sounded like marbles.
The nurse said this sound rarely lasted for more than a few hours. She saw death almost daily. She was a clean and pretty lady, an expert in human exits. She said this at 5pm. It was now 3am. She also said that this rattle caused no pain, but those who might confirm this never did. It sounded like it hurt.
The mother slept on the couch, soundly, not ten feet from the rattle while the boy moved from seat to seat, the foot of the father’s bed, and kitchen chairs, and even the floor.
The boy thought of the last few days, and then the last few months. He thought of the father’s questions about what sins Jesus might forgive and which ones might preclude pardon. The boy quoted the relevant red passages from memory. The father admired the scriptures and the boy who memorized them. The boy knew them all, but believed only a few. The father liked believing in the boy and the reassurance he gave, and the boy liked giving the reassurance he himself would never receive. It was a small lie, he thought, smaller than those the dying father and sleeping mother told.
Then the boy thought mostly about promises. The father made those he didn’t keep, but the boy always believed he would have kept them if he could, and he always believed he might keep the next one. It was here that he saw his faith disappear like wisps of holocaust smoke, every future lie reflecting an original one.
The boy also thought about his own promise. The father feared suffering more than retribution and made the boy promise that he would end his suffering when the time came. Believing in mercy, the boy had agreed, though he knew others had begged the father for mercy he never gave. The boy sat for two long hours, his back against the kitchen wall. The rattle never changed in tone or volume. Then the boy nodded asleep and dreamed, or remembered, the father putting his pistol to the head of the boy’s dog, his back broken, his hips twisted topsy-turvy by the car’s impact.
The sound of the shot awakened him, and something inside him.
The boy walked to the father’s bed. He placed his palm against the father’s scalp. It was cool to the touch, like the hood of a car left sitting in the shade, its engine having been shut off for hours. Cool, and yet the rattle continued.
The boy unfolded a damp cloth and wiped the father’s face one last time. He lay the cloth over the father’s face, covering his eyes. He clasped the father’s nose between his left thumb and forefinger and pressed his palm over the mouth. The process reminded him of a child forming a snowball from cold white powder.
The boy loved the father and hated that he loved him.
But, most of all, he hated the sound of the marbles, and then there was nothing left to hate.
Alan Caldwell hs been teaching for 29 years, but only began submitting my writings last May. He has been published in almost two dozen journals and magazines since.
Odours hover low in the arena, pungent with nervous urine; horse, cattle, sheep, any beast that can realize a profit. The auctioneer’s repetitious phrasing rings shamelessly to those listening and tedious to those who are not. His timing neither falters nor retires. He cannot allow himself to appear uncertain; not to his earnest buyers he can’t. That is the nature of his task.
The auctioneer might well have been pitching caskets to corpses as far as I am concerned. I am neither earnest nor a buyer and his ‘oo’ll gi me 40, 40, 40’ sounds like an engine missing far down the road. Today I am consumed by misfortune. That’s why I came to the sale barns. I didn’t want to bear the weight alone.
The same work bent bodies are here today as with every sale, some to buy, some to neighbor and sip coffee. Men and women that bend their bones with beasts’ work, can feel legitimately idle for a couple of hours. They lean the rail with their forearms, fingers laced, heads stooped from familiarity with strain; mighty workers clad in farm garb.
I was leaning. I was leaning next to a neighbor whose great bent hands and work worn frame declared his right to be leaning as well. The Guthrie’s persevered as a cow/calf operation in spite of owning good bottom land, north of the assumed limits of good Ontario farmland. He and his wife Violla were stockmen not land tillers. He stood pushing his finger at the tear hole of his cup. I expect he had seen the worry in my face and needed a detour for his eyes. He could see that I had been bit by our neighbor’s trouble.
“See anything you like, Elmer?” I ask to let him off the hook.
“Sellin; not buyin.” He says and he draws involuntary circles on the lid. We stand awkwardly for what seems too long, knowing that there is a question that needs asking.
“You heard?” He asks. I sense he hopes I have not.
I acknowledge his question with a nod but have a gnawing one of my own. Why I am so spooked by this tragedy. This isn’t the first-time injured beasts had to be put down. Every guy here probably had to do it himself at one time or another. But that business. That was the saddest waste of animal flesh I had ever known. Those poor horses. Ran full out, probably for the first time; ran until they perished. I had gone over every possible reason why and not one of them offered any comfort. The reason I had suspected was hard to swallow.
Guthrie twisted himself so he was facing me full on. He was still fingering that cup.
“You were there?” He asked it and raised his eyes till they were fused on mine, retiring yet persistent.
“No. Not me. You?”
“No. Walker told me.”
I scanned the men abreast of Guthrie, searching for Walker, as if that was going to settle anything. I watched Guthrie study me.
“Hell of a thing…” I said. “…just to bolt like that, full out.”
Guthrie made a spitting noise. “It would have only taken one of them to start.”
I listened to Guthrie’s explanation. I could see he had made his sense of it.
“Just bolted.” I repeated. “Ran clear to the swamp.”
Guthrie reached to an inside pocket. His hand emerged holding a small bottle. Under the cover of his coat, he tipped the bottle into his cup. He made a gesture. I waved the offer away.
“Those animals never saw anything like open spaces before…” Guthrie’s tone was looking for blame. “not in the years I knew Able to own them. They were either hitched and working or corralled in that shoebox paddock.”
Guthrie was probably right, but still, Able hadn’t been in the ground long. A dead man can’t answer to insinuations.
“You ever keep horses?” Guthrie asked. He was implying, that if I had, I’d know.
“I’ve never taken a notion to want a horse.”
He looked to me as if there should be more.
“No need of horses.” I answered. “As a pet maybe but I wouldn’t want to find myself here selling a friend. Would you?”
Guthrie sniffed a brief laugh at my logic.
A big strawberry roan mare got led out into the ring. She looked like somebody flung red paint at her white body through a sieve. Striking. She held herself proud and bobbed and shook her head in protest. The auctioneer began his trill and I could read the worry in that animal’s lines just as Guthrie had seen it in mine.
Able’s team had spent a lifetime in the company of soulless drudgery, no indulgences, no pasture land to kick up and play. They bolted out of the sheer joy of it; an opportunity they’d never known. That’s what I convinced myself happened. That’s what made it unpalatable. It’d be like watching fledglings getting picked off by predators on their first flight. Turn a guys’ guts just thinking about it.
Every day Able would hitch his team and they’d draw whatever he had been hired to haul and when he was done cooling them down, they’d be confined to that small paddock, only spitting distance from the comings and goings of the road. Those poor beasts could only witness the world’s disposition: passing dog fights, lightning storms, kids playing on the road. Imagine it; them cut loose for the first time. They probably hit full gallop in three strides. Rash enthusiasm ended up a very ugly thing indeed.
It took Guthrie and I less than an hour to learn the authentic details of what happened to that team: When Able Cromptom passed from the ailments that had plagued him, his team had needed care and feeding. Able was a bachelor. Gossip had it that he had been orphaned although no one knew that for sure. That was before my time. It was agreed within the community that his team should be pastured by his neighbors until the estate was settled. It was intended to be a charitable undertaking. We look after our own.
Mr. Angus Brown agreed to be the temporary recipient of the team. He offered the pasture fronting on the Mallard quarter line. They were loaded in a trailer and transported. A crowd of helpers showed up, mostly for the laughing and telling of stories, unaware that they were to become witnesses. Upon being unloaded both horses became hard to handle. The gelding reared and snorted and the mare resisted the men as they removed her halter. Those horses knew something was up. Both immediately bolted. Neighbors shouted, encouraging the team to freedom. The animals took separate trails for the first time in their lives like they were rebelling against years of pointless toil. They eventually both broke the rise that led to low ground and descended out of sight. The first sign that something had gone wrong came to the crowd on the wind. It was a dreadful sound, “Panicked whinnies.” That was how it was described. That sound got everyone running.
Some said they had bolted because of being skittish of the unfamiliar ground. Little Jenny Brown thought the same as me. She swore she saw raw impatience in their trusting faces. Both animals were dead within thirty minutes of their release. The mare ran head on into a leaning dead tamarack and broke her neck. The gelding broke a leg in the swamp muck. There was no decision to be made over the animals’ future. It took half of that thirty minutes to fetch a rifle.
Guthrie left the auction barns forgetting to collect his earnings from the sale. Me; I thought to offer the guy who bought the strawberry mare more than he had paid. I let that thought pass.
From a body of work that includes thirty short stories Steve has placed two pieces: ‘Hardly Worth the Telling’ with DASH, English dept., California State University, and ‘Burying Jacob Muscrat’ with the now defunct Danforth Review.
He was up early and well gone to his work on the farm, as always. She found the envelope on the kitchen table, propped up against the tomato sauce bottle that was already attracting flies in the burgeoning heat of the day. Well, that’s a bit romantic, she thought. Hadn’t picked that up in their limited conversations to date. She put the kettle on and added fresh tea leaves to the pot. They were both old-fashioned that way.
Sitting down at the Laminex table, she opened the envelope and began to read.
Kate (no Dear she noted)
Talking’s never been something I’ve had much use for and the only way I know what I think about anything is if I write it down.
Unless I’m mistaken, and I don’t think I am, you’d like this occasional weekend thing to become a permanent arrangement. I can see the sense in that but I want you to be clear about what that will mean for our future. Women say they want honesty in a man but in my experience they don’t really mean it. Now’s as good a time as any to find out if you’re different.
I don’t want to marry you but I do want to spend my life with you. Instead of getting rubber-stamped by the Government or the Church, we’ll have this contract and we’ll have each other’s word that we’ll stick to it. Without that, life together would be pointless. And, besides, nothing about me will ever change. There will be no negotiation.
I’ll work hard all the rest of my life to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table. You will be responsible for the household. I’d prefer you didn’t work but if you do, the household mustn’t suffer. I want plain traditional food. You can eat whatever your like.
If you want children, that’s fine with me but you will raise them. I will never mistreat them but I will not coddle them, because the world will not when I’m gone. They will learn tasks appropriate to their age and take responsibility for their actions.
If you have visitors or relatives to our house I won’t be interested in talking to them. You and the children will be all the society I need except for necessary business arrangements.
We will continue to have sex as long as we both want it but I won’t be ‘making love to you’.
I will never say ‘I love you’. I have no idea what ‘love’ is except people say that there wasn’t much of it around in my house when I was growing up. I guess you can’t miss what you never had.
We will be faithful to each other. I know myself well enough to know that will be true for me for all time. If you are ever unfaithful to me, the contract is ended.
I will almost certainly not remember occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries and I will ignore all attempts to rope me into Xmas.
There won’t be any cuddling on the couch and watching TV and I won’t be interested in going anywhere to be entertained.
There won’t be any deep and meaningful conversations about books or what’s in the news.
You must be thinking, “Where are the good things about this contract?”
You will have financial security as long as you live. The farm produces well and is pretty much drought-proof. If I die before you I don’t expect you to keep the farm and the place will fetch a good price.
You will have children (if you want them) to love and nurture as you wish and they will grow up knowing how to be resourceful and resilient, putting them well ahead of the pack.
You will have a faithful and respectful partner that barely drinks, doesn’t smoke, is rarely ill and will stay strong for years to come.
You will live in a community that has kept its values and its connections tight and in that sense you’ll never be alone.
And we will sit on the back porch at dusk and look over our land and not have to say how much it means to us. We will know what we’ve done together and that’s enough peace for anyone.
So, if that’s a contract you can live with for the rest of your life and never reproach me or yourself for the choices you have freely made, let me know tonight.
She put down the letter, made herself a pot of tea, took it out to the back verandah and sat in her favorite cane chair, gazing at the landscape that could be hers forever.
As Kate sipped her tea, she mulled over what he’d written, let the landscape in to her mind until the horizon was clear and mapped out how she would provide her answer.
She returned to the kitchen, poured a second cup of tea, sat at the table and began to write. She didn’t bother with a salutation; who else would she be writing too?
I’ve heard people say that honesty can be a weapon. However, in your case I think you’re using it as insurance or, at the very least, assurance that I won’t try to change you.
Life doesn’t work like that. No matter how we isolate ourselves, the world will have its way and we have to deal with the consequences. Even for people like you who don’t follow the news, either the grapevine or the bank will tell them when there’s no longer a market for what they grow or what stock they raise; at least not at a price that they can live on.
You talk about the farm being drought-proof but you know such a thing has long gone and last year was the driest on record. In that sense, I’m not assured by your promise to keep a roof over our heads and provide well for me and any children we may have. To be blunt, that’s the sort of promise I’d expect from a townie, not a farmer.
Like you, I can take or leave marriage. It doesn’t seem to have made relationships any stronger or otherwise amongst people I’ve known. The fact that you want to spend the rest of your life with me fills me with peace and hope. But I won’t have a life without love from my partner and promising to be faithful entirely misses the point.
You know I don’t mean romance novel love or love that has to keep telling itself over and over again that it exists. That would scare me even more than what you’ve proposed. However, at the very least, I would expect you to look me in the eye and tell me you love me enough to want to spend the rest of your life with me and promise to let me know if that ever changes. (By the way, the sex doesn’t need to change – no complaints in that department.)
But here’s the real rub. We (as distinct from me alone) need to decide if we’re going to have children. And if we decide we will, you will be their father in all the important ways; comforting them, tending to their needs, teaching them patiently and defending them to the death. Don’t worry, I’m perfectly happy to take on the traditional mothering roles but I’m not going to let the cold distance of child-rearing that you inherited from your father and grandfather enter my bloodline.
How you are with others is fine with me. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not much different. Besides, think of the money we’ll save on presents. But we will talk, especially about the important things and we will talk about them at the time it’s needed, not when it’s too late.
I’m all for meaningful silences but when they end I want to know what they mean.
I want this life. Since the beginning I’ve felt I’m coming home when I come here and I feel lost when I’m not. I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, provided you are prepared to accept what I’ve asked for in your ‘contract’ (that word is so wrong my first impulse was to take off, forever.) If that much is too much then it says a lot about our chances of survival.
I think you will because I believe you are the strongest and most honest man I have ever met and that you have finally met the woman that you need to survive what’s coming.
You can give me your answer, face to face, when I come next weekend.
Signed, guess who?
Flynn read the letter several times over, climbed on to the ancient TD-18 International Harvester tractor with its metal seat shined by three generations of ample backsides and drove out to do some ploughing. His plan was for the concentration on straight lines to bring him the peace to think clearly about what Kate had said. What wasn’t helping was the ‘love’ part.
His father had been a hard and harsh taskmaster and he found it difficult to recall any words of praise passing his lips. The most anyone could hope for was the odd grunting nod and a mumbled ‘Not bad’. His mother was only slightly better, with hugs disappearing by the time he went to school and a relentless ticking off of tasks when he came home.
He understood they were hard years when they were trying to get the land into the condition that it needed to be in for long-term sustainability and there was little time for anything peripheral. And as he grew older he imagined that they thought that leaving him the legacy of the farm was, in the end, the only love that counted.
Breast cancer (deliberately left untreated he discovered later) took his mother in her late forties and five years later he found his father dead from a heart attack while repairing fences on a boundary paddock. When he picked him up, he half expected to be told to bugger off and get back to his work. Flynn made the necessary arrangements and stood dutifully solemn at their funerals, accepting condolences, but felt nothing. One day they were alive, the next day they were dead. That’s how life worked.
On his first night alone, he went through some old photos and lingered over a picture of his Mum, clipped from the local paper, holding one of her prize cakes at the annual regional agricultural show. Mum’s recipes were a local legend and she kept them, written in immaculate copperplate script, in a re-purposed school exercise book, kept from her teaching days. He decided to keep it safe, without knowing why.
Women rarely entered his mind as he continued to develop the farm, with some occasional hired help. Those he had met at school seemed weak or unapproachable. After he left school, he would see them again in town, usually either flaunting what he imagined were country town fashionable clothes or pregnant or walking along with a tribe of whining kids trailing behind them.
A couple of girls had pursued him (or his property) and once he had found himself suddenly engaged to Cheryl Clarke, not that he could recall popping the question. The next thing he knew was that has being paraded around the district like a prize bull with a ring through his nose. He hibernated for weeks before that blew over.
Then one day, when he was collecting his mail from the post office, in strode a statuesque female stranger. The coat and slacks could only belong to a city type and her long red hair hung in waves down her back. Her face contained eyes and a fixed smile that spoke of openness while still conveying concealed steel.
Having collected her mail, she strode out again, unfolded herself into a dusty, dented hatchback and sped off. In the background he could hear fragments from the tongues wagging. ‘ … new schoolteacher … not married … bit of a tyrant in the schoolroom I’ve heard but the kids seem to like her … asked for wine in the pub the other day… drives like a maniac’. This woman had certainly entered Flynn’s mind and he was totally uncertain as to how to deal with that.
Up until then, he’d go into town for the mail and shop at random times, when the opportunity arose between jobs. Now he found himself on schedule to be there, coincidentally, when she came into the post office. She’d started nodding to him, as country people do, but with an odd, crooked smile on her face when she did it.
Kate made the first move. Instead of nodding, she asked him ‘I’ve heard that sometimes you take animals for agistment.’ After a moment, from the side of a barely opened mouth, he said ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘I have an ageing horse that I’d like to have close at hand.’
‘One horse?’
‘Sum total.’
‘Not sure my fences are high enough to contain a horse.’
‘Oh, her fence jumping days are over. Besides, you could ride her. If you wanted to.’
They pretended to haggle over an agistment fee and then Kate said, ‘I’ll bring her up at the weekend.’
And so it began.
And now here he was, sitting on his veranda, waiting for Kate, who was waiting for an answer.
Kate’s traveling car wreck pulled up at the veranda. She emerged, climbed the steps and sat in his Mum’s rocking chair and waited.
‘Not sure where to start’, he said.
She offered no help.
Silence.
‘I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you’ he blurted, as if fearful that if he didn’t get it out quickly his words would be strangled at birth.
Silence.
Kate smiled but said nothing.
‘About kids’, he nervously continued, ‘I want to be able to leave the farm to a next generation. I’m just not sure I’d be much good at the raising bit. You might have to give me a few tips.’
Kate laughed and said ‘I can always work with a willing pupil’.
They watched a pair of kookaburras land in the giant redgum that dominated the front yard.
Kate’s voice softened and she said, ‘That’s settled then.’
Now the silence between them was easy.
Later, she said, ‘Thought I might make a cake tomorrow. What did you do with your Mum’s recipe book?’
Finn smiled and said ‘Think I might have put it somewhere in the bedroom. Want to help me find it?’
Doug Jacquier has lived in many places across Australia, including regional and remote communities, and has travelled extensively overseas. His poems and stories have been published in Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and India. He blogs at Six Crooked Highways
