Wednesday, March 30, 2016

The Farm


With a barely audible grunt, aching joints, and nagging singularity of purpose Alvis swung his legs over the side of the feather mattress where he had slept since his own father took a spell and went to live with an Indian woman who told fortunes and went down on men for a living. When he was a teen Alvis had thought that the witch put a spell on his pa or maybe had brewed up some kind of a potion to trick him. Uncle Roy had told him that his dad had seen things over there in Europe when he and a couple of the others from around town had gone over to fight the Nazi's. When he said Nazis it rhymed with hat trees and something about his voice made Alvis think of the old farmers and timber men who had served in that one. He had been proud that local men like his father had served well.
They were heroes.
They saved America.
The world. They had saved the farm.
So the boy and Roy worked the farm. The farm was constant and there was always work to be done with little time for whimsy. Alvis took comfort in that. All of these years later, Roy long was gone, mother and a wife passed, the consistency of farm life remained. This one thing, the relationship with her, the farm- it had been his entire life the most important thing, and lately his hope for a legacy. This was the first morning he had ever resented the farm for her selfish calls for attention.
Dressed and looking out the kitchen window as he filled the percolator with water he looked at the place, the fields , the crops and he was no longer attached. The difference went unnoticed in him, and everything went grey.
"For what, for who?" , he asked no one at all.
After starting coffee, Alvis crossed the large kitchen to sit at the table and wait. Just before pulling out his chair he raised his hand toward the dial of an old Zenith radio, then let it fall again, uncalled on to complete the near-daily task of tuning in the local country station.He listened instead to the hissing and sputtering of the percolator atop the gas stove. Most people used the electric ones now but Alvis was not a man who was comfortable with change.
After a cup, he made toast but nearly burned it, then carried it on a saucer to the table. It was still intact as he rinsed his cup and sat it on the window sill over the sink. A small dust devil twisted and moved across sandy dirt turn rows and he felt insulted by the wind itself. He was angered by the soil, fat and fertile. The farm was a tease who promised far more than she ever delivered. He pulled his cap from a peg as he went outside to work just like he always did. Coaxing her into fruition with sweat and wisdom earned with disappointment or a plodding success, it was his lot.