Walking down a
quiet country road, the dirt kicking up with each step a reminder that rain
hasn't come along in a while. The corn isn't as high as it should be, and
another bad crop will probably be the end of the farm.
I can see my dad
and mom sitting on the front porch, and I can imagine their talk isn't about
love and such but what their going to do if the worst happens? It has to be a
huge burden for them
I was just
seventeen when I got the calling and joined up, now six years later I'm coming
home with scars unseen and nightmares most every night. The meds help some, but
what keeps me going is the fact that I won't let them lose the farm, I won't.
It was mom who saw
me first, nearly falling out of her chair and running towards me as fast as her
legs would go. I dropped my bag and braced myself for that momma bear hug I
knew was coming. Dad tapped out his pipe and waited on the porch until we made
it there. Welcome home son he said offering me his hand which I took in mine
pumping a few times then looking away.
The rains finally
came, and we got the crop in and a few after that. Dad got hurt when a jack
fell on his leg, and he had to stop farming, leaving it to me and my mom to
keep things going. Then mom got sick with a cancer which took her from us way
too soon.
I never did like
farming all that much, and dad wasn’t much good at anything those days since
mom passed. The bank called in our loan and auctioned off the machinery and
stuff from the house then sold it off to the highest bidder who came in with
the winning bid of just twelve thousand dollars. Not much for a piece of land
that we worked for so long.
Dad ended up in a
mobile home in the desert where he drank himself to death, and as for me well,
I took a job at a factory that made cardboard boxes. It was a mindless job that
didn’t take much skill, but it kept the voices quiet, and it was only a few
miles from the old farm. I still walk down that dusty old country road
sometimes looking at the old house that’s been painted, and the fences mended.
I'm only
twenty-seven tears old, and my life is nothing but some memories that someone
much older than me should be having.
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