I wrote this one night while cooking at the Waffle House. I wanted to have something to enter in the Post & Courier and South Carolina Arts Commission sponsored South Carolina Fiction Project and the deadline was only 2 days away. I wasn't able to work on it again until the day of the deadline. I spent all day editing and re-writing, managing to get it posted 5 minutes before the post office closed. I didn't win.
He rode out on Purpose, the gray-white mare he’d left on the farm three years ago when he went away to school. The sun had already been up for an hour, hidden by a ceiling of slate gray clouds. Probably going to snow. His breath hung in the still air like a ghost. The only sound, the muffled crunch of snow under the horse’s hooves. Everyone in the house was still asleep. Spent. Unprepared for the effort of the past few days; stress they thought they had prepared for.
The horse sauntered through the farmyard; past the rusting F150; past the bare clothesline, tiny icicles dripping off the sagging lines; past the dog pens, now empty; through the already open gate to the woods on the other side of the field.
The sweet scent of pine caressed his nostrils like a friendly cat. Purpose gingerly picked her way along the deeply rutted two-track cut by Dad's Ford, the John Deere, and mother nature. The road wound and forked through the forty acres of forest that surrounded the main house and farmyard. He and his three older brothers, all of them moved away from home and starting their own families, had hunted deer and ‘coon and rabbit with their dogs out here. Large mounds of snow-covered branches and roots were scattered in clearings on either side of the road. Dad had said something about selling some of the trees to help pay Mom’s hospital bills.
A year and a half ago he had learned about his mother’s cancer. His first year at State had been more intense than he'd expected, but he kept to the books. Being the first to go to college made him push harder. Now with Mom gone it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Maybe I should just quit. Save time and money. Come home and help Dad.
The two-track rolled out to an open field. Brown and broken stalks poked up through the snow. The bleached gray slat barn was supposed to protect the aging John Deere from the weather, but little mounds of snow sat on top of the huge tires and seat. He had made some weak promises to his father to fix the roof. Animal tracks criss-crossed the whitened field like impatient doodles. A hawk circled over the far end, the future looking bleak for some rabbit or squirrel.
The cornfield butted against the apple orchard. Harvested fruit (the farm’s main source of income for over two generations) was now applesauce or cider vinegar. Large empty crates, stacked rank and file, stood around the perimeter of the orchard; a makeshift fortress. Smaller crates cluttered the orchard floor; some stacked two and three high near the trunks, others strewn about carelessly under the unprotecting canopy of the leafless trees. As a boy, he had learned hard work picking up drops. And he had watched as Mexican migrant workers worked even harder to pick the red ripe fruit for their few dollars; all seemingly content.
Leaving the fruitless trees, the land slowly sloped up. A small ridge—open, unplowed, and left to its own. Dried up Queen Anne’s Lace stabbed the snow here and there. Clumps of dead grasses not flattened by the snow peeked out at the world. A single maple tree stood at the top of the ridge. Three main trunks rose to form a wide canopy. The trunk to his left had been recently struck by lightning, its deadened limbs bent to the earth.
He slid from the saddle to the ground and let the reins drop.
When I was a kid I used to pack up peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips, and pop to eat out here.
I smoked my first...and last...cigar by this tree. I thought I was so cool, until I coughed my lungs out and puked my guts up.
My back was against this rough bark when Darlene first kissed me. A few weeks later we discovered more than a kiss under this tree.
My hunting dog, Bones, is buried right over there.
Mostly, I just came out here to watch the clouds slide by and the breeze blow the grass.
Yeah, this is where I made my decision to go to school upstate. Stayed out here until it got dark. Mom was so proud that I was going to college. Any college.
And in the shelter of naked branches, he leaned back and wept. For as long as it took, he wept and sobbed. Puffy snowflakes floated down to frozen earth. Wiping his chapped cheeks, he took the reins of Purpose and walked her home.
