Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: STRESSED - Begins January 18 / Ends January 25 (01/18/18)
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TITLE: Dry Spell | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ann Stocking
01/25/18 -
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One windy night, when the moon was obscured by scudding, dirty clouds, my father hanged himself in the barn.
Earlier, in bed, I’d listened to the dirt of our farm scouring out a raspy tune on the weathered boards of the house. I heard something else, and so must have Mom; the back door banged. Leaping to the window, I saw her crossing the yard, her lantern flickering wildly.
I ran out after her, stumbling in a rut and tearing the hem of my nightshirt. In the barn, unearthly sounds erupted from Mom’s lips as my father twisted in a grotesque pirouette. I’d expected something else, bats or the hay afire, but not that. Never.
Earlier, Dad had hunched in his chair at the supper table, subdued, silent, finally pushing away his plate. I’d looked at his untouched food covetously, and Mom’d slid the plate over to me. I wolfed down the fried potatoes, not seeing the emptiness in Dad’s eyes, the grim deep creases framing his mouth.
Earlier in the day, Dad had gone to town. Take care of your mother and sisters, he’d said. He’d bathed, combed his hair, and pulled on the faded shirt Mom had ironed. He was going to try talking with the bankers again, men I believed were colossal, with enormous appetites for food and land and money, seated at towering desks as hard and unyielding as their verdicts. I believed they’d chew Dad up and spit out his bones
Before that, Mom’d swept dust off the table, strained dust from water, kneaded dust into bread, wiped grit from my sisters’ faces, and fed us slices of lard-smeared bread. I’d played in the silty soil while dust devils spiralled around the yard.
A year or so before, Dad had gone to the city looking for work, then rode the train to the end of the line up north in search of anything that paid. He came home thin, gray, his hands callused, nails broken, the pockets of his frayed trousers empty.
A couple of years before that, the rains stopped, and Dad’d spent his days gazing out over the prairie, watching hoping wishing praying for a cloud the size of man’s hand. That’s all it’d take, he’d said. A cloud the size of a man’s hand.
But the sky betrayed us, and the crops withered. Leaves and stalks and roots shrivelled and crumbled to dust. Eventually, Dad brandished his own fist at the sullen, barren sky.
Before that, the price of wheat had plummeted, like a duck full of shot. From dollars per bushel to pennies. The men at church pursed their lips, shook their heads, and the women smiled ruefully. Mom tried to perk Dad up, saying next year next year, and Dad replied, next year nothing.
Even earlier, Dad had borrowed against the farm. Beguiled by easily obtained loans and escalating grain prices Dad’d bought a tractor. A seeder. A cultivator. His face’d shone when he drove the new machinery home, and he’d whirled mom around the yard, then lifted me up into the tractor seat. It was a king’s throne, and a king’s fortune lay in every turn of the plough, in every golden kernel of seed.
I’ve no memories of before then, yet I know, for they told me, that Mom and Dad had looked, eyes glittering with confidence, over their new homestead, the deed gripped in their hands, hope clutched in their hearts. The land was fertile; rolling waves of green rippled to the horizon, an ocean of optimism and prosperity. Their destiny.
Now I am at the beginning of the journey to that terrible, awful night.
The land Dad broke, broke him. The strain had eroded his soul, leaving his spirit as arid as the land, impotent and useless. He couldn’t take no any more; no rain, no money, no job. No end to no mercy. Could anyone have foreseen the moment Dad would be worn out, worn thin as his old shirt?
If they could go back, before before before, and discard the dream, deny the destiny, and walk away from the undulating, expectant, untried land, and settle in a secure and known place, wouldn’t it have been the better thing? Wouldn’t it?
I’m sure Dad would say no.
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Powerfully written.