Horrible Harvest

We got back from Charleston proper the day they come for Daddy. I’d seen a lot since I’d left previous. Most I didn’t have no interest in remembering, but you can’t choose what lingers in your mind. Memories choose you. They make you. I was made different since we set out for Galtville. I was a rice farmer’s boy ‘fore that. I wasn’t nowheres near that now. I was a walking, talking, whole entire boy-shaped piece of shame, and I never felt it more than I did right before I was to see momma for the first time after being fully corrupted by murdering, thieving, and eyeing bare-ass naked crackers and whores. I knew in the deepest part of my heart she’d know I’d become the Devil soon as she laid eyes on me.

Daddy pulled the rig to a stop at the barn. I jumped down and run to the house. I didn’t wait for no instruction from him. I didn’t care if he beat me dead for running off. I just wanted distance from him. I’d put a whole entire country between us if I could run that far.

At the front door of our tiny house, I stood for a beat. She was on the other side. I could smell the reek of the day she’d soaked up cleaning, cooking and mending. I pushed the door open, and there she stood, hunched over the table, cutting away at some fabric, stitching together clothing to warm her kin. She looked from her work to me, and I could see it. She felt the shame same as me. I know’d without her saying a word she put all her anger on herself for the man she’d married, for the man she bedded, for the boys she’d given him, for the hell she couldn’t save us from. We stood for a time just staring at one another.

She spoke first. “Where’s your daddy?”

“Barn.”

“Are you injured?”

I give a shake of my head.

“Hungry?”

Another shake.

“Have you spoken with Charles?”

“No, ma’am.”

She nodded and took a deep breath. “Fine.” She cleared her throat. “I will tell you what I told him. I am your mother.” The tears run. Briny trails filled deep dimples and flooded the well-earned wrinkles of her pale face.

I run to her. Dove into her bosom and wept. Instantly, I was that boy again.

She cradled my head in her hand. “I’m sorry this is your life. I’m so sorry I did this to you.”

“No-no-no-no.”

“But I tell you true, if I could change all the bad and awful that trapped me here, to this farm, to your daddy, I wouldn’t do it because you and Charles are my everything. Do you hear me?” She kissed the top of my head. “If not for that demon for a man, I wouldn’t have such wonderful boys. I’m just so sorry I can’t save you from the mountains of suffering he puts us through.”

I worked like the devil to get closer to her by hugging her with all my might.

“Listen to me. Your father is not a good man. I know you know that, but I want you to hear me say it. It’s important you know he is living life wrong. The more years you spend with him, the harder it will be to step outside of his ways. Even when he’s long dead and buried, you will feel the draw of Horace Tennyson. His evil spans years. It was here before him. It will last generations and cross all time. He can reach into your future with a single act of blind hate in the present and direct you down a dreadful path cleared by your own capacity to hate.

“Know this. Believe this. Fight this. Even steel can be shaped by something as small as a ball peen hammer. And your father is as small as they come. You have to be stronger than steel. He plays abuse like it’s a violin, and he a concert violinist. We victims are in awe of his mastery. So, much so that we accept that our torment is but a supporting role to his grand performance and not our enduring misfortune. Don’t get caught up in his skills as a wicked monster.”

“I hate him.”

“No. You must find the strength to not hate him. Pity him. He is a weak man felled by something weaker still. Animus.”

“Weak, am I?”

The voice come from the demon himself. He stood at the doorway. Shoulder against the frame. Bottle mid-bend. A glow of rage pulsated from his bloodshot eyes, and a Navy Colt stuck out of the front of his britches.

Hell had arrived.