Horrible Harvest

A large tree with thick branches, a good number of which twisted into spirals from base to tips, give the headstones shade. The graves, they was all marked with home-carved headstones, save one. I’d sent Julia money years prior to give Douglas’ burial site a proper stone, but looking on it now, it felt wrong. It felt as if he was a stranger on this land. Unknown. Unloved. It was a cold marker, and I wished I had the strength in my old bones to tear it down, but I was at the age where I didn’t even have the strength to take a good shit.

The dead here? They was all Tennysons – Julia, my sweet as pie sister-in-law, a niece and two nephews – And Douglas. I knew next to nothing on none of them, ‘cept Douglas – And most of what I know’d of him was that he went from sumbitch to saint. Unfortunately, I spent most my days with the sumbitch. In point of fact, I got the saint kilt.

The others I knew from letters supplied to me from Julia, and those stopped when she passed. They was words on a page to me – Julia and her children, and I kept them pages in a box in my closet. Read them every so often over the years to feel the love she had for them. She was a good mother, that woman.

I felt the loss of these dead Tennysons, and that was a surprise to me. Last thing I thought the world needed was more Tennysons. Yet, there I stood, sorry the world didn’t get a good take on what all these Tennysons could’ve been.

I stepped back from the graves and turnt to the house. It was familiar and unfamiliar to me all at once. The coziness of it was gone. The two-story structure was mostly rot. The roof and trimmings was in need a repair. The house entire looked as if it’d tumble to the ground from a fair to middling breeze. For some goddamn reason, the tired old house stood, providing shelter for the final Tennyson who took up residence inside.

I cut across the field, gazing at the ruins of the barn as I passed, hearing the ghost of a boy’s laughter. My aching feet stomped the grassy plain and stole my attention away from my racing heart.

At the kitchen entrance to the house, I pult at the door – hanging on by but two of its three hinges. It opened with a wobble, and I stepped into the scruff-banged kitchen. Trash littered the floor. Dishes, flatware, mugs, glasses, all filthy as pigs rolled in mud, covered near every inch of counter space. The sink – equipped with a pump handle that syphoned water directly from the well – was empty, ‘cept the rotting food from meals that was half-et.

I cleared away the trash and the like from the kitchen table and set down.

Charles appeared in the doorway from his bedroom. He’d aged same as me, more severe than me. The loss of his family tore away at his youth and spine. He walked with a bent-over gait, with his neck tilted to the ground.

“Today is that day, is it?” he asked.

“It’s a day, brother.”

“Coffee?”

“Made here? In this here kitchen? That’d be a fuck you for asking.”

“That’s good. ‘Cause I ain’t got no goddamn coffee, anyway.”

“Then why the hell’d you ask?”

“Because she would’ve.”

“I’m guessing she would’ve made sure there was coffee in the house, too – along with a house worth living in.”

“You got a problem with my housekeeping.”

“If this keeping is your doing, then yes, I got a problem with it.”

He set down across from me. “Heard about Felix.”

I pult the letter and pepperbox from my jacket pocket and set them on the table. “News made it all the way out here?”

He give pause as he stared at the paper and gun. “My boy brings me news from Rapid City. He keeps tabs on Charleston for me. He’s in correspondence with Gladys’ people. They sent him a wire.”

“Your boy? Gus?”

“He’s a smart one, that boy. He’s a doctor. A good one – Not like the shit-ones we dealt with in the war.”

I nodded. “The war.”

“The war.” He give a clearing of his throat. “So, how’s this to be done. You aim to shoot me with the pepperbox.”

I give a laugh. “Thing ain’t been fired in 50 years. Don’t even know if it works.”

“What’d you bring it for?”

I give a shrug. “Your boy – Gus. Does he know?”

“Know what?”

“What we were, me – And you?”

“Brothers? ‘Course he does – ”

“No – Not brothers. What we were.” I slid the pepperbox to him. “What we done. What you done. What I am.”

“What are you?”

I slid the letter to him.

He give me a long hard look. “There’s things a boy ought not know about his father – His family.”

I set back. “Them two things – The gun, the letter – They sum up my life entire. For the longest time I got the two mixed up. I took pride in the wrong part of me. I thought the one made me more of a man than the other – stood for my true heritage. First man I kilt was with that pepperbox. The only man I ever loved is in that letter. The world is in such a backward state that it says I was right for killing the one and wrong for loving the other. Things is bent that way ‘cause fathers hold back the truth about their families. They think it’s pious is as pious does. That kind of thing don’t leave no room to be human. A fella starts to hide things from himself ‘cause he ain’t got no idea who he really is. What’s in his bones. He seeks out the darkness where he can’t be found. He spends so much time there he becomes the dark.”

“My son ain’t nothing like me because what we done, all that was hid from him.”

“Your son ain’t nothing like you because of Julia.”

He give a long pause ‘fore saying, “I don’t understand what you want to happen here.”

“Clean yourself up, hitch that ol’ rig I know you got in that rundown barn to what’s most likely a horse turnt fat from free-grazing prairie grass, and get yourself to Rapid City. Set down with your boy and tell it to him, the whole pile of shit things we done. Give him this pepperbox. Tell him about Galtville. Tell him about the Miller men. Tell him about the vigilance committee. Tell him about the war – The Miller brigade and all the horrible shit you done. – Tell him the worst part of you, and let him know there’s a way out. That you fount. That Douglas fount. Let him know that the darkest part of man don’t have to be a man entire. They’s a light inside all of us. We ain’t meant to be killers and thieves. That those things is done out of hate and ignorance. Goddamn it! Just let him know that blood don’t make us. Time and how we choose to spend it makes us.”

“And the letter? What of it? Why does he need to see it?”

“Because he also needs to know that you stole my way out from me.”

I stood and walked to the door.

“That’s it?” He pushed himself up and give me chase with his crooked gait.

“That’s everything, brother.” I walked out the door.

“I thought you was to kill me.”

“I choose to spend my time differently these days.”

I marched to my horse and climbed into the saddle. Me and my pale mount, we rode sun bound.