From Dust to Dawn

"This land is an unforgiving mistress..."

Words I've heard a thousand times, but not anymore since the passing of my father's father, and my father after that.

They worked and tilled and sweated their lives away on our dusty patch of earth.

Now I do as they did.

Mother's gone; long dead.

Sister married off and passed away in childbirth.

If it weren't for it being much the same for everyone we know, I would've deemed us cursed.

Our neighbors - the next farm over, a spec of rust on the horizon - already succumbed to some fever or other.

There is a town down stream a ways, but it's too far to visit on the daily. I only make the trek when I can afford to.

I work and till and sweat my life away on this dusty patch of earth.

A slab of stone, don't know what kind, is already picked out on the plot.

My family - cold and laid out, awaiting the creator, staring to the heavens - ignore me.

My prayers to them, unanswered...

Just that blank slate at the end of the row, like greying teeth with the gums of the ground receding from them, calling out to me when the wind passes through.

There isn't much left around here but the dry brush.

The crops are near dead.

The animals have been eaten or sold.

What's the point?!

The thought comes, unwelcome as a midnight salesman, and I stuff it down.

Because this is all I have left...

I look across the lot: from the edge of a patch of corn, withering on their stalks; to the equally pitiable place I call home, the ramshackle barn beside; only to end, as my eyes are always drawn to, on the gravestones, weather-worn and whispering.

The birth, life, and death of a farmer in one meager vista.

I know there are fields behind me.

Acres and hectares and rickety fences...

Sun bleached bones and paltry scrub so dry it could ignite in a harsh summer...

There were once woods around, but each any every tree, uprooted to the last, has been used to build or repair this farm over and over.

What weren't of use as planks or patching got chopped and seasoned, burnt up as kindling in the worst of the winter weathers.

The cold in my bones warms for a moment.

Memories of the stove, piping hot, and glowing gold.

The competing smells of biscuits baking and coffee brewing.

The sizzle and boil combining like some homely tune.

No trees left for that now.

Lord knows the last time I lit a fire.

Think I took up half the table top to burn so I'd still have something to eat off of.

Most of the chairs are gone, bar one for me and another for company.

The bed's been looted for half its slats... like stealing bones from some giant rib cage.

I just fear the day when every room is bare... when I'll have to take up floorboards, make patchwork of the drywall, and plunder the barn until its corpse is picked clean.

Till then I guess I'll keep working and tilling and sweating my life away on this dusty patch of earth.

Nothing more to do.

Nowhere else to go.

"Because it's all I have left..."

* * *

Some nights I watch the lightning out over the plains.

Behind the clouds it blisters the black in violent colors.

In forks and knives it stabs at the earth and ignites the dry grass like tinder.

I pray those times it never hits the house... then I'd have nothing.

But it doesn't stop me whooping and hollering at God's splendor.

At all the majesty of nature out under that bleak and empty sky.

The stars may shine down, a billion billion tiny eyes, but they don't look this way... they don't shine on me.

We're forgotten in these lands.

Not like there's much to look at.

Probably why they’re setting fires... nothing else to do.

I chuckle.

It's a raspy gurgling sound.

My throat unaccustomed to making sound, outside of cursing at a stubbed toe or caught thumb or torn bit of clothing.

Or when I wake to a hole in the roof, with water coming in, and I gotta find an old cup to catch what I can.

Then I gotta think about which ceiling isn't rotting from which to steal some beams to brace it's broken brother.

Or when the rats and mice come gnawing at my stores and take more than their fair share of what I don't have to spare.

Then I gotta empty the tins and jars of rain water and dry 'em with my shirt tails to keep the grains out of those threadbare bags.

Then I gotta lay traps with what few scraps of other things I still got that ain't spoiled... at least then I can make jerky for a while.

Or when blight hits and nothing germinates and the fields go barren and they poison the soil and nothing will grow there again.

Then I gotta pull from the stash of heirlooms, of gold teeth pulled from parents, jewelry and frocks, anything of value left.

Then I gotta hump it out past the abandoned homestead, a half day hike one way, and sell our last for supplies.

Then I gotta come back, emptier handed than ever, and work and till and sweat my life away on this dusty patch of earth.

Till there's nothing left...

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust..."

I pour a slug of clear whiskey out over my own unmarked grave.

Sometimes some grain is going bad and I can make a little moonshine outta it when I heat the house to ward off damp.

White lightning in my hand while thunder rolls overhead.

Kin above as kin below.

"Why'd y'all leave me..."

I slur the sentence, unfinished.

...all alone?

...out here?

...with this?

I gesture to no one.

A wild flurry in the dark.

Only skyfire as illumination to my dervish.

Rain that ain't rain running down my face.

The air as dry as the land.

"Fuck..."

Alone.

A single spark of man in the land of Nod.

Isolated wildfires flicker in the distance.

They rage where lightning strikes dry brush then sputter out.

Embers dancing in the arid breeze.

Alone.

The daze and fog of liquor keep me warm and dulled.

I stand, staring at my laying family, and wipe my face.

A waft of burning tickles my nose.

Lights, out in the dark, dance on.

Those burning bushes mocking my exile from Eden.

A sigh escapes me.

Many’s the night I’ve yearned for a hanging tree.

To end my family line at the end of a loop of rope.

The barn creaks.

Not its door.

Nor its hinges.

Every timber of its frame as one.

The gaping maw of its opening a blackness I could drown in.

My feet find their footing and trudge me toward it. A beckoning from within too alluring to ignore.

I know what’s inside. What sturdy beams arc overhead. What ragged lengths of hemp remain. What promise is offered by that world of shadow. What sin it would be.

Dutch courage lifts itself to my lips. I drink deep. The march to improvised and impoverished gallows a long and stumbling one.

In the glass before me, there glimmers all the things from behind.

All the bracken turning to ash.

All the broken lines of heaven.

All the blighted fields of nothing.

All the blasted graves of my kin.

All the bones of trees we robbed to make our cursed home in this god forsaken plain.

Another swig.

A hiccup.

A burp.

Rising bile and apprehension.

Am I really going to do this? Do I really have it in me this time? Finally? An answer to my prayers? An end to it all? Finally? The sweet release? For me?

My head swims, giddy on the impulse, excitement hand in hand with fear.

Nervous like a child on their first hunt. Like a teen going to join up under age. Like a lover laying down for the first time.

Not that I’d know. Just what I’m told. The world out there is for the living. All I do is work and till and sweat on this patch of dusty earth.

As the barn begins to envelop me with its cavernous dark. As the end is in sight. A glint, that should not be, catches my eye.

I wobble.

Enough to regain some sense.

My balance lost and with it the courage… yet again.

I go to sip once more, in hopes of regaining that supplemented bravery, but before the bottle can come to bear, I once more see the light.

Over among the ears of corn - parched, piteous, pathetic - I spy what strike me as embers.

Sparks adrift on the currents of the air, lifted from the lightning, and threatening the farm.

My farm.

MY FARM!!!

Where my family, for generations, has grown crops, and grown kids, and grown cattle, and grown old, and…

“No…”

The whiskey slips from my fingers to the floor.

“No.”

I dash, trip, crawl, stand, and trudge on toward the glow.

“No!”

Grabbing up a pail, the slosh and weight of rain water a heavenly chorus to my ear, I march into the field.

“NO!!!”

The water is loosed.

What might have been flame flickers.

I chase and clasp at what might be fireflies.

Hellfire avoiding my outstretched fingers.

Slipping through my grasp at every graceless grope.

There’s no heat from them.

No scorch when they connect.

Just light that lingers in the midnight pitch.

They play about on the waves made by my passing, their playfulness infuriating me.

Before long I am at a sprint.

My head clearing with the pounding of my heart.

Air in my lungs and wings on my heels and a mix of rage and wonder in my veins.

Before long I am lost in the corn.

The guiding light forever out of reach.

Whether wills o’ the wisps, St. Elmo’s fire, or the Holy Spirit itself, I know not… but they lead me on and on and on, through the field into the fallow, and the sobering first rays of dawn.

* * *

She comes to me again and again.

On every occasion when my faith and resolution falters.

Light of my life... the dancer in the dark... my sin... my soul…

I kicked the drink and can still see her - a great sign - as much as I had feared she were a flight of fancy, a figment of my addled brain.

How came she to be?

I care not.

How came she to here?

I know not.

How came she to me?

I worry not.

Fortunes have changed and I am all the better for it.

One does not look a gift horse in the mouth…

An old saying, but an apt one, though the animal in question may be off.

As I work the farm, she stays inside, silent and supportive. In the day she may flicker by the windows at most, but that is enough. Enough for me at least.

At night she illuminates the world and I feel not alone; for the first time since the passing of the last of my kin. The house is warm with her glow, as if she were the wood itself.

Back and forth - day in, day out - I work and till and sweat... but my life feels full and the earth is fertile.

And in the barn, as if it walked out of the plains of its own accord, the first of its kind to roam the earth, there stands a prime beast. Its eyes bright, its coat clean, its milk fresh, and its manure ripe for the fields.

The finest cow I've ever seen.

A gift from her to me.