“You hear me, Dean? We’re going to California.”
“When?” he managed to choke out.
“Soon’s we can sell the farm. Pa said to have Lawyer Morris arrange it.”
“Lawyer Morris died three years ago.”
“Of course, but your pa don’t know that. We can ask that new man, though, that Mr. Atkins. Pa thinks we could get a thousand dollars for it. Enough for the journey with plenty left over.”
“So he didn’t strike it rich himself then?” Dean asked. It came out angrier than he had planned, but he didn’t care.
Ma ignored his tone. “Says he’s got a man interested in going into business with him. Thinks with the money we bring, he could start a grocery. All three of us could work there.”
“Oh.” Dean pushed back his chair and reached for his hat. “I’ve got work to do.”
It was nothing that couldn’t wait, but he needed to get out. In the fields he hoed with unusual viciousness, hoping that if his body worked hard enough and fast enough, his mind might slow down. Or maybe that he wouldn’t have to think at all.
But all he did as the morning wore on and the sweat slicked his back was get angrier. He wasn’t ten years old anymore, going to bed every night dreaming of California. This was his farm, his home, and it was worth more than a thousand dollars. And that was because of him. He had succeeded where his father had failed.
He could still remember the day Pa left. Dean had sobbed because Alec was the one sitting smugly in the front of the wagon instead of him, and Pa had knelt down and looked him in the eye and said, “No tears now, Dean. You need to be a man. I’m leaving the farm in your care, all right?”
Of course those had just been words then. Dean had been the errand boy, the extra pair of hands while Ma and Cass and a string of ineffective hired men did the heavy work, slaving to scratch a living out of the tired soil. Each year passed with haggard looks and tense conversations with the shopkeepers and the banker.
And then Cass ran off with that no-account Ernest Firley, and the latest hired man got let go because they couldn’t pay him, and Ma just looked so tired. Dean had been fourteen and he’d taken over, discovering with pride that he was no longer a runty little fellow but an actual farmer. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d done it.
I enjoyed this story very much. I relate to it in a variety of ways, several of which are, tangential but my liking of it is real. I was raised in Nebraska, though on a farm. I’ve had, indeed I have, decisions pushed on me by circumstance, that seem to have no “proper” choice: some gain, some loss with any decision. I’ve written a story, much, much different, with the same title, which is what got me to read yours. Turned out that, after reading yours, I’ve realized that the two stories have much in common, in spite of their differences. Still, the core of my response to your story is, well done. It moved me.