How much of Pa’s own sweat had ever gone into this land? They’d bought the farm when Dean was six. Before that they’d lived in Kentucky, and before that, Maryland. Pa himself was from Virginia, and Dean knew he hadn’t stayed in the same place in California these past eight years, had even spent a year in Oregon. Maybe the problem was that Pa didn’t even know what a home was.
Likely Pa wouldn’t recognize the place if he saw it now, and the burgeoning fields were the least of it. They were a different family then, him and Ma and Cass and baby Noah waving as Pa and Alec rode away. In his memory the four of them looked inconsequential while Pa and Alec were large and important, ready to conquer the world.
Dean snorted. It was a ten-year-old’s memory, distorted. What had Ma seen that day? What did she still see, when she thought of Pa? There was no denying the light in her eyes this morning, the hope and the happiness. It was as though eight months had passed instead of eight years, as though there was still a family to reunite. He’d always thought of Ma as practical, so how could she act like this?
At noon when he trudged into dinner, her eyes were still bright. “We’ll visit Cass on our way west. Won’t she be surprised!”
Dean gave a noncommittal grunt. He’d stopped trying to figure out Cass’s reaction to anything. Used to be they were good pals, but that was before the hard years. The crops had died and Noah had died, and something had seemed to die in Cass, too. He still couldn’t figure if she’d run off with Ernest Firley because she genuinely liked him, or just because he provided a means of escape. Her letters were few and far between, brief and bland, worse than Pa’s. She’d had a baby last year, and hadn’t bothered telling them until after the fact.
Ma chattered on, every other sentence starting with, “Pa says.” Dean hadn’t heard her talk this much in years. “How quickly do you think we can sell this place?”
What, Pa hadn’t said anything about that? Dean didn’t say that, though, just mumbled, “Dunno.”
She gave him an eagle-eyed stare. He tried to ignore it, but her eyes seared into him, and he knew they would until he spoke.
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.