Putting Down Roots – Valerie Hunter

Those might-have-beens creeping in, festering all this time. Likely festering with Pa, too, but Dean’s sympathy still lay with Ma first. “He could have come back,” he argued. “Could have come and gotten us. Could have come and talked.”

Ma shook her head. “He’s a proud man. Not to mention stubborn. And then, after Alec… I don’t know if your pa knew how to come back after that, you know?”

Dean didn’t, but he also did. He had memorized the letter Pa had sent three years ago, the first after a long, worrisome gap. Alec had “left,” had “figured on trying things on his own.” The following letter had haltingly admitted that Pa had no idea where Alec was.

“And now?” Dean asked. “What exactly did he say in his letter?”

“That it’s been too long. That it’s time to let go of the past and look to the future. That he’s got a home for us, can give us a life there.”

As if a home could be made that easily. As if they didn’t already have a life here. “You believe him?”

“Your pa has many a fault, but I’ve never known him to be a liar, have you?”

Dean shrugged. He hadn’t known Pa since he was ten years old, and what did a ten-year-old know?

“He’s not a liar,” Ma repeated, but whether to reassure him or herself he couldn’t tell.

He nodded, then let go of the words he’d been holding onto. “You should go, then. But I’m staying.”

She looked at him a long time. Her eyes weren’t fierce anymore, just sad. The same way they’d looked in the weeks after Cass had run off with Ernest Firley.

Well, she’d get over it. That’s what the two of them always did. Kept going, no matter who else left.

Dean got up, and Ma didn’t try to stop him.

 

 

Dean went to the orchard first, but for once the apple trees didn’t make him feel better. By the time the crop came in, the farm would likely belong to somebody else.

He could still remember holding the tiny saplings straight while Pa tamped down the dirt around them. “Trees are a commitment, Dean,” Pa had said. “You know you’re home when you start planting trees.”

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  1. M.L.Owen says:

    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.

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