He’d left less than a year later. Dean wished he’d had the wherewithal then to remind him of their commitment to the trees. But at ten he’d been just as excited at the prospect of California as Pa had been, certain it was a land of gold and happiness.
He walked up the road to Grady’s, where his friend was relaxing on the front steps. They hadn’t talked since the day Leeds had come. After exchanging greetings, Dean got on with it.
“Pa sent for us.”
He expected Grady to need a moment to process this, but his friend’s face immediately split into an enormous grin. “Well, that’s grand!”
Grady’s cheerfulness felt like a punch in the gut. “I’m thinking on staying here,” Dean said cautiously.
“Really?”
Dean nodded, words building up steam. “Pa wants to open a grocery. A grocery! I’m a farmer, not some grocery clerk. Not that he’d know that. Do you know anyone looking for a hired hand?”
Dean had hoped that Grady might offer him a job himself, but Grady just frowned. “Haven’t heard of anyone. You sure you’ve thought this through? You’d leave your ma like that?”
Grady’s ma still lived with him and his wife. Grady took care of her, just like Dean always figured on doing with his ma. But Ma would be leaving him. There was a difference, even if it amounted to the same thing.
“She’ll be with Pa,” Dean said firmly. “You think I’d make a decision like this lightly? I’m not my pa.”
“You make him sound like some bogeyman waiting to swallow you whole.”
Wasn’t he? Not a monster, no, but a shadow, a ghost, looking for a son who didn’t exist anymore. If he went to Pa, he stopped being the Dean of the past eight years, the young man who took care of Ma and the farm, the one who was steady and reliable and knew what he was doing, at least most of the time. Pa didn’t know that Dean, might not be willing to meet him.
But somehow he couldn’t seem to find a way to explain that to Grady. Instead he said, “You wouldn’t understand.”
He knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words fell out of his mouth, even before he saw Grady’s face.
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.