Post by Steve on Nov 19, 2007 12:47:14 GMT -5
Long-branch like fingers circled around the mound, rustling leaves and moving branches that obstructed his eyes’ view. The eyes were tightly squeezed, shutters seamlessly drawn closed, reducing the amount of harsh mid day sun the retina endured. They scanned over and about the peach toned oval while the fingers pinched and pressed and made palm sized circles feeling for a firm place to grasp. At last taking two fingers on either side of the stem and bracing the surface, they tugged. A quick snap, and the bough bounced like a heavy bird just took flight from it, while a cap of green leaves and stalk swung solemnly undisturbed. The old man carried his sack down the old wooden ladder, and breathed hard when reached the bottom. “With every harvest they grow larger as do the complaints in my back” his thin mustache teetered from side to side as he spat this through his clenched teeth.
He placed the brown freckled bag on the ground beside his leg, took from his plaid cotton shirt a handkerchief and proceeded to wipe his brow. The sun was strong, and his head began to feel detached, only an echo from where a thought was shouted. His weight made the ladder arch inward as he crossed one leg about the other and leaned backwards. He thought about calling the boy over and telling him to go fetch something cold for his thirst, but thought better when he saw the boy jumping from tree to tree gathering thrice as many as he himself does in an hour. With pride of a family tradition kept alive he separated his back from the rungs of the ladder and made his way down the road to his house. It was a good hour walking distance, and he paused to look at the pickup. His back tensed, and he thought it wiser to walk the cramp off than settle into the driver’s seat.
Over his shoulder he yelled, “I’ll grab you a spring jug, you could use some water the way you’re jumping about” and started walking.
The truth was that the boy didn’t understand much of what was said to him. Tweak, for that was what the old farmer called him, would just watch. There was something wrong. Not specific to one area. His mind was slow, and his hearing shabby so rather than try verbally explaining his duties to him, the old farmer just went about doing them-instructing the boy with hand gestures and facial expressions. Every morning for the first month he roused the boy from bed, fed him fresh eggs and fish, and walked him; or drove depending on the farmer’s mood, down towards the orchard. Then one morning, the boy, Tweak, was not in bed to be woken. The farmer, being slightly attached, but no real love between them, went about his morning tasks a little slower. He ate his eggs one at a time, cooking them only after the first one was eaten. The fish he went to the river and caught. He watched the scales fly into the morning sun shining like tiny eyes. He filleted it, cooked it and ate happily alone.
It was not that the farmer didn’t like the boy’s company, only that the farmer preferred to do everything by the lonesome. He slept alone in a bed that was alone in the room, and the boy lived downstairs in the guestroom. They would eat together, and then would be off in different directions, neither of them knowing how the other went about occupying them self. Sometimes the old farmer thought ill of the boy, thought he was getting into mischief, and took walks down to the kitchen holding an empty glass, pretending to be fetching a glass of water. Tweak would be sitting there, legs folded, staring at a circle that he had drawn on a piece of paper and taped to the wall.
At the end of the first month together the farmer woke up to Tweak missing. After he ate and dressed he made his way to the orchard via truck. When he pulled towards the first row of trees the boys head stuck out, upside down from the second to lowest branch. His face a crooked jagged smile, not really a child’s grin but more of the smug ignorance from a well trained dog. The farmer remembered all of this as he walked around dips in the dirt, smiling to himself.
The house was now within stone distance from him, and he noticed a beehive above the back door. He stood there for a minute, staring at the black and brown humming specks then went inside. At the counter were two jugs, marked with two different colors so that Tweak would not drink from the old man’s. He gathered the containers and filled them one at a time, then when full placed one beneath his arm and took a swig from the blue jug. Once again at the door he found himself standing around beneath the hive. He was listening to the perfect buzzing of their tiny wings and painting a picture in his mind of a giant bee as large as the house. Once this was finished he tried to hear what that one bee’s buzzing would sound like. He wondered how much louder it could possibly be than the hive in front of him. He shook his head to clear it of these loose thoughts and walked off the back steps.
It would be a long walk ahead of him, and he didn’t rest. The sun was just now over the orchard, rolling along the tops of the trees, and he guessed it was probably bout 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Tweak would be resting by the time he got back. His head resting on his scraped knees, a few scabs would flake off and be stuck to his brow, and his feet would be bare and buried in the dirt. The usual pose when he was not sitting cross-legged.
He limped up to the ladder that he had just left propped against a tree, as though he full heartedly intended to come back and resume, and placed both jugs down. With both of his thin fists he picked the ladder up and heaved it into the back of the truck. The shocks below the frame creaked and the wooden ladder jumped half out of the bed. The back of the truck had been lined with sacks and wool. Years ago he had done this same thing, and the ladder splintered off into a thousand pieces. He learned his lesson after stomping on a log of a strip of wood that impaled his foot (his shoe had been off to fix his crumpled sock). Since then he lined the bed with soft items so that he could still throw the ladder.
From behind four trees ahead of the truck a face emerged from the wide base of the tree. His hair sandy blond and grew out from the center like the greens on a strawberry. His eyes were too far apart, and his nose small and narrowed to a point. He moved an arm as thin as the sand falling through an hourglass and waved a long paddle of a hand. The farmer picked up the stained bag and placed it snugly in the rear of the truck behind the seats then took the jug over to Tweak. He made a glance towards the truck, and like a dog, Tweak rose and jogged over towards his door and waited for the farmer to open it for him.
While Tweak bathed the farmer heated the stove, placed a pot that could be used to bathe a small child onto the burner, and filled it with some sort of stock from an old can. He sat down in the chair at the table and drug the bag over towards him. He opened the sack and plunged his hand inside. It wasn’t haphazardly or careless, but with an experience that comes a long way down the line of heredity. He could remember the first time he ever climbed one of those trees. Hell, he could probably tell you which tree it was! But he fished his hand around; those thin fingers feeling around grabbed hold of an object and slowly pulled it out.
He lifted the mass out of the bag and carefully guided his other hand beneath. The pot on the stove began to bubble over its brim, and he gently, slowly, placed the object on the seat of his chair and left to attend supper.
Behind him, on the seat, was a tiny infant with the smallest scab on the top middle of his
head.
He threw in some corn, beets, cabbage, left over fish scraps, eggs that weren’t finished that morning and other things from inside of the fridge. With a ladle as large as a grown man’s cupped hand he stirred and sloshed about the ingredients in the pot. He lowered it to a high simmer and went back to his seat, lifted the babe once again, and sat down.
To the right of his chair were two bags, much smaller than the one he carried. On the fronts of these bags were spray-painted words. The left on read: Abnormal. The one on the right declared: Normal. He wasn’t quite sure what the words meant. He knew the definitions of the words, knew how to use the words in logical thought, but he had no reason or clue as to why the bags were marked so. The pot finished heating, and the substance was thick with an odor like sun heated fish carcass and burnt vegetable oil. He wiped dry two bowls and equal spoons and placed them on the table. He finished sorting out the babes, one had a hollow eye; another had a shrunken arm; a third one had a perfect smile. This perfect babe he rested on the table. He pinched his fist into a cylinder and slipped it over the mouth of the child. Somehow over the generations of growth, the babes live like cut flowers. They can survive for a short time when separated from the trees, but without proper oxygen resuscitation they wither inward like an autumn leaf. His cheeks puffed out like two partially inflated balloons, and his lips turned purple, then blue. The tiny chest on the table raised then fell. It raised then fell, until the farmer stopped and the chest continued this on its own.
This is part of his family tradition.
The old farmer walked to the stove and began serving supper, maneuvering around the babe delicately breathing on the table and placed the pot back on the burner. Before sitting he picked the infant up, which had ceased respiratory functions, and placed it in the bag marked normal; he moved around the table with the ease of a housewife clearing a vase of dead flowers.
Tweak rushed from the upstairs once his nostrils caught whiff of supper and seated himself at the far end of the table. The farmer dished out the slop, to them both, and they ate.
The bowls were thrown in the kitchen sink, spoons laid out across their brims, and the two sat and stared. The old man thought about the up coming month, the last of the four harvests, and if he would actually make it through. He sunk lower into his chair; the plaid shirt stuck to his caving chest and made a cavern of skin and ribs. Every now and again his heart would beat through the cotton, or his lungs would inflate making him appear mildly healthy.
This farm, everything that he ever knew would be lost. There were no little farmers that he and his wife conceived. In fact, there was never a wife for him. He lived alone his entire life, presumably after a few small ventures dabbling with youthful ruckus and females. But now, his health was failing him. Everyday he felt less and less like waking up. More and more like pulling the shutters, loosening the drapes, and watching and waiting for his eyes to see a blackness that was darker than this room of his during the middle of the night. He thought quickly about giving the farm to Tweak, and making it a shared contract so that there was somebody to deal with the Quarterly men because out of the years Tweak had helped him harvest, the old man couldn’t be certain if the boy had ever seen them. He wouldn’t know what to do and the men would take advantage of this and perhaps cut the price they were paying to a ridiculous amount.
As it was at the time he was receiving a $300 check along with fresh drinking water and crop seed for his winter food. It had been a long time, since he was a small child, that the rivers were polluted with microscopic worms, much like tape-worms, that prevented anyone from ingesting the water. The fish were fine, after cooking thoroughly, and the water was fine to irrigate with, and if you boiled the water it became drinkable but it was a luxury to have fresh jug water and not have to cook a glass of water. The money he received allowed for the house and farm to remain a step above being a shack and a few new shirts or slacks for himself and Tweak. There was the worry that if Tweak ran the farm the Quarterly men would reduce the amount, and since Tweak wouldn’t be able to perform maintenance on the farm or the house he would have to hire some one to do it for him and run out of money. It was a hard time for the old man and either way he looked at it there was only the dismal fact that his farm wouldn’t survive for much longer.
While the old farmer was thinking this Tweak sat there politely with his hands folded, not a thought in his eyes. His tongue would pop out of the side of his mouth and run across his lips like a nude man, pink from the sun, running the dash. He would tap his fingers, which were as large as logs, and since he didn’t know any songs, he just randomly thudded them as he pleased. His eyes were fixed on the wall beside the table, and they would follow the cracks down to the floor, then back up to where they vanished right before the ceiling. He began thinking about the tiny skulls and how their scalps felt as he tore them from their stems. How they were peaceful, emotionless. To him they seemed almost dead, like they had nothing in them yet; just ornaments. Dreamless dolls hanging from the trees in the farmer’s backyard.
He remembered the time, one of the many times that the farmer left during the day and didn’t come back till nearly the day’s end. He sat in one of the trees holding one of the quiet babes loosely in his hands. His monstrous hands enveloping the entire body of the child, he carefully moved the arm at its elbow. He had nearly moved every part of its body, seeing if it bent at the same parts as he did. In the middle of this he suddenly grew angry. Complex. He wasn’t sure what exactly was happening, only that he felt his blood running through portions of his face that he had never felt them pass through. He was warm in places that he had always felt to be regular. His tongue wet his lips and then his jaw clenched. He gripped the babe tighter, raised it above his head, and swung it against the tree trunk before him.
It pleased him. The sound of the tiny head splitting through the small scab in the middle of its head made his heart light. It made his eyes clearer. Tweak sat there staring at the dark spot on the tree. Watching it slide down the trunk and trickle onto a few leaves just below him. Instead of taking another and doing this he simply swung the doll twice more, leaving fragments of skin and organs sewn into the bark. By now the face was fully sheared clear off, and he beat only a small section just above the waist with his final blow. He held the tiny pair of legs in his palms. Their feet were crossed and Ohio cloud white without the blood in them. Tweak cried. He didn’t know for what. It hadn’t seemed alive. The doll made no noise while he was thrashing it about the bough of the tree. But now, with the wood louse sized toes curled against the calluses on his hands, he bawled. He wept. And he thought about the last time that he cried, and he couldn’t remember.
He remained at the table after the farmer yelled to him he was headed upstairs. The old man stood behind him, and tapped his shoulder: “Tweak, I’m going up about now. You can eat some more or do what you like, but I’m headed up and catching eye rest.” and he gently but ever so quickly massaged the boy’s shoulders.
He waited until he heard the door close then got up and opened the screen door. He paused for a minute, uncertain, and then walked onto, then off of, the back porch. His body was lost in the darkness seconds after he left, but the crunching of twigs and leaves beneath his feet were heard until he stopped.
Tonight, tonight Tweak would sleep among the trees.
The months of the harvest departed as the days chilled with winds from the north. The old farmer had made it through the season, one more notch in his belt, riding on Tweak’s back; but the consequence left him nearly bed ridden for the past two weeks. The month had closed and Quarterly men arrived to collect their investment, give the check and the supplies, and this was the final mark of the end of harvest season. It had been a fine one, the trees were in great health and the insects weren’t a tremendous issue, and it was ending none too soon for the old man; who was graciously accepting the general feeling of conclusion that was evident around him. Autumn had burnt the leaves and the trees were dropping their ember-bodies every time the old farmer looked outside. Soon it would all turn grey and malnourished.
The old farmer lied in his bed, the comforter twisted about his neck showing his thin face—longer now since he became too lazy to exercise his jaw muscles except when eating or speaking—and exposing his socked feet. The fireplace crackled and through the soot flew burning confetti popping into the air with the sound of kernels bursting through their shells, and one solitary ember blew passed the metal grate-hovered and spiraled then fell to the wood floor. The old man watched it, following with his eyes until it became cold ash to be blown away whenever a breeze appeared. He began thinking about the week prior, how time slows, nearly stopping when all there is are walls and poor views from a window; about thoughts he had pondered and rolled around in his skull during that period and felt infinitesimal, microscopic at the base of the mountain of time that, though was shortened by a decreasing health, was still an immense amount of minutes; hours; days to be lived through before his fight was complete.
He had dismissed Tweak in a rather sharp manner at the first signs of his increasing decrepit ness, too proud to have some one witness his body failing; his legs folding like a collapsible chair and the struggle to finish the route to the bathroom; his hands fumbling with cook-ware and the burns rendered. He was a private man, and nothing had changed this about him; in fact if there was any alteration in his personality it would have been the amplification of his solitary life. There were times when the fan-handed boy was gravely missed, though they never coincided with the moments when the old man felt crippled, instead, it was during his prophetic visions into the fireplace or when he was spectator of a dust race taking place on the floor that the old farmer pined for another pair of eyes; if not to look into while speaking, then only for the fire to gaze upon and give his own pupils rest.
The old man went through this day after day until the new year. The snow had fallen, the trees washed grey; his orchard barren. He repeated through his mind the sentence that had taken everything from him: We have no longer the need to conduct business with you. In return for the service your family rendered this last payment will be doubled. The quandary he faced last year had come to a solution, though somehow the old man still felt resentful for being discharged in such shortness; of both advance notice and tonality of the Quarterly man that had spoken. This wasn’t his employment that ended by another’s hand, but his heritage. It is one thing for a man to neglect or refuse his own legacy, for then he is certain that that is what he desires, but for it to be done so by an outsider; a person who assumes they hold a form of superiority over another man, is a fatal strike against every thing that makes one a man.
He had heard Tweak downstairs at the first snow and took comfort that he was not utterly isolated, only distantly removed from the world, and slowly the torture of what concluded his family’s existence on earth let off and he was able to sleep once again.
It wasn’t long into the first month that he became bed-bound; his ventures to relieve his bladder became less frequent, less graceful compared to when he first began life in his bed. He rarely ate and when he did the only thing he was able to eat was water-logged bread. His mouth lost its strength and he swallowed his food with his teeth wide apart, head bent backwards with the mush sliding into his throat. On the small wooden table to the left of the bed was a brass bell that he would ring when he needed Tweak to bring him more bread and water. He used the chime less, resolving to sleep until the hunger was unbearable, though there had been times when he rang simply for the sight of Tweak.
Now, after the years of knowing and caring for the young boy, the old farmer enjoyed pretending Tweak was his finest crop, harvested from his own loin and obviously managing well without the farmer’s guidance. The boy would sit at the foot of the mattress, smiling into the folds of the elder’s face, desperately attempting infiltrate the walls of flesh that had begun to block the farmer’s eyes. The old man rationalized that the boy didn’t comprehend that he was dying and wondered if he would be remembered by him. It was a dismal thought but one that couldn’t have been avoided. The old man would fall asleep and dream of horizons at dawn, knowing they were only the smiles of Tweak watching as he slept.
The farmer had relinquished eating, and for a few days the boy still came with bread and water, but had stopped not long after. The old man felt his time was closer than far off, he felt the heaviness of his chest and the reduced amount of air he was able to inhale. He hadn’t been out from under the sheets since the last time Tweak had entered with sustenance and the bolts, joints of his body ached every time he drew a breath. The old man knew it was today that he was to vacate his body and earth and rung the bell to see the boy for the last time. His hand reached for the bell but fell as soon as the support from his thigh was gone. He was extraordinarily drowsy, his eyelids weighed a ton each and he let them close. He dreamt a night horizon and felt it deepen; missing the beautiful blue-yellow dawns that Tweak injected his dreams with.
Cob-webs formed in the corners of the house, thickened to resemble spun sugar; the shed fell beneath the last blizzard; the shutters of the old man’s windows blew and beat against the house in winds and the fireplace grew cold, forgot the orange glow of burning wood. Silver in the house tarnished, walls yellowed; pipes below the floors froze and cracked, the building began to fall away shingle by shingle as the sun set and rose without hesitation. The orchard was tacit, leaves occasionally rustled and broke the sterile quietness, but Sunset Orchard was silent and neglected. The echo of life became less distinguishable from the muffled howls of wind; apologies from the old man receded into the trees that marked all that was left of his heritage.