The day started the same as any other day. Leastways in my head it did. Rising early to set the fire to flame and bread to rise and eggs collected for breakfast and ham cut in thick steaks. Howie turned in his sleep and that was the same, too, same as a hundred days before and a thousand days before that.
I don’t know what it was that made that day different. A year past since we’d put his Pa into the ground and a stone with his Pa’s name cut into it and no money for beer or beef for a six month afterwards on account of the bill from the mason. And he talked about it at first, about his Pa and all the good that was ever in the man and the bad too, for the old man had whipped the boy when he was small and Howie still bears the scars of those whippings. But Howie just laughed when he remembered those days and he shrugged and said it was nothing less than he deserved for the boy that he was. And it was a year and some since that old man was laid to rest and a stone at his head to mark his passing.
Howie rose same as he always did, and the first words in his mouth were for me and they were not unkind, I remember, not as they could be if his head was still thick with the drink of the night before. No, the words on this day were kind. Something about the light in my hair and the eggs on his plate and I thought he might be found singing sometime in that day.
But something there was that snatched the song out of him and I don’t know what that could be. I was hanging out his washed shirts and the sheets from our bed and towels and a dress that had once been my mother’s and with small alterations was now mine. There was a playful wind that lifted the sheets and made them like billowing clouds in front of my eyes and through the gaps in the clouds I saw Howie coming up from the house. He was carrying the Winchester rifle, the one that had belonged to his Pa and he was carrying it like he was now the old man in the picture by the fire and his face grim the same and his eye squinting against the day.
I don’t know what was in his head at that moment. It makes no sense to me even now. It all happened so fast, the surprise blast of thunder in a dry sky and the hole in the sheet, the edges torn and burned and I felt no pain, just the wind taken from me, punched from me, again and again, and a darkness falling over everything and Howie standing over me, his fingers pumping the lever action of his rifle one last time.
And maybe there’s a man somewhere who sold Howie’s Pa that rifle, and a man who put the parts together, and the designer pushing his pencil across the paper plan of that rifle, and someone with money to set up the business and that person making his money back and more than that, and all of them grown fat and rich on what was sold to Howie’s Pa, and with my last breath I curse them all, and Howie should do the same when he sits in front of the picture of his Pa holding his that rifle, the grown boy now a copy of the man, and Howie should weep too, as I do.
Judith, it is indeed a woman’s voice from the grave… thanks for the feedback… clearly I need to do a better job of signposting this idea. Thanks for reading it.
The day started the same as any other day. Leastways in my head it did. Rising early to set the fire to flame and bread to rise and eggs collected for breakfast and ham cut in thick steaks. Howie turned in his sleep and that was the same, too, same as a hundred days before and a thousand days before that.
I don’t know what it was that made that day different. A year past since we’d put his Pa into the ground and a stone with his Pa’s name cut into it and no money for beer or beef for a six month afterwards on account of the bill from the mason. And he talked about it at first, about his Pa and all the good that was ever in the man and the bad too, for the old man had whipped the boy when he was small and Howie still bears the scars of those whippings. But Howie just laughed when he remembered those days and he shrugged and said it was nothing less than he deserved for the boy that he was. And it was a year and some since that old man was laid to rest and a stone at his head to mark his passing.
Howie rose same as he always did, and the first words in his mouth were for me and they were not unkind, I remember, not as they could be if his head was still thick with the drink of the night before. No, the words on this day were kind. Something about the light in my hair and the eggs on his plate and I thought he might be found singing sometime in that day.
But something there was that snatched the song out of him and I don’t know what that could be. I was hanging out his washed shirts and the sheets from our bed and towels and a dress that had once been my mother’s and with small alterations was now mine. There was a playful wind that lifted the sheets and made them like billowing clouds in front of my eyes and through the gaps in the clouds I saw Howie coming up from the house. He was carrying the Winchester rifle, the one that had belonged to his Pa and he was carrying it like he was now the old man in the picture by the fire and his face grim the same and his eye squinting against the day.
I don’t know what was in his head at that moment. It makes no sense to me even now. It all happened so fast, the surprise blast of thunder in a dry sky and the hole in the sheet, the edges torn and burned and I felt no pain, just the wind taken from me, punched from me, again and again, and a darkness falling over everything and Howie standing over me, his fingers pumping the lever action of his rifle one last time.
And maybe there’s a man somewhere who sold Howie’s Pa that rifle, and a man who put the parts together, and the designer pushing his pencil across the paper plan of that rifle, and someone with money to set up the business and that person making his money back and more than that, and all of them grown fat and rich on what was sold to Howie’s Pa, and with my last breath I curse them all, and Howie should do the same when he sits in front of the picture of his Pa holding his that rifle, the grown boy now a copy of the man, and Howie should weep too, as I do.
I am having a hard time with this one….just trying to understand what is going on. Did Howie shoot her? Is this a voice from the dead?
Judith, it is indeed a woman’s voice from the grave… thanks for the feedback… clearly I need to do a better job of signposting this idea. Thanks for reading it.