The Farm Read online

time to the poundin’ rays of the blisterin’ Kansas sun.

  We only been workin’ a couple hours when Sid dropped a boulder on my hand. It weren’t his fault, but I heard a fingerbone snap when the rock hit an’ I let out a yelp. Ma said she thought it looked broke. Pa took a look at it an’ said he couldn’t rightly tell, but I’d best run home anyway an’ have Grace put a bandage on it. There wasn’t much blood, tho,’ so I tried wipin’ it off on my shirt an’ sayin’ I’d be all right in a minute, but pa wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Fections ain’t nothin’ to make light of, he said, ‘specially when a body lives near forty miles from the closest doc. So off’n I went back to the house.

  An’ that’s when it all went bad.

  You have to excuse me a minute. They just brung me my last meal an’ it’s my most favorite one. They don’t never serve it here, but they said I could ask for whatever I wanted an’ I wanted this. I’m havin’ fried trout an’ scallop taters.

  Ok. I’m back.

  They burnt the trout.

  I shoulda knowed there was somethin’ wrong when I come up on the house, but I didn’t. There was a shiny black Merc parked out front, an’ it was one I’d seen a hunnerd times afore so I didn’t think much about it. Besides, my hand was throbbin’ somethin’ awful an’ that hurt finger pretty much took up all my attention.

  The front door was wide open. I walked in an’ was just about to yell for Grace when somethin’ struck me as seemin’ kinda outa place. It took a minute afore I knowed what it was, but I finally realized there weren’t none of those good smells comin’ from out the kitchen. Grace shoulda been cookin’ by now. Not only that but there weren’t nobody in sight neither.

  I was standin’ there in the middle of the front room ponderin’ all this when I heard a commotion comin’ from down the hall. I still weren’t none too alarmed tho,’ ‘cause like I said, I seen the car out front an’ knew the man what owned it. I just figured Grace was showin’ him somethin’ or t’other in her room an’ so I sat down to wait. But then I heard them same sounds again, an’ when I did I realized they was ugly sounds, the sounds of my little sister cryin’ an’ beggin,’ and then the waitin’ was over.

  Now I been here in Springville a while now, an’ since I been here I heard an’ seen some things I never woulda thought possible. Bad things. Scary things. Stories not fit for the ears of those ‘cept the meanest sort alive. But stories are just stories. An’ when you hear ‘em you can just sorta set ‘em aside if’n you want to. But some stories, no matter how bad they is, have a way of comin’ true. It’s almost like wakin’ up in the middle of a nightmare an’ comin’ to understan’ you been awoke all along.

  What I seen when I walked in my sis’s room was like that. It was a livin’ nightmare.

  Grace was lyin’ on the bed. Nekked. An’ some huge bear of a man I ain’t never seen afore was lyin’ atop her, smashin’ her, his fat hairy back squirmin’ thisaway an’ that. He was nekked too, an’ it was his bein’ nekked, I think, what rattled me most.

  At first I wanted to run. Just get outside someplace and catch me a deep breath. ‘Cause what I was seein’ was getting’ me sick somethin’ awful, an’ I could taste that nasty bitter yaller puke risin’ inside me from that hollow pit deep down in my guts. But my feet wouldn’t move. I tried. I tried so hard to get goin,’ but I couldn’t. An’ then my eyes caught the look on my poor sister’s face an’ my heart clenched tight as a fist.

  She was cryin.’ Hard. Her eyes was slammed shut, nailed tighter’n Hell’s back door, and there was big rivers of tears flowin’ bright an’ shiny down her pretty cheeks, reflectin’ all the grief an’ misery a body’d take. Her lips was movin’ too, in a strange an’ scary way, an’ even tho’ I weren’t able to hear ‘xactly what she was sayin,’ I knowed they was the whisperin’s of a prayer.

  Just inside my sister’s door was a old thing pa’d made a long time ago.

  It weren’t much, really. Just a wood pole he threw together for Grace to hang clothes on. But it was a solid thing. A thing easy to hold on to. An’ afore I knew it my hands was wrapped tight around it.

  Grace snapped her eyes open quick as I laid that pole ‘cross that squirmin’ man’s back. An’ in ‘em I seen a look of thanks like them what musta give Jesus when he took away their pains an’ sins.

  So I swung it again.

  An’ again.

  An’ again.

  I swung that wood pole as hard as I could till I was sure my arms’d fell off. Then I drug that bloody mess off’n my sister an’ hauled his carcass outside, hopin’ with all my heart the buzzards’d finish him in a way I was too sick to do.

  That evenin,’ after ma an’ pa’d come, an’ the sheriff’d come, an’ ever’body was through arguin’ an’ yellin’ an’ cryin,’ I was give a ride to town by a deputy an’ throwed in the jailhouse. The people called it murder. The paper called it worse.

  I never took the stand at trial.

  Nobody did. I asked ‘em not to.

  You see, livin’ where we do, who we are, an’ what them townsfolk think of us what make our livin’ outa scratchin’ the land, we has to build our walls, protect ourself’s from the coyote natures of them on the outside. They see us as diff’rent. They don’t cotton to grubby clothes, even if’n they’s clean. They hear the way we talk an’ think there ain’t a one of us with a lick of sense. They cheat us when they can, talk behind our backs when they cain’t. We ain’t never done a speck of harm to none of ‘em, an’ never would, but they still grab hold of the li’l un’s when they see us walkin’ by, coverin’ their eyes and turnin’ ‘em away. They stare at us like we was the scum of the earth. An’ to them we are.

  Myself, I prob’ly never was meant for much. An’ I knowed it my whole life. All I was ever cut out for was plowin’ an’ sowin’ an’ reapin the land. An’ yeah, I know I talk bad ‘bout it sometimes, make it seem like it’s a life purely of the devil’s own makin.’ But the truth is I’d never do anythin’ else. Pa’s right, ya know, when he says it’s God’s land. He’s right as rain.

  But it ain’t thataway with Grace. Grace is made for better things. I already said she got a good heart. An’ she does. She got looks too. She can be right pretty when she has it in mind. But this life of dust an’ dirt, of broke hearts an’ pain, of crooked backs, busted fingers an’ worry, it ain’t for Grace. Grace needs to be in a city someplace. She needs to wear the fancy dresses an’ learn to talk like a lady. She needs a man what can marry her an’ give her a fine home an’ pretty children, an’ buy her things to hang on her shelf what break the minute you touch ‘em. That’s what Grace needs. Not to be knowed as some poor young farm girl from out on the Bowl what got taken ‘vantage of.

  That’s why I asked ‘em all to keep quiet.

  To give Grace a chance.

  A chance at life.

  Well, it’s almost time for my ride on the Big Blue. The lights are flickerin’ an’ flashin’ so I s’pose they’s puttin’ her to the test. In a way I’m kinda glad the time’s come. Not ‘cause I’m in any all-fired hurry to get where I’m goin,’ mind you. But they’s one person I need to give a message to afore I go. An’ I’ll be seein’ that man tonight.

  You see, that poor ol’ boy what died while rapin’ my sister weren’t the only man in the room that day. There was one other. Things was just happenin’ too fast for me to see him. An’ it weren’t till after I drug that man outside an’ come back to look in on Grace did I chance to see him standin’ there, hidin’ in the corner, his soft pudgy hands coverin’ his nekked privates, an’ tears startin’ to slide from those eyes I’d looked into ever’ weekend since the day I was born. I shoulda knowed he was there. I shoulda knowed it. It was his black Merc I seen out front.

  Yep, they’s a message I wanna give that man. I want him to know I’ll be waitin.’ ‘Cause I know, you see, where it is I’m headed. I know ‘cause the Good Book already done told me. And just like pa—

  I still believe…

  State Execut
es Youngest Man

  AP - (Kansas) At 12:17 this morning, Billy Joe Hollister, the 17 year-old killer from Wicksburg, was put to death at the Springville State Prison. Hollister was convicted two years ago in the savage slaying of Andrew Paulsen, 47, whose nude body was found brutally beaten and thrown onto the front lawn of the Hollister farm. The case drew widespread attention because Hollister, who was just 15 at the time of the murder, was the youngest man ever sentenced to die in the State’s electric chair. Hollister, while maintaining his innocence, declined to seek legal representation at the time of trial, refusing as well any opportunity to represent himself. In addition, Hollister also requested that his family not provide any testimony on his behalf, nor offer any references of character. There were no appeals pending.

  Several witnesses attended the execution proceedings, including Hollister’s mother, and one witness described the scene as such: “I really felt bad for the boy’s mother. When they brought him out you could feel her pain. She cried only once that I saw, that being when he smiled at her as he was being strapped into the chair.”

  Another witness described things differently: “I can see now why they put this despicable young man to death. Two years ago he showed a total lack of remorse for what he’d done. And he died tonight