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Where we were in Texas, the dust storms weren’t the worst they could’ve been, but it felt like no one in the world was safe from the Great Depression. Especially folk who made their livings off of healthy produce and good growing. I thought the stress was what was killing my Pa back then... but who knows? It probably sped the process along.
I never was kind to the old man. Spent most of my free time with Ma, or out in the fields digging around with our dog (when we weren’t shut-in inside of the house so we wouldn’t be suffocated by the weather, that is.) Beyond training (which I started early. It only dawned on me in the castle that John did that because he knew he didn’t have a lot of time left,) I barely spoke to him. Broke his heart, it did.
Ma told me that ‘no one in the world’ could have more spirit than my old man. I never saw it, but maybe I just overlooked the times I could have seen it.
Well, ‘never’ might be a stretch. When I think back trying to recall some good story I could tell about John, I remember this one time in particular:
It was the early years of the thirties. We didn’t have much, then. This was just two-or-so years after my parents told me we couldn’t live like we used to anymore, and the dirt was blowing and our cows died with sand in their stomachs.
On one particular night, my Pa was sitting out on the porch overlooking dying fields. Ma urged me outside to talk to him, so I awkwardly shuffled outside and stood beside the old man like a rigid pile of sticks. He greeted me with a “Jonathan,” and I replied with a “Sir.” I was lost after that, I just wanted to go back inside. John didn’t even look at me, he just kept rocking in that old chair...
Finally, I spoke-up and asked him what he was thinking about. It wasn’t hard to tell when he was doing that-- his eyes were focused and his brows were drawn together. He sighed, and that focus left him just as he turned his head to look at me with a tired smile. All of his smiles were tired, at that point... they were the only smiles I’d ever seen from him since before the dust started blowing.
He told me: “This farm has been in the family for a long time,” I remember him saying the same about the Vampire Killer, “I love it with all my soul.” Another thing he’d also said about the whip. He went quiet for a bit, and I stood there looking at the dust on my old shoes. He cleared his throat after a few seconds... but I remember the silence feeling like minutes. “My Pa died today, years back. Apparently he loved this place more than even I could.” I didn’t know what to say. John didn’t talk much about Quincy around me (which I suspected was partially because he didn’t know much but hear-say about him either,) but he and Ma showed me the sparse few photos they had of our family, and he was in one of them. Smiling, with that clean cowboy hat and the neat facial hair... and muddy boots, standing beside someone John called ‘Mr. Lecarde.’
I wondered if John used to look like that, too. When he was younger and more full of spirit like Ma said.
I digress.
I was six or seven, when Pa told me that. I already had too much death to think about. Maybe he realised that, because he stood up from the creaking old chair and offered me a tired old hand (fitting for a tired old man) and asked me to come with him. Not knowing what else I could do, I took the hand and he took me back into the house, Next to the little kitchen was his old guitar I’d seen him use once. He grabbed it up in his free hand and continued through the house and out the back door.
We had a little pit out there. Real old... lots of the ashes and rocks surrounding it had been blown-away. John didn’t let that stop him, though. He let go of me and set-up on the rotting trunk of a tree beside the pit, telling me to get the fire going. So I ran to the back of the house and grabbed a few dusty logs, and some thinner pieces of starter wood and the matches and came back to the pit. We didn’t need too big a fire... we were surrounded by sand, but we didn’t want to risk anything, with how dry it was. The dryness of the air made it easy for the fire to start, though. He was tuning his guitar just as the first hint of smoke started to rise in the air, then once the fire started going, he told me to sit down.
I took-up an old stump, settling down. The day had passed us by... I remember I looked up and noticed it was just starting to get darker. I didn’t have much time to dwell on that though before Pa strummed the first note of a song on his guitar and had my attention.
More notes came, then he began singing.
I remember the singing so vividly, even now. It was the one time that my mind really connected the dots that this man was my father, another human just like I am. Ma’s lullabies could never be beat, but my Pa had a voice like singers I’d heard on the radio. The tune he was playing was somber and hopeful at the same time, the lyrics were no different.
He kept playing the same song for longer than it was meant to be, but eventually I picked-up on the chorus. At first I’d hummed-along, then he opened his eyes to me and sang louder, which meant he wanted me to do the same. There was a smile on his face then that wasn’t as tired... the crackling and warmth of the fire, and the smile and the song all was comforting. I eventually started singing with John at the same volume he was (couldn’t say my tone was as good, though.)
Ma poked her head out of the door at the back of the house just as it was getting dark-enough outside for me to barely see her. She might’ve joined-in, but I have a feeling she wanted the moment between my old man and I.
By the end of it, I’d been sitting with John on the tree trunk, leaning against him with my face on his shoulder. I was mumbling the words, about to drift-off. I wasn’t fully conscious when Pa decided to finish the song up, but when the last note of it died, I blinked awake.
He was still smiling, looking down at me. I stared at the fire, and the first thought that came to my mind was that I was going to go back inside, sleep, and wake up to another terrible day the next morning. I wouldn’t even let myself feel any comfort in the moment, after that. Pa’s sleeve smelled like dust, and I saw a scar on his forearm. My young mind turned that into something to be angry about, and I stood up. John told me to kill the fire (Ma had left a lit lantern outside the back door so we’d be able to find our way back in) so I did, walking quickly afterward to catch-up to him when he was already heading back for the house.
The tune played in my head the rest of the night, even though when I got back inside I didn’t even look at John before rushing off to bed. I hummed it before I went to sleep, face pressed against our dog who was sleeping next to me. I felt a bit like crying, but I told myself that good boys don’t cry, and that I couldn’t be weak if I was going to take over that dying farm and take care of my Ma.