Section I - The Storm

Chapter 1

“If it keeps on raining, the levee’s gonna break,” my father said as cold sweat trickled down his forehead. The heavy perspiration on his face glistened in the kitchen lights like some dying star. Each time I heard my father utter those words, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread and this occasion was no different. Even though the words seemed to drift through the room and were never meant to adhere to anyone or anything, they shredded my emotions with the rigid brutality of an executioner’s poleaxe. The phrase had no origin nor history of use, or at least none that I remember. It just always seemed to appear in the pale times of melancholy, almost as if it were a familiar component of my family’s heritage. As a child, I spent a great deal of time observing my father and his reactions to situations that prompted the use of this phrase. By the time I was ten, I felt that I could read the man just as easily as he could read me. Although I never fully understood the meaning of those words until I grew much older, I knew when they were coming.

My mom could also sense the tension in the room that presaged the uttering of the phrase. Even though she knew better than to speak to my father in times such as these, she would nonetheless attempt to pacify him.

“It’s not so bad, dear,” she would say. “We’re going to be all right; it’s not so bad.”

He would then give her that quiet but harsh gaze, the expression that we kids absolutely abhorred, for it told us that trouble was about to be unleashed in an unbridled fury like the atomic rage of the great bomb. Even though my father’s actions were almost unnoticeable to strange eyes, to us the quiet gestures seemed deafening. Over the years, all of us, even Mom, learned that when my father spoke those words, it was best just to empathize as best we could.

He wasn’t adept at hiding his emotions, so I found it easy to recognize the clues that preceded the infamous phrase. His expressionless face would squint and soon he would stare at the ceiling, slowly shaking his head from side to side. He would sit in silence with his hands over his face, hoping that we’d not gain a glimpse of the pain that resided in his soul. Then he would remove his hands, exposing only the dim radiance of the light and shadow trapped within the creases of his face. It was as if he was as big as the whole world and we were so small and insignificant that we didn’t dare witness this monumental, yet horrific moment. Even the dogs outside seemed to respect the gravity of this dark moment.

Afterwards, Mom would ask us kids to leave the room. My brother and sister and I would leave the house and travel to the creek and wonder what horrible event had surfaced once again.

Chapter 2

On this particular day, we all knew that something extraordinarily bad had occurred, but we didn’t know exactly what. All that we were sure of was that for the past five years, our lives had changed, and we felt it was somehow related to money. It seemed as though Mom constantly reminded us to save all we could. Whether it was buying basketball shoes or groceries or gifts for our best friends’ birthday parties, we lived by the cheapest means available.

We were too young to understand the value of money, so any time Mom attempted to instill her frugal values upon us, we fought her tooth and nail. She took it hard when we argued with her at the shoe store or wherever these conflicts occurred. She was just doing her part to hold the family intact as best she could. The three of us were nothing more than innocent children, sheltered from the complexities of adult life and money.

As we walked to the creek, my little brother and I looked at each other but could hardly utter any words. Due to the previous moments’ intensity, I felt that I had to speak in order to remind us that we were not in the house anymore, that we were away from the terrible madness and, most importantly, that we were just kids. Since I was the older brother, I knew Devin was probably more shattered than me, so I searched for some positive common ground.

“So how’s Franky?” I asked with a frail voice. It always seemed that the first words that I uttered after witnessing Dad in a state of mental anguish were the most difficult. I usually had to breathe in and out very slowly and concentrate on relaxing or I would cry when I began to speak. But not now. Now I was trying to remain in control. Now I was the big brother.

Devin didn’t answer. He just looked at me, real slow and hard, and stopped walking. Since I’d seen Devin react this way before, I assumed he didn’t feel like talking, but I felt that it was my job to make him talk.

“How’s Franky?” I demanded. Still nothing. Now I was worried. For the last three summers, Franky was Devin’s world outside the family. He was all Devin ever talked about. If he wouldn’t talk about Franky, he wouldn’t talk about anything.

Franky was special because he was Devin’s pet fish in the creek by our house. Well, actually he was a carp, and he wasn’t really a pet, he just got hungry a lot and liked to be fed worms if they were cut up into small pieces. Over time, my brother formed some sort of bond with the ugly fish and somewhere in the process he named him Franky. Franky liked to hang out in the shade beneath a certain group of trees at the edge of the creek. Every day, Devin would spend as much time as he could at the creek under those shade trees feeding worms to Franky. It was amazing. I’ve never known a wild fish to become domesticated, but Franky returned and greeted Devin almost daily.

Franky served a vital dual purpose for our family: Not only did he provide hours of entertainment for Devin, but his primary role was that of peacemaker. Since Devin was the youngest member of the family, he was usually the most convenient person available to absorb the backlash of the family’s problems. Devin was too young to understand the dangers of troubled family waters; he didn’t know to leave the scene when things began to melt down. When life became complicated at our house around five years before, Devin was only three. By the time he was old enough to comprehend his surroundings and retain memories, things were tumultuous.

As Devin grew older, I think he accepted my family’s volatile behavior as normal. If Mom and Dad began fighting, Devin stayed around and joined in like some boxing fan rooting for the underdog at a prize fight. They could be screaming at the top of their lungs at each other during dinner and Devin would just sit there with a smile on his face and continue to eat. I don’t know if he enjoyed it or if that was just his way of dealing with screaming parents.

It always came to a head when Dad would become enraged and push the fight too far and say one of those unforgivable things to Mom like what a lousy cook she was or that her butt was getting big or some other timeless insult. Dead silence would fill the air and just as Mom would begin to cry, Devin would chime in with “Good one, Dad.” Dad would give Devin a hard slap on the arm for being a smartass and Devin would start crying. After Dad cooled off, he would apologize to Devin, but Devin usually stayed mad. That is, until Dad brought up Franky.

If Franky was mentioned, Devin would instantly get over his anger and begin telling tall tales about him. He’d say, “I actually caught Franky with my bare hands today, but I let him go,” or “Franky jumped up out of the water and let me pet him.” Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. Just mentioning Franky’s name healed all wounds. Even Mom used the Franky tactic if she lost her temper with Devin.

But now, as I walked with my little brother toward the creek, I discovered that he refused to discuss the whereabouts of his cherished pet.

“Devin, how’s Franky?”

“I don’t know!” Devin shouted.

In many ways, Devin’s character was similar to mine. As the boys of the house, I suppose we felt responsible for Dad’s problems. Somehow we managed to fully absorb the brunt of each dilemma and then we took it out on each other. The problems seemed to follow us around like shadows and by now we were as familiar with them as we were with each other.

“Have you seen him lately?” I asked.

“I think he got ate,” Devin sobbed.

“What do you mean, ‘you think?’”

“This morning I found a big carp in the mud. He looked like Franky.”

“Did he have a red spot on his nose?” I quickly asked. Franky’s appearance was uncommon for a carp, as he wore a big red spot on his nose.

“’Coons got him. The fish I saw didn’t have no nose.”

“You mean the fish you saw didn’t have a nose.” Dad often said just because we lived out in the country didn’t give us the right to talk like we lived out in the country. After many years of hearing Dad correct my mistakes, it came naturally for me to act as the authority in his place. Even though my sister Jessica was fourteen and entitled as the oldest sibling to act as the grammar police, she didn’t care much for proper English, so it was my job.

“Devin, remember the rule about double negatives? He didn’t have a nose.”

“No, he didn’t have a damned nose! Are you happy? He didn’t have a damned nose!”

I laughed at Devin’s response. For such a young man, Devin had the mouth of a sailor - but then again, so did I. We tried not to speak vile words around Mom and Dad, but we normally spoke them at will everywhere else. I don’t remember where we picked up the colorful language; it must have come from our friends at school. Well, them and Dad and Granddad.

“That’s much better,” I said. “Well, maybe it wasn’t Franky. Did you get a good look at him?”

“From what I saw, it sure looked like Franky.”

“But you didn’t see the nose, right?”

“I told you, the fish didn’t have a nose.”

“Then you can’t be sure it was Franky, can you?”

A smile worked its way onto Devin’s face.

“I guess not. It might not have been Franky.”

“That’s right. There are lots of fish in that creek. It could have been any one of them.”

As a child growing up in the country, I enjoyed my adolescence; but nothing felt better than briefly banishing gloom from someone’s world.

The feeling didn’t last long. As we walked closer to the creek, we heard Jessica shouting her patented insults. Jessica’s scorn was a constant reminder of the war between the sexes. Of course, at age twelve I never fully understood nor appreciated this ancient battle. I just accepted the opposite sex as a riddle and dealt with it with as much hostility as I could muster.

Even though we didn’t particularly enjoy her insults, Jessica was a wealth of information. If anyone in our world was to know the source of our father’s mental anguish, it would be Jessica. She was an incredible snoop.

“So what did you do this time?” Jessica asked while tailoring a good old-fashioned mud pie from the banks of the creek.

“Nothing, or at least I don’t think I did anything,” I slowly answered. Devin and I knew that the words we spoke to our sister must be chosen carefully because they would eventually be used against us.

“Betcha did,” her voiced squeaked. “Betcha did, betcha did, betcha did.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I shouted.

“Yeah you did. You broke the tractor,” she said, reminding me of the latest debacle.

“That just happened. It overheated because the heat gauge doesn’t work. I didn’t know it was gettin’ hot.”

“Well, it’s still broke,” she proudly announced. “It’s broke and it’s your fault.”

Now I was getting mad. It seemed that I was always the one to get the credit for breaking the machinery. This was the way it always happened. Someone, be it Dad or Ramón, the hired hand, would drive one of the tractors for twenty minutes and it would run just fine. Then they would send me out to the fields, but they would always forget to tell me about the little things that were wrong with the equipment. In this instance, it was a broken heat gauge. Next would come Murphy’s Law. Almost every time, something would break. It might be something small like the hydraulics on the hay baler or the clutch on the pickup, or something huge like a massive oil leak which overheated the tractor’s engine and cracked the block.

It didn’t just happen to me, however. Devin was also entangled in this mysterious universal web of disorder. Even though he was too young to operate most of the machinery, he did various chores around the house like mowing the yard with the riding lawn mower which, without fail, would break down. Devin and I spent many hours pondering this disturbance in the universe and tried in vain to understand its origin and meaning, but to no avail. All we could do was just accept the fact that chaos occurs randomly and without reason.

The universal law of disorder was biased, too. For some reason, it never fired down its misery on Jessica. Of course, she was always inside the house, and since she’d never worked a day in her life, she never broke anything. While Devin and I made our contribution to the family by working, Jessica did her part by watching television or talking on the phone to her friends. Sometimes she would feel generous and make cookies, but by the time we got back to the house, she’d eat the last one right in front of us. She’d wait for us to walk in the kitchen after a hard day’s work when we were hungry and tired, then she would hold the cookie just above her mouth. By the time we saw the cookie and started running for it, she would drop it right inside that nasty brace-ridden cesspool of hers and, chomp chomp, it was gone.

The worst thing about our sister was that she was smart. Since Mom took a part-time job in town and was away each afternoon and Dad, Devin, and I were in the fields all day, Jessica had the house to herself. She took this time to perform her devious acts. For example, if she wanted to torment us with the cookies, she’d spend the afternoon making and eating most of the cookies, then she’d wash all the pots and pans. As soon as we’d enter the house and see her eating the last cookie, we’d tell Mom and Dad. Of course Jessica would say, “If I made cookies, why aren’t the pans dirty?” Mom and Dad would then yell at us for trying to get our sister into trouble. Jessica would force herself to cry and then tell Mom and Dad that she didn’t understand why we didn’t love her. Mom and Dad would then take it out on us. So basically, we lived in persecution our whole lives and most of it was caused by our sister. I’ve never understood it, but then again, Devin and I realized long ago that we should never try to understand Jessica. All we needed to know was that she’s a downright cold-hearted girl.

We became conditioned to her trickery, but that didn’t stop our animosity for her. Especially during times such as this, when she was rubbing my nose in it about the tractor.

“At least I was out there working and not in the house brushing my hair and running up the phone bill,” I shouted.

“Well, the calls were local, so they were free, and my hair brush cost less than a dollar,” she calmly remarked. “Daddy says a new tractor engine will cost at least ten thousand dollars,” she said with a wicked smile. “I rest my case.”

This was Jessica’s most lethal weapon: Not only could she lie and cheat like Old Scratch himself, but she was also very good at arguing. My granddad often said she’d make a good lawyer when she got older. Devin and I agreed.

“You know,” Jessica said as she packed the mud pie, “you two are the reason we’re poor. If you’d stop breaking all the equipment, we’d have more money to spend on stuff for...”

“Stuff for what?” I angrily demanded.

“Well, you know, just stuff.”

I knew I had her now. She backed herself into a corner and I had her dead to rights.

“You mean stuff for you, don’t you? Stuff that will make you look prettier to those older boys, right? Stuff that you can show off to your crappy friends.” Since I didn’t have the opportunity to lash out at Jessica very often, I felt the ice flow through my veins as I spoke the words.

“Well you two aren’t as old as I am. You don’t know what it’s like to be a teenager. I need things so I can keep up with my friends and...”

“You need things so’s you can be the queen of the bitches!” Devin shouted.

Upon hearing the dreaded “B” word, Jessica instantly cried her alligator tears and began running towards the house.

Only a few words existed that were not allowed to be spoken at our house, and the “B” word was one of them. Mom and Dad both stressed this on many occasions. Now Devin had broken this golden rule and he knew he would be in some serious trouble when their precious little angel came to them in tears because one of their sons called her that awful name. Devin realized that he was in some serious trouble and Dad’s present mood would only amplify the punishment. So in an instant, Devin planned his evasive action.

Devin was young and small, but he was very crafty. He knew he couldn’t give her much of a lead or she would outrun him with ease. So he instantly made his move: He went for her feet. As she began running at full throttle by him on her way to the house, he stuck out his foot and, blam, she fell end-over-end twice like some snorting rhino that had been blasted by a safari hunter in the Serengeti. It wasn’t just a fall, it was like a beautiful acrobatic feat that, no matter how many times it was practiced, could only occur once in a lifetime. To make matters worse, or better, when the tumbling subsided and all the dust settled, she opened her eyes and found a world of darkness: Her face had landed right square in the mud pie that she held in her hand. The same mud pie that was intended for use on us had betrayed its creator.

As she arose and wiped the mud from her face, I quickly noticed that her tears probably weren’t fake any longer. In a moment of weakness, we both felt sorry for her, but that was soon overcome with laughter. Devin and I laughed so hard that we had tears in our eyes, too. It was a moment of universal justice, painted perfect. The laughter slowly faded, however, when she continued her jaunt towards the house. Her crying and moaning became louder with each step that she made towards Mom and Dad. In a demented way, her shrieks somehow seemed hilarious, so Devin and I again roared as we heard her near the front gate to the house. It was so loud that you would have thought that she had been beaten by an angry band of gypsies. As our laughter subsided, however, I knew it was time for us to take our medicine. I slowly wiped my face with my shirt and decided that we should meet our destiny.

“No point in waiting around,” I said, “we might as well get on up there.”

“Why? You didn’t do nothin’,” Devin remarked.

“Yeah, but I was here and I didn’t stop it, so I’m gettin’ it, too. It’s one of those stupid rules they have.”

“Damn!” Devin’s anger was now instantly flooded with fear.

“No use in puttin’ it off,” I said. “That’ll just make it worse.”

“Damn!”

“Double damn,” I added. “Let’s hurry to the barn and get some gunny sacks.”

For the past year or so, Devin and I had come to appreciate the protection of gunny sacks. They served as armor for times like this. My dad sometimes became possessed with extreme fits of rage during the disciplinary exercises. I’m not sure from where the anger stemmed, but make no mistake, it made its presence known when the belt was used. More than anything, I think the anger came from his own frustrations in the world. The problem was, he took it out on us. Even though Devin and I never really knew the cause of the anger that fueled it, we were certain of one thing: There was hell to pay when Dad pulled off the belt and the gunny sacks were about the only protection we had.

Before the punishment, we’d pull our pants down and cover our butts and thighs with the thickly woven feed sacks and then pull our pants up over them. This provided much protection from the stinging pain of a belt. With a gunny sack over your butt, plus the protection of your jeans, the pain from the belt was greatly diminished. The sharp pain was still present, but not nearly as devastating.

Installing the gunny sacks wasn’t easy. We had to be careful to make them fit with the contour of our butts, or the sacks would cause noticeable wrinkles in our jeans. Probably the biggest problem with the gunny sack defense system was that they only worked when you knew of a whippin' in advance and had time to go to the barn for full installation. This usually wasn’t a problem. When Dad got mad and went on the rampage, you could hear him screaming from anywhere in the house, or the ranch for that matter - and it was a big ranch. Normally, we had enough warning time to make it to the barn. By the time he would find us, we’d be in full gunny sack armor.

Another element that took some time to learn was fake crying. If you didn’t cry when you were getting whipped, then Dad would just think he wasn’t hitting you hard enough, so he’d put more muscle into it. For this reason, Devin and I rehearsed fake crying in the off-time. Although Jessica had it mastered, Devin and I found it difficult to produce the fake tears, so we worked hard to devise a plan which would allow us to call up the tears on command. We finally decided that it would be best if we could think of something horrible before the whipping started and then continue to think of it throughout the punishment. The problem was, we didn’t know of anything that was horrible enough to make us cry. After spending many afternoons at the fishing hole contemplating the worst imaginable things that would cause us to cry, we finally came up with a solution: Imagining that we were forced at gunpoint to French-kiss Jessica. Devin didn’t even know what a French-kiss was and when I explained it to him, he actually started crying. We knew then that the Jessica French-kiss mental image was our ace.

All in all, the gunny sack method proved to be very effective for Devin and me. To date, we’d never been caught using it.

“You reckon we oughta use two gunny sacks today instead of just one?” Devin asked as we entered the barn.

“Yeah, I sure do.”

Devin and I both knew that we were in for the thrashing of a lifetime. Not only did Devin call Jessica the forbidden name, but he also made her fall down, thus hurting her physically. That was almost as bad as using the forbidden name. To top it all off, Dad was in one of those moods anyway. With this in mind, we quickly covered our butts and zipped up our gunny-sack-ridden-pants and prepared for the biggest fake crying of our lives.

As we approached the front lawn, I felt each step becoming increasingly difficult to take. It was as if my legs weighed a thousand pounds and were telling me that they would certainly become instantly lighter and oblige me with a fast escape if I turned and ran. I knew I had to go, though, no matter how bad I wanted to run away. I absolutely did not want to take my medicine, but running away would just make it worse. In all my years of growing up on the ranch, I learned to hate many things: Hauling hay, building fence, working cattle, but I hated the belt more than anything and if I ran away, the severity of the flogging would increase tenfold.

My skin crawled as I neared the house. I turned and looked at Devin and noticed that tears were coming from his eyes and he was already wiping away Jessica’s imaginary kiss. We glanced at each other and continued walking. Our fears were heightened as we stood in the front yard and heard screams of anger.

“Now quit crying and go wash your face!” Dad yelled.

“But Daddy, they rubbed mud in my face. In my face, Daddy!” Jessica cried. “And then Hadley pushed me down the hill over by the creek and when I hit, Devin kicked me right in the ribs.”

“Aw crap!” Devin said. “We’re really gonna get the beatin’ of a lifetime now.”

“Thank God for the gunny sacks,” I added in a weak voice.

As we continued to listen, the most amazing thing happened: Dad continued to argue with her, indicating that he wasn’t believing her lies.

“Quit your damned lying and go wash your face before I give you a reason to cry!” Dad screamed.

We heard the bathroom door slam and knew that Jessica had finally obeyed. All we could do now was brace ourselves. I looked down and stared at the grass on the front lawn and waited for Dad to come. When I heard the front door open, I quickly looked up and saw him walking towards me. I squinted my eyes and awaited the flogging, but the strangest thing happened: Instead of walking to us, he headed toward his pickup. Devin and I couldn’t believe it. He climbed into his pickup and then drove down the road. We both breathed a sigh of relief and began to laugh when we remembered the mud pie smeared all over Jessica’s face. We laughed even harder at the fact that we didn’t get into trouble for causing it. This was truly a monumental moment. For once, we got away with it. After years of unfounded persecution, we were the deviant party that committed a high crime and escaped punishment.

After the laughter subsided, I decided that it was time for us to go inside. As we opened the door, our smiles were suddenly wiped away when we heard our mother’s shrill but commanding voice:

“I don’t know what you two did to Jessica, but you’d better go in there and apologize to her,” Mom demanded.

“Didn’t you hear? Dad didn’t buy it,” I said. “He didn’t do a thing to us. Not a thing.”

“I don’t care what your dad said or did,” she snapped, “little girls don’t just fall down into mud pies by themselves.”

“She did, Mom, honest,” Devin pleaded, “right square on the mud pie. She’s real uncoordinated, you know. We both saw it, didn’t we, Hadley?”

I gave Devin a look which suggested that we should just shut up and take our victory, even if it wasn’t absolute.

“That’s enough, Devin,” Mom announced, “you two go get cleaned up.”

“It’s too early to get cleaned up,” Devin replied. “Besides, we didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”

I was always amazed at the difference in the tolerance level between Mom and Dad while in a confrontation with us. For instance, if we were having the same conversation with Dad, it would have been over instantly, after he told us to go apologize to Jessica. Devin wouldn’t have back-talked Dad, or if he did it would have been minimal. For some reason, though, we all seemed to test Mom more. I guess it was because she wasn’t as prone to reach for the belt as Dad. Oh, she wasn’t afraid to whack us with the belt - she’d done that a few times - but it wasn’t nearly as painful as it was with Dad. I just think Mom understood us much better. She realized that we were kids and that we didn’t care at all about the things that she and Dad cared about like money and mortgages and past-due bills. Actually, we didn’t really care about anything that they cared about. We had our world and they had theirs, and I think she understood that we were just kids.

“Now go get cleaned up,” her voice was still bold, but much less threatening.

As we walked down the hallway toward the bathroom we both started smiling again, for we had scored an important victory in the war against Jessica. Not only did we avoid Dad’s belt, but we didn’t even get screamed at by Mom. The best part was that Jessica got caught lying, even though the lie was based on the truth. We both felt like we’d really accomplished something. We had fought valiantly against the oppressive forces of the evil older sister and won. As I turned on the light in our room, I simply felt an overwhelming sense of fulfillment. But then we heard the voice behind us again:

“Oh, and boys, one more thing,” I could tell by the tone in Mom’s voice that she was up to something.

“Yes,” I said, expecting a bomb to go off at any moment.

“Take those gunny sacks back to the barn.”

As we slowly absorbed the words, I felt heat flashes, intense as molten lava, searing in my forehead. I thought I was going to faint. I suddenly realized the magnitude of my mother’s power as never before. She had transformed from the delicate mother in our home that cooks our meals and washes our clothes and offers the love and support that only a mother can provide into the executioner who stood beside our guillotine. My world was fading now and growing drearier by the second. I felt her words tear away the fabric of my reality, leaving nothing except the stark remains of a gloomy and insincere existence. At this moment, I glimpsed the end of my world, for if Mom knew about the gunny sacks, then Dad knew, and if he knew, then the guillotine blade was about to be drawn and released on our miserable heads.

“What are you talking about?” I said while sweat ran in streams down the sides of my face.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Mom said in a condescending tone. “I know about the sacks.”

“We ain’t got no gunny sacks, honest, we don’t!” Devin screamed as tears were mounting in his eyes. “Please, you’ve got to believe us. For the love of God, please!”

“Quit getting all worked up about it. I’m not going to tell him. Your secret’s safe with me, although I wouldn’t tell your sister.”

Absolute elation doesn’t nearly describe the state of our emotions. We both let out a huge sigh of relief and thanked God for Mom’s charity. Not only was Mom promising to protect our secret, but she was, in a sense, telling us that she saw through Jessica’s deceitful nature and understood her motives. Devin and I couldn’t believe what we just heard.

“Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “We don’t tell Jessica anything. We know all about Jessica.”

As we spoke, we heard Jessica in the bathtub performing her rehearsed sobbing. She was obviously trying to appeal to mom’s weaknesses, as the crying was very loud. The fact that mom wasn’t rushing to her aid reached beyond our beliefs. We almost didn’t recognize the woman that stood before us now. It was as if she had suddenly come to understand our struggle. We were simply in awe.

“Why aren’t you going to tell Dad about the gunny sacks?” I asked, knowing full well that she probably wouldn’t tell me.

“Your father has enough problems. He doesn’t need any more. Besides that, if he found out that for the last year or so you’ve been wearing gunny sacks, why there’s no telling what he’d do. I know I wouldn’t want to be around, that’s for sure,” Mom said. “He’s too hard on you boys anyway.”

“Well... uh, thanks,” I said still shocked by the whole thing. “The sacks really help us a lot. It doesn’t hurt near as bad.”

“Did you boys do your chores tonight?” Mom said to change the subject.

“No, I guess we forgot.”

“You’d better hop to it then, it’ll be dark soon.”

“When will Dad be back?” I asked. I knew we’d get into trouble if he returned and found out that we forgot to do our chores.

“Don’t know. I wouldn’t expect him back any time soon.”

Devin and I agreed and walked out the back door to the barn. Once inside, we began feeding all the animals and replenishing the water troughs. We’d spent about an hour doing the chores and by this time the incident with Mom was arousing my curiosity. I figured that if she was willing to forget about the gunny sacks, maybe she would open up a little more and enlighten me to the source of Dad’s current mood. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know, but I felt as though I was coming of age and needed to be aware of any burden that was strong enough to alter my father’s mental state.

“Devin,” I asked in a normal tone of voice, “could you do me a favor?”

The mere mention of the word “favor” was enough to provoke strong suspicion in Devin.

“What kind of favor?” he asked with a skeptical pitch. I instantly knew this wasn’t going to be easy.

“Could you please put out all the hay tonight by yourself?” I said.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? I really need for you to do this.”

“They’re your chores, too.”

“I know they are, but I’d really like to go talk to Mom and find out what’s going on,” I said. “I think she might tell me now. Please, it won’t take long.”

Devin began kicking the dirt, contemplating the situation.

“Under one condition: You and Jacob have to take me fishing on the river.”

Jacob Stoneman lived near our house. He was my age and he and I spent a lot of time together.

“I always take you fishing with me.”

“Yeah,” Devin said, “but you won’t let me noodle. I want to go noodlin’ with you guys.”

Noodling meant catching catfish with your bare hands in underwater holes by the bank of the river. The process required a lot of nerve, because you never really knew what might be waiting in the hole where you stuck your hand. It could be a catfish or a snake or God knows what. You just stuck your hand in the hole and if you felt a fish, you grabbed him by the inside of his mouth and pulled him out. Dad told us never to noodle without an adult, but Jacob and I did it anyway. We never really snared that many, but if we ever did, the fish was big, I mean really big.

“I don’t know, what if you grabbed a water moccasin?”

“If I grab a moccasin, I’ll pull his head off before he has a chance to bite me.”

“Yeah, right. While he’s biting you, you’ll pull his head off.”

“You’re acting like Jessica,” Devin said. He knew this remark would seal the deal.

“All right, I’ll take you, but you don’t have to insult me like that.”

Devin walked toward the haystack and I turned around and headed for the house. I found Mom in the kitchen when I arrived. She still seemed to be in a pleasant mood, but before I started I wanted to find out Jessica’s whereabouts.

“Where’s Jessica?” I asked.

“Oh, she’s still in the bathtub crying,” Mom said with a smile on her face.

“Think I should go check on her?” I asked. I didn’t care about Jessica, I was just trying to soften Mom before I began the interrogation.

“Why, that’s very nice of you to be concerned, but I’m pretty sure she’s all right,” Mom said.

This was a good response. Now’s the time, I thought.

“So, uh, what’s going on?” I asked, not knowing how to begin the questions.

“What’s going on with what?”

“You know, what’s going on with you and Dad and us and Dad. Why’s he so pissed off?” I inquired.

“Those are great words to be using in front of your mother.”

I immediately knew that I should have picked my words more carefully. Gathering information from Mom was like walking the plank on a pirate ship: One wrong move and it’s all over.

“I’m sorry. Why’s he so mad? It seems that he gets like this all the time now. He use to never get mad. He was always real nice but for the last few years he’s changed.” It felt good that I finally said it.

“Has your brother noticed this also?”

She’s being a mother now, I thought. I knew I was making progress. If I ever asked her a question before about Dad, she always told me not to worry about it, but now I could tell she wanted to talk. Maybe she needed to talk.

“Sure he has,” I said, “even though it seems to Devin that Dad’s always been like this. Devin doesn’t remember what he was like before.”

“So, are you two upset about it?” Mom asked with sincerity.

Now that was a dangerous question. If I said yes, then two things could happen: Mom would talk, or Mom would tell Dad that his boys were upset about his attitude. That was sure to bring trouble.

“No, not so much, but we’ve noticed that we get beat more often than we use to.”

“You get beat, uh?” Mom asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Well yeah,” I said. “What else would you call it?”

“I prefer calling it getting spanked.”

“Well sure you do, but it’s still a beatin’. I mean, no matter what you call it, it’s still a beatin’. Spankings are for rich kids who steal bubble gum from the dime store.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” Mom said. “If the women in town were to hear about that...”

After I said it, I was shocked that I’d spoken so nonchalantly about getting whipped. I suppose that it was because I’d never talked about it before. Sure, Devin and I talked about it many times, but I’d never discussed it with an adult. It didn’t matter, though. I wasn’t here to think about that nor to explore and share my feelings about child brutality with my mother. I was here for one reason: To gain insight to the origin of my father’s problems.

“All right,” I said. “We won’t call it beatings any more; we’ll call it disciplinings, if that’s actually a word. So, what’s the problem?”

“Well, I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but you’re going to find out anyway.” Mom’s eyes began to mist over and I knew she was about to drop something heavy. “It’s money. We’re having problems with money.” I sensed that Mom felt relieved after she finally said it.

“Problems, uh, like how bad?” I asked.

“Pretty bad,” Mom’s voice was weakening as she spoke. “The note on our ranch is due soon and we’re completely out of money. We’ve got to have more to keep operating.”

“Well, can’t you go get some?”

“Where?”

“What about Granddad, won’t he help?”

“I’m sure he would, but your father’s not going to ask him,” her frail voice whispered.

“You mean Dad would rather go broke than ask Granddad for help?”

“There are many things about men that you don’t understand, Hadley. Men have a thing called pride and it sometimes gets in the way of logic.”

“Well, I’m a man, or a boy anyway.”

“That’s right, and that’s why you need to pay special attention to what’s going on right now. You must learn from your father’s mistakes.”

As the weakness in her voice dissipated, I soon realized that she was giving her patented switchover. I’d become familiar with this tactic many years ago, as it was very common for adults. Whenever the moment became too real or too intense, the conversation switched from being informative into a lecture. I guess it broke the tension.

A moment of silence filled the room.

“So we’re completely broke and there’s no way we can get more money?” Money meant nothing to me and I didn’t understand anything about a mortgage note or any of the other stuff in their world. I wanted to care, but I just didn’t know how.

“He went over to Albert Finken’s place tonight; maybe they can work something out.” A glimmer of hope flared in Mom’s eyes as she spoke.

“But I thought you two didn’t like Albert, Dad’s always calling him a shitbag.”

“That goes along with being a banker around here. The thing is, he’s the only hope we have right now.”

“So why do you two call him a shitbag?” I asked.

“Because he knows we’re in too deep to pull out now,” Mom said as she suddenly grew somber again and stared blankly out the window. “The bastard knows we’re in trouble and...” Mom abruptly stopped in mid-sentence.

“What?” I asked, now more confused than ever.

“Nothing, honey. It’s just a huge mess, that’s all... Forget that we talked about any of this,” she said as the tears came once again.

“Okay. So what happens if Dad can’t work something out?” I asked.

“Then the bank wins and they take it all.”

We both heard a vehicle pulling into the drive. We looked outside and noticed it was Dad.

Mom was quick to assess the situation: “You better hurry and go help your brother. Do the chores, get a bath and then get on to bed.”

“All right.” I wasn’t very happy that we had to end our talk or that I had to go to bed early, but with the situation at hand, I decided it would be best. As I walked toward the hallway, Mom stopped me.

“And one more thing, Hadley.”

“Yes,” I answered.

“You’re not to mention this to anyone. Your father is under enough pressure right now. He doesn’t need any more from you kids.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said and traveled off to the barn.

Once inside the barn, I was greeted by complete darkness. “Devin?”

“Yeah, I’m over here.”

“Why’s it so dark in here?”

“The damned light bulb burned out.”

“Are you about finished putting out the hay?”

“I’m getting there. It’s pretty dark, though.”

I wasn’t fazed at all by the burned-out light bulb. Since Dad was mad and we should’ve finished the chores hours ago, this was expected. Once again, the universal forces were at work right in our own red barn. If history was any indicator, we’d get back in the house just about the time Dad was getting out of the shower. He’d ask us where we’d been and we’d tell him we were feeding the animals and then he’d ask us why we waited until dark to do our chores. We’d tell him some lie, probably something like we found some rats in the feed silos and that we chased them around for awhile. He’d then look at us in disbelief and finally grunt something incoherent. We’d stay and nod until he left the room and then that would be that.

Devin and I changed the light bulb and put out hay for the animals. Although we weren’t really looking forward to going to bed, we were pretty tired, so off to the house we went. As soon as we entered the house, we soon realized by the lack of movement in the house that something was awry. Jessica was already in bed and the house was silent. Mom and Dad’s door was closed, so the house was ours, which was good. Not just because we had the house to ourselves, but when their door was closed it usually meant that everyone would be in a much better mood in the morning. Devin and I had our suspicions as to why, but they were just suspicions and we didn’t like to think about things like that.

Devin and I seized the opportunity by watching television and eating ice cream until midnight, and we didn’t even take a bath.

The next morning, we found that we were right about everyone being in a better mood. At the breakfast table, Dad was joking about the ferocious rats Devin and I told him we battled the night before. As I ate my bacon and eggs, I sensed that Dad’s visit with the shitbag must have gone well. He must have bought some more time.