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The Boyd Family Storehouse

Michaela knew the rules, but they grew harder to follow every day.

By Steven A JonesPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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The Boyd Family Storehouse
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Before Michaela could lift a spade, she had the rules memorized. Love the earth and it will love you. Share the harvest and you won’t go without. Never take more than you need from the barn. Every night, she fell asleep whispering those rules into the rafters, drowned out by creaking planks and the soft rustle of the crops outside her window. That mantra and the shabby farmhouse were her inheritance; the sacred rites she owed to her father.

She thought of him often, the memory of his booming laugh and powerful frame a buffer against the aches and pains of working the land. When the wooden handle of a shovel shredded her palms, she pictured his eyes morphing from hard to kind as he trudged back to the house in the murky orange light of dusk. If her back locked up, she could imagine his arms around her wrists, pulling her forward just as they had when she learned to walk.

While the first rays of morning light stirred the world to life, she thought of him and swung a hoe to punch new holes in the rich, black earth. Oh, how that soil had clung to him. Sunk into the fibers of his shirt and pants, latched onto his skin -- the only thing she’d ever seen as dark as the ground he tended -- and hitched a ride to the kitchen sink. The house was never clean, but the air was always sweet with the scent of his hard-scrubbed skin.

Inevitably, the image of his shimmering flesh, drenched in sweat that turned the dirt to mud, gave way to other memories. There, too, he glistened; slick with the crimson sweat of his soul as it left his broken body behind.

The hollow thud of a car door roused her. Gravel crunched beneath expensive leather, and the bony frame of Mr. Nathaniel Williams swept around the corner of the house. As usual, a faded black suit hung from his shoulders; a veil between his pale face and matchstick legs. Death in his Sunday Best.

“Afternoon,” he said, waving a dusty hat in her direction. “Thought I might drop in. Check on your next installment.”

“Nothing for you today, Mr. Williams,” Michaela called, trying to coat the words in sugar even as she drove the hoe emphatically into the ground again. “Won’t have money until I go to market. Can’t go to market until I’ve got something to sell.”

“Well, now,” he chuckled. “Seems like you’re working the wrong field. Why don’t you go pluck some of that corn, see if you can’t put a dent in Daddy’s debt today?”

“I’ll get there,” she said, focusing on the rhythmic punch of metal against earth. “Sprouts and greens have to go in today.”

“That puts you about two weeks behind my other clients. Still set against a bigger loan? Get you some shiny new equipment and everything will go much faster.”

“We’ve done it this way since my great-granddaddy bought this place in 1907.”

“Maybe that’s why your Daddy was always behind.”

“Daddy was behind because he got his seed late.”

“And here you are, making the same mistake.”

Michaela bit back her reply, setting her eyes on the work as though she could plow a new row in the field with anger alone. Mr. Williams knew full-well why their farm lagged behind the others. Every season, he took their loan application and set it on an empty desk with a satisfied pat. Let the others apply until the top of the stack was the bottom again. Worked his way methodically down the pile. What did the time matter to him?

She worked until he shuffled away, disappearing with another hollow salutation. Pushed herself through the wall of exhaustion that always came just as the sun found the center of sky. Impossibly, she got the fields ready and the seed sown while it hung there, then threw herself onto the ground at the foot of her father’s favorite tree. She sighed until her lungs were empty, letting her heavy shoulders sink into the grass. The wind kissed her face, making the leaves overhead sway so that the shadows tickled her filthy clothes. She stretched her hands toward the sky; picturing her father’s calloused fingers slipping in between hers.

Her stomach groaned.

Every other muscle protested as she forced herself to stand, but none of them could drown out the angry growl of her gut. With leaden legs, she shambled over to the spigot, splashed cool water on her sore hands and down her neck, then glanced around to be sure she was alone. Satisfied that no one would follow, she limped through a hole in the fence and foliage, making her way down the eroded cobblestone path to an old barn.

Nature had started to reclaim the storehouse and its dilapidated facade. The edges of every board curled outward and vines crept up through their splits and crevices, but the years had only weathered more character into each one. The double doors, askew on their squealing hinges, invited Micheala inside.

Here, too, was the ghost of her father. She longed for the days when they would walk along the rows of baskets, filled or even overflowing with the fruits of his labor. Lean years had cleaned out most of their supply. They may never have broccoli again, but there would always be potatoes.

“I’m grateful for you,” she said, hefting a particularly knobby one and taking a reluctant bite, “but I’m also very tired of this.”

It was firm and dry in her mouth, a nightmare to swallow. The starches soaked up her spit and turned it into a disappointing paste, but she carried on, one miserable bite at a time. Once, there had been butter and chives. Time to bake or even — bless the day — to mash and whip each tuber. Now, raw spud was the only thing as plentiful as hunger.

Something scuttled in the corner. Michaela wheeled around, snatching an empty bucket and lashing out toward the noise. She had to pull back mid-swing to keep the aluminum edge from connecting with the sheepish, grinning face of Ruby Hatfield. Michaela recognized the child instantly, even under layers of dirt. They’d been neighbors since the day Ruby was born.

“Sorry, Miss Kayla!” she chirped. “I dint mean to scare you!”

“I’m not scared,” Michaela sighed, letting the bucket swing at her hip. “Just surprised. What are you doing here?”

“Same as you. Got hungry,” the girl said, her voice falling into a whisper. “Papa told us about Boyd Farm. About the magic.”

“No such thing,” Michaela replied, trying not to focus on the image that swam back into her head as she thought about the Hatfield family. Her own father draped sloppily over Mr. Hatfield’s shoulder. The putrid, glistening crimson. That horrid tractor.

“Yeah-huh! You ain’t planted beets since last Fall and you still got fresh ones right over there! That’s got to be magic.”

“Maybe I bought those.”

“And stored ‘em out here?”

“Pantry’s full,” Michaela lied.

It was a step too far, and they both knew it. Sorrow swept over Ruby’s face. Her eyes slid down the ground, which she kicked until her bare feet were coated in dust. Eventually, though, her youthful nerve returned.

“Well, seein’ as how you’ve got so much,” the girl sputtered. “Could we have some?”

“Did your Papa send you over here to beg?”

“No, ma’am!” Ruby cried. “He told us not to bother you. Said you was still shook up about what happened. That he misses your Daddy every day and wishes he could’ve held up his end of the deal. Maybe then, mean ole Mister Williams wouldn’t be sinkin’ his slimy claws into the land.”

“Listen here,” Michaela said, stooping down until their eyes met. “Men like Nate Williams will always be sinking their claws into things. They’ll reap their own foul fruit some day, sure as we get ours.”

“How do you know?”

“Because every day, I work myself to the bone to put just a little more away in this barn. And every day, I wake up to find twice as much as I harvested. Now, what do you think happens when that same power comes to call on Mr. Williams?”

“So… the magic is real? How does it work?”

“I can’t say. All I know is what my Daddy passed on to me. And I’ll pass it on to you, if you can promise to do right with it.”

Ruby nodded, her bulging eyes bouncing in her skull so that she wouldn’t break eye contact. Words eluded her, but she drew an imaginary ‘x’ above her heart.

“Love the earth,” Michaela began, rolling her eyes toward Heaven. “And it will love you.”

She stood, tears biting at her eyes, and began piling food into the bucket. Its handle dug into her palm as she went, the wire reminding her that everything loaded today was money thrown away at the market tomorrow; each step toward a new basket a step back into debt.

“Share the harvest,” she continued, “and you wont go without.”

The last few carrots settled in with some shoving, leaving Michaela to balance a handful of red potatoes precariously on top. She set the bucket down with a heavy plunk and tried to focus on Ruby’s wondrous expression rather than the pain of giving away her last green onions. One tear escaped, but Michaela didn’t bother wiping it away. Instead, she lifted the little girl’s chin until their shimmering eyes met.

“Never take more than you need,” she finished.

“Is that all? I thought it would be more complicated.”

“The rules are easy. Following them is hard.”

“Have you ever run out of food?”

“No,” Michaela whispered. “It gets scary sometimes. And I worry that I won’t be able to replace what I take. But as long as we can grow something, we’ll have something to eat.”

Ruby nodded again, then fished around in the abyssal pockets of her overalls. After some determined digging, she produced a gnawed apple core with a magisterial flourish.

“I’ll leave you this!” she said. “Papa says you can get a whole tree out of just one.”

“Your Papa’s right,” Michaela laughed. “But I don’t have the time. You can keep that.”

They hiked back to the house together, Ruby stumbling under the weight of the bucket but refusing to surrender her bounty even for a moment. The sight of her dragging the thing — as wide as she was tall — stayed with Michaela as she harvested too few ears of corn and dropped them into baskets too empty to merit a ride into town. It consoled her as she drifted off to sleep, mumbling those promises to herself once again. Played across her dreams. Sank down into the wounds beneath her skin.

So much so that it would be impossible not to recognize that same bucket in the storehouse the following morning, a mound of Hatfield soil spilling over the brim. And there in the middle, a single, obstinate sprig of green.

By Majharul Islam on Unsplash

In 1920, 14% of American farmers were Black. By 1997, the number had fallen to less than 1%. The next year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture published a report linking that decline to its own discriminatory practices, including delayed loan funding. There are no magical storehouses to fix hundreds of years of damage. Still, as wise men have observed: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Fable
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About the Creator

Steven A Jones

Aspiring author with a penchant for science fantasy and surrealism. Firm believer in the power of stories.

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