The Crack

Morning crashed through the window, stabbing his face with searing rays. His flapping arm flipped the phone end over end to the vinyl floor. Grumples of age accompanied his crackle back as he cranked up to sitting. The sun was early. Or the phone was late. It silently mocked him from the floor, its downward face denying him the torment of knowing the time. Well worn hands who’s backs he knew flung the covers haphazardly aside, revealing legs past their prime, but still with a few miles left. He managed to get feet on the floor and hands on knees before the phone began its morning trill, confirming that the sun was indeed, early.

One, two, steps across the yellow gold floor before thumbs way too large for these new fangled gadgets performed their daily struggle to disable the alarm. Socks and jeans and shirt, these are the actions the body knew well, performed to completion without bothering the brain for instructions. In fact, the body was at the kitchen table, hot cuppa in hand before the brain managed its first original thought of the day.

“Is that a crack in the floor?”

The brownish linoleum floor, original color buried with his mother, sported a vicious crack across the kitchen. Fjorded edges peeled back revealing rusty brown wood beneath. Staring at the crack his brow creased, a mirror of the furrows in his fields, smoothed and replaced year after year after year.

He mentally added this crack to his lists, both the small list of big jobs, and the big list of small jobs.

The cuppa completed he placed it back on the counter on its ring. No need to rinse and wash, he drank it black and he drank it all. From his drawer, not from any of her drawers may she rest in peace, but from his drawer he fetched the silver ring of the gods. If it could hold together a ship in a hurricane, it would hold together a bit of floor in a farmhouse. The jagged shape required three strips, leaving a shiny lightning strike on the dirty floor. Checked off now on the big list of small jobs, he replaced his precious tape and booted his feet for the outside. No telling how long it would be until he could get to fixing it on the small list of big jobs, that list never seemed to get any smaller, the big jobs were always too big.

Outside into the dancing sun, the farm awaited its husband. Once this had been a family, fathers and sons and sisters and mothers and all manner of cousins. Weeding and seeding and farming and breeding, each day a cyclone of chores and cheers. Now, standing in boots with hat in hand, he stood alone. The animals gone, sold or otherwise. The farm still family size, but mostly gone to weeds. Only the garden and shed still used enough to be called functional.

From the shed he withdrew his trusty companions, no rust on these, his daily tools. At the garden gate he paused to plan, the tomatoes needed tending, the beans were alright, the carrots required weeding, the potatoes doing fine. A cultivated hour later his ministrations were complete, rake and spade returned to their shedded home. A long and studied look into the sky foretold no precipitation. He would distribute his own from the pumphouse with timers and spigots, a clunking machine mockery of nature's lifegiving rain.

He turned his back to the artificial rainbow sprinkling over his crop. It was time to care for her roses. From the painted box on the porch he withdrew her tools, shiny and bright like the day she first saw them. Watering pail, tiny clippers, an overgrown fork that dared call itself a rake. The roses, despite their thorns, required tender care. Two hours he spends today, yesterday, everyday. The roses glow to match the sun, every leaf washed clean, every petal misted once, every bed brushed and fluffed, the tiny white border rocks carefully laid in perfect circles.These roses could grace the cover of a Garden magazine, were any to still exist. But only he saw them, no one else came all the way up the drive any more.

He returned her tools to their box on the porch, carefully cleaned and polished after use. He let pause his fingers on the box doors, he remembers painting them. The crude yellow sunflowers looking childlike compared to the roses the contents cared for, but he was never allowed to change the box, even though sunflowers were never present on the farm. Once after a cruel winter brought the rampaging storm, he spent days repairing the damaged hearth and home, only to find her carefully restoring the porch box to its original amateur glory.

Time had once again slipped loose of his grasp. He didn’t know how long he was lost in memory, but his knees and back said too long. He cracked and gasped upwards before lumbering his way towards kitchen and lunch. A jar of sustenance laid up from farming years past, along with dry goods from infrequent trips to town made the base for most meals. When he sat with his repast, he examined the crack.

In the hours since morning it had grown. Jagged ends reached beyond the silver strips previously laid. A jagged canyon of linoleum corruption, partially contained with a bit of tape. Noodles and vegetables went untouched as he contemplated the floor, the tape had never failed before. Replacing the linoleum for the kitchen was an unthinkable task for both his knees and his budget, and who had ever heard of a crack getting that large that quickly?

He retired from the kitchen, lunch forgotten on the table, in the sitting room was his chair for sitting and thinking, of which he needed both. Her chair was also there, not enshrined and maintained like the roses, much to his regret. But sometimes, when he needed, he could pretend she was still there. They would have a conversation, he could guess her response on just about any topic. It was comforting to hear her again, even if just in his mind.

But she was silent today, her empty chair was empty, his silent house was silent, the family farm devoid, with only a growing crack to keep him company. The silence pushed him down into the chair, pinning him against the cushions with the weight of unheard memories. His body lay helpless, constrained by age and gravity, but his mind slipped free into wandering clouds.

Unremembered dreams shattered as he hacked awake, lungs expelling dust before they too were caked as thick as the pictures on the mantle. His gnarled hands groped and rubbed his eyes, a physical attempt to combobulate the thoughts within. Some moments later he regained reality and situation. He had fallen asleep in the chair, again. His lunch uneaten, his floor unfixed, his afternoon chores undone.

With a firm knee slap he stood, ignoring the pains of his aging self, and strode into the kitchen. He cleared away the detritus of forgotten lunch, ignoring the crack, the distracting crack. There were still some hours left in the day, and still some tasks that could be accomplished, even if the crack could not.

The truck roared to life on the first turn, just as it always had. Such a trusty steed, another thing he had always cared for. Never letting it go to rust or linger with a cracked windshield. It served him today as it had since the first dusty drive into town. These modern days there were fewer farms of neighbors and more gingerbread subdivisions. These parts had never seen a twin oak, a pine bluff, or a crescent hill, but here stood quarter acre tracts of evenly spaced drives and perfectly placed shrubberies memorializing those geographical figments.

The grange was there as it had always been. The cashiers came and went, but the ambiance remained. He knew what he wanted, he knew what he needed, and he knew where it was. There were no animals left on the farm except himself, but the grange had a section for humans as well. Once he had tried the new shop in town, with its bright lights and shiny floors. So many choices even for the basics. Soaps in every scent, coffee from every land, even noodles without grain. Once had been enough.

The cashier wore flannel and greeted him by name. A comfort, so rare these days. The owner's granddaughter walked by. She removed her gloves and slapped a greeting on his back. She was the owner now, so good to see a loyal customer, can she carry one of these bags to his truck? He accepted her assistance, a nice young lady like that, the world needs more nice folk.

The truck plays his favorite song on the way back. The sun completes its descent, now driving in the dark, singing along, he can be young again. The journey is short when the music plays, it ends before he is ready to return to his life and age. The bags are heavy with jars and the way is dark, he neglected to leave the porch light on. There is no fumbling for keys, not this far out in the country. He shuffles into the kitchen through the back door, the bags are much heavier than he remembers.

A foot catches the crack. Down tumbles the man and the bags, smash and crash, consumables dry and wet are scattered across the floor, barely visible in the moonlight. Failure to leave the light on, failure to stay upright, failure to fix the floor, failure to keep the kids from leaving, failure to keep her from going on before. His failures are building up before his eyes, he can see them bright, brighter than the moon, brighter than the sun.

Jars of sustenance, cracked from the fall, are leaking their contents on the floor. The man struggles in pain, he also has been cracked by the fall and is leaking onto the floor.

He reaches for his phone, the only bit of future he owns. His thumbs, still way too large for this new fangled gadget, are slick with fluids from jar and man.

The phone slips free and falls into the crack, it sinks downwards into the brown expanse of rusted wood. He follows it with his eyes until it comes to rest on a bed of fertile soil surrounded by white rocks. Roses red and strong stand tall above. Her roses, he knows them better than he knows his own face.

He sees her. She is standing in the garden in her blue dress, favorite sunhat on, the one that never matched with anything. “Thank you,” she says. “They have been beautifully tended.” She reaches out her hand, the same one he ringed on a bright sunny day so many years ago and yesterday. “Come with me,” she says. “It is time to rest.”