A Father's Dream

The black dog comes to meet me and guides me in.

"Oh, they are cute," I say as I step into the barn and see the four baby cows. "They look different?

"Two different breeds," he tells me looking over his shoulder. "Come here."

The smell of hay makes me sneeze. I notice then he's mixing something in a bin with what looks like shredded hay and I don't know what all else.

"More grass seed?" I ask seeing one of the bags. "Wheat. Winter rye. It's my cover crop for this time of the year. I don't get a huge yield of wheat from it but it helps the ground stay put through the spring storms."

"So your cows and pigs do your planting for you?"

He nods. "Most of it. I do spread a bit extra every few weeks so it grows in nice and thick."

"Why did you separate them from their mother's?" I ask pointing at the calves as the thought comes to mind.

He stops and takes a deep breath.

"Okay, cow's milk 101. The cow has to have a calf or there isn't any milk to be had. She will dry up. Now if I leave him with her he will drink all day long and I would get less milk. Also, she gives off a hormone when he does that that makes the milk kind of bitter tasting." He shrugs. "I think it's to help him to start eating grass more often and not nurse as much. Either way, it's not a nice taste in your morning milk. I separate them every morning and give them extra feed here in the barn. I will sometimes let them go play and eat in the field I have pasturing out right now. When it's warmer anyway. They can't do much damage by themselves and the new grass is better for them. I milk the mother cows every night and turn the calves back out."

"So you rotate everything around the barn? Bringing them through the barn to switch fields?"

He looks at me, nods and smiles. "Very good. I've had even long time farmers not catch that. Yes. I can open two of the barn doors and pass the cows through the middle to the next fields. Not having but one gate into my fields I lesson the changes animals will get out." He reaches into a pocket and pulls out an apple. I catch it when he tosses it to me. "You earned an apple."

My stomach feeling still terribly full the thought of more food doesn't sit well. Plus the apple is wrinkly.

"Winter stored. It's fine to eat just sweeter if anything." He tells me after a second of watching my face.

I nod and seeing a good place sit down on an upturned watering trough. I watch him working with the calves.

"What got you started in all this? Were you born on a farm?" I ask.

He looks over at me and shakes his head. He takes his hat off and wipes sweat from his brow. "Nope, I was a city boy. Born and bred in the suburbia."

"Why all this then?"

He takes a long deep breath "Do you believe in signs?" he asks then.

I blink and ponder the question for a moment. "Like as in omens?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know. Maybe," I say.

He nods. "Your mother was the same way. Well, I do. Very much so in fact. I was given a sign that this was the life I should be living."

I just sit watching him for a second. "What was it?"

He turns smiling and leans on the fence rail. "My daughter was born on April 22. Earth Day."

"My birthday told you that you needed to be a farmer?" I give my lips a quirk. "I can't see it?"

"Well, I was off in the woods one day walking ... hiking." He chuckles. "The whole, getting back to nature thing, was real big then. And I stumbled across this place where the trees were all burned to nothing but stumps. It was a mess of blackened ground and rotting stumps really. Well, standing there in the exact center of the place ... about four feet from where you are now, in fact ... was a little mother deer. I didn't see her till I was far closer than I should have been able to walk. I stopped dead in my tracks and her head came up. She just stood there chewing a mouth full of grass looking at me. Then, from around her, came prancing out the cutest little fawn you ever would see. Like Bambi make flesh and blood. Well, he saw me and came at me at a run. Stopped a couple of feet off and reared up, like he was the king stag of the whole world."

I smile seeing the look on his face as he remembers the little deer.

"Anyway, his mom gives this little chuffing sound and off he goes. She walks with him to the edge of the burn and stops to look back at Me," He pauses and takes a long breath. "I just stood there for a while and looked around. Then I headed home. When I got back to the little suburban ranch house your mom and I had, Crystal met me at the door ... to tell me she was pregnant with you. I took it as a sign. When you were born on Earth Day I took that as confirmation and went to found out who owned this land. I bought it for a fair price and started to work it on the weekends."

"Mom thought you were nuts, didn't she?" I ask.

"Yep. Off my rocker, bananas, two cards short of a full deck and a lot of others. She came up here all of once and hated the place. I tried to tell her what I wanted to do here and she thought it was a silly idea. A waste of time. Why not just go to the grocery store and get your eggs? Your milk and meat? Why work so hard just to live?"

"So, why?" I ask him "Why work so hard just to live?"

"Well, does this make sense to you? I was working in the savings and loan industry. Just getting started but I was doing okay. Now, I was making money ... good money, but I was working forty hours plus a week, most times. I would take that paycheck to a supermarket and buy the food we ate. I would take some more of it to the Mortgage Company that owned the deed to the house and pay them; I was paying some of it to the Car Company for our two cars. I had half-dozen other bills as well that took all the rest. I was then working all weekend long to maintain a yard in that green carpet perfection, with the perfectly sculpted hedges and the sharp-edged sidewalks, that is a suburbia requirement."

He stops working and leans on the gate.

"The tomatoes had no taste, the food was bland and I hated every day I woke up. I would end every day sitting in front of the TV watching the most mindless drivel, night after night, so tired I couldn't make the effort to find something worth watching."

I watch my father close the gate behind him. He comes over to me. He squats down till he's on eye level with me.

"Now I have a place that's paid for, a truck that's paid for, almost all of my utilities are free, with the exception of the solar panels I'm still paying for. And the occasional tankful of diesel fuel, for the generator I almost never use." He puts a knee to the barn floor. "As you have seen I eat very well, of food that tastes great," He takes the uneaten apple from me, splits it in half with his knife, and then hands me back half. Apple juice runs down his chin when he bites into his half. "So, you tell me, just who is working harder? Me or that guy who's living in suburbia?"

When I bite into my half of the apple it tastes like a piece of heaven and I ponder his words as I chew. "I think you are but I think you're having a better life."

"Exactly," he says with a grin. "Now come on, this farm doesn't work itself." He stands up and offers me his hand.

I love how hard and strong his hand is in mine. I hang onto it for a bit then step forward and give him a hug.

The smell of my dad is a comfort. His strong arms are as well.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

(Brian)

"Poor little thing," I say to her when she moans as she sits down in the kitchen chair. I smile at the look she gives me. "It gets easier over time," Going to the stove, I open the lid on the cast iron pot. It's still incredibly hot from the day spent over the fireplace in the living room. Ladling her out a bowlful of beans, I then get out the loaf of corn bread from the stove. I turn it over onto a plate, cut it, and butter it for her. When I get back to the table she's half-asleep. I pass the bowl under her nose. Her eyes pop open.

"Food?"

"Yes, sleepy. Pinto beans with all that bacon that was left from breakfast," I tell her, sitting the warm bowl in front of her.

"Smells good," she says picking up a spoon. She blinks as I sit a tall glass in front of her. She gives it a sniff. "Apple juice?"

"Hard cider. You're close enough to eighteen to be able to drink alcohol in my book."

"You do know they moved the legal drinking age up to twenty-one right?" she asks me then takes a sip. I can see she likes it after her second try.

"Yes, I do. It was one of the dumbest things this country ever did." I go get my food. "Made a whole generation of people believe that they were too young to really be responsible for their actions. The government said they weren't responsible enough to drink after all. I've heard talk of moving the driving age up to eighteen. It will do the same thing."

"So you think an eighteen-year-old should be able to drink? Buy cigarettes?" she asks me after a moment. I can see the hoped-for answer in her eyes.

"Yes," I tell her truthfully. "But, I do hope you don't decide to smoke, though. I don't think there anything wrong with it. If you're making the choice to do it you're accepting the consequences of your actions after all. But the cost of them is ridiculous."

"But you smoke?" she says with a bit of protest.

"Yes, I do. A pipe. And, if you watch, I only light it about four times a day. I buy my tobacco from an old Amish farmer I know and we both tell the government tax guy to piss off."

She smiles at me. "Once a hippie always a hippie?" she asks.

"I was not a hippie! Now my Mom, your grandmother, she was a hippie." He chuckles. "Hell ... I think I was conceived at Woodstock."

"I saw your picture," she says pointing at the old wedding photo. I look over at it. "Yous was a hippie."

"Long hair doth, not a hippie make, daughter dearest," I say to her with my best Shakespearean voice.

She laughs. We then finish dinner in a comfortable silence. That's because she's gradually falling asleep.

Getting her to her feet, I set her on the path to the bathroom with her yawning the whole time. I listen to the shower running a few minutes after she goes in.

"Damn it, there is a naked seventeen-year-old woman is in your shower and she has to be your daughter." I walk out onto the patio and sit down "Fuck but that sucks pond water."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

(Chanel)

Turning under the shower head, I let it find all the places that hurt and the heat eases away the pain. Then I just soak my head, enjoying the pounding.

"This soap is homemade," I think as I take the strange looking bar and start to lather up. I lift my breasts and scrub the hay dust, barn dust, pasture dust and about forty other types of dust from under them and then from every other nook and cranny.

And the dust got everywhere!

When I finally turn off the shower head I'm waterlogged and falling asleep standing up. He was right, though. I didn't run out the hot water.

I think for a moment to go find him and wish him a good night. But then sleep says no and I follow its direction to my bed. I wake only long enough to feel him kiss my cheek.

"Goodnight baby," he says next to my ear.

"Night, night," I mumble back.

Smokey takes up her place at the foot of the bed. Not even the too quiet house will keep me awake tonight, though. It feels like I really fall into sleep. Like the mattress dropped out from under me and dreams caught me before I could fall.

Dreams. I don't remember them but I wake in the middle of the night, blushing like mad, which may mean something. Then, hours later when I wake up again smelling breakfast, I feel like the dead.

That he means to do the same thing today as yesterday is a horrible shock. That I have to get most of it done before seven o'clock, so we can go enroll me in school, is an even bigger one.

That first week at my dad's is a hell that I can only half remember. I awaken with the stars still in the sky; eat twice as much as I would normally eat, then I help him for two hours. He then drives me to where the only school bus in the area picks up at and drops me off. I almost feel bad that I'm going to go sit in a classroom, till 3:00, while I know he will keep working all day long.

He's waiting there to pick me up every afternoon when the bus arrives. I come to look forward to his happy-to-see-me face.

The school sucks. Oh, it's nice enough. It's far more modern than I would have given it credit for, but the people? The boys are farmer's sons and they are one and all dumb as a bag of hammers. But, they are invariably cute and they all want to talk to me the new girl from the West Coast. Even if I am a bit chubby.

But their girlfriends are jealous, cliquish, little tramps that turn my stomach.

The only people that really like me at the school are the teachers. They like that I get top grades and don't say much. Makes their day easier.

Then I find out, on Friday afternoon on the bus ride home, that I'm suddenly the school slut! Apparently a few of the football players have started the rumor that I let them do 'city girl shit' to me. Whatever the fuck that means!

"Bunch of backwoods, inbreed, cousin fucking, sons of bitches," I'm muttering under my breath as I walk to the truck. Dad leans over and opened the door for me. I hop in and tone down the monolog to a grumbling mumble.

"Problems?" he asks with that head-tilted, half-lean of his that always reminds me of Smokey. That little half-smile.

"Boys!"

"Ah," he says nodding his head sagely. "Well, that's why I never dated them. That and the fact that girls smelled a whole lot better." He puts the truck into gear and pulls away. From the gravel lot where the other school kids are still unloading. I notice that several of the girl's watch us drive away. That they are whispering to each other proves my point.

"Stupid hillbilly sons of ..." I hide the rest in a mumble. He starts laughing. "It's not funny!"

He laughs all the harder.

"They have been spreading shit, saying I'm sleeping my way through the football team!

He looks over at me and grins.

"What do you find funny about that?" I demand with some heat.

"That those girls think my daughter is beautiful enough to steal all their boyfriends from them," he answers with a smile. "I know what your mom would say."

I pause and a grin starts to make my own lips twitch. "A jealous girlfriend is the finest compliment you can be paid," he says. I hear mom's voice say it in echoed memory. I give a nod. Suddenly, I don't feel so bad.

When I get to the farm, I go change out into some older clothes. I fall in next to him helping him get a fence fixed.

That first week drops away into memory then the first month follows. I manage even to make a few friends when the rumor mill runs dry finally. No one has seen me so much as even talking to a boy ... so that's that, right? Nope.

I'm the school lesbian.

"Please, April get here soon." I'm constantly muttering under my breath.

One night after my shower, I drop my brush in the bathroom and have to get down on my knees to fish it out from behind the little vanity cabinet. That's when I see the scale under it. I pull the old thing out and look at it for a second. Given all the rich food I've been filling up on I suddenly want to put it back under the vanity or maybe take it out and bury it in pig shit.

Drying my feet on the towel in front of the tub, I step up onto the scale.

"It can't be?" I say looking at it. I step off and then back on. "This thing has to be broken! I'm twenty pounds lighter!" The girl in the mirror? She looks at me and grins.

Thinking of something, I grab up my towel and wrap it around me. When it knots I give a cheer. It's been a long time since I could do that!

"Yes, yes, yes, yes!"

I open the door and go all but skipping to my bedroom next door. I grab up my phone and flip it, and then I hit the ringtone and start dancing as it plays.

"Baby I was born this way..."

Turning, I stop seeing my Dad standing in the doorway with a grin. He tosses a yellow dishtowel onto the floor by my feet. "Penalty for excessive celebration."

I rush over and throw my arms around his neck "I've lost twenty pounds!"

"Well, congratulations." He gives me a tight hug. When he turns me loose I skip back, hold up my arms and cheer the fact I'm losing weight.

Then, as my towel drops to the floor, I also get another benefit. An almost instant suntan. I blush from head to toe so crimson I look blistered!

** ** ** ** ** ** **

(Brian)

My knees in the rich black soil, I pull the bud ends off. The little flowers dropping to the ground to be pressed into the soil as I knee walk.

I sit up, massage my back for a second, and look at the house. The hillside is covered with little spring blooms, yellow daffodils that almost give it the look of a thatched cottage from a distance. All the windows are open and the front and side doors are as well. From inside I heard the stereo playing. Loudly.

Her music.

Well, I'll be generous and call some of it music. I chuckle thinking back to my mom's reaction to the stuff I listened to when I was seventeen.

Looking up at the sky, I let my eyes wander. The gray clouds are promising rain but so far all we have gotten is a good strong wind. I look over to Blackie. His game of hold down the cricket seems to be going well. He looks up at me with his tail wagging.

"Beware the ides of March," I tell him.

The cricket forgotten, he belly crawls over to me. I give his dark fur a ruffle. He rolls over and I scratch his belly.

"More like April shower bring May flowers time," I say sadly.

He starts to try and scratch a flea on his back. I smile as he wiggles under my hand.

"Oh knock it off, you clown." Looking to the east, I notice the flash of lightning. "Blackie, get your, brother."

The dog rolls over and goes to play his very favorite game. Brother hunting! Then Pepper knowing he's wanted comes running to me with his darker sibling right on his tail.

As we walk through the stubble of the just harvest rye, I thank everything I got it harvested this past weekend. I climb the fence and head toward the chicken coop.

"Bird out!"

Both dogs take off at a sprint and start to bark and chase the chickens back into their coop. By the time I reach it only the rooster is still running around determined to show that he's not afraid of a couple of dogs.

Then Smokey, hearing her sons, comes in at a run.

Seeing the odds get ridiculous the silly bird decides he is a chicken and runs up the ramp and into the coup. I close and latch the coop's doors.

The flashes of lightning are getting even more intensive by the time I have the cows herded down to the small enclosure by the barn. With their calves already inside the mothers go a lot easier than the chickens did.

I look across the farm as I walk towards the house. "The pigs will be fine," I think then do a rethink. I turn back and walk over to the barn. I open the door that leads to the stubble field and then the one that leads to the field with the pigs. The other two field doors are closed

"Chase the pigs!" I call out. Off go all three dogs, they run with all the enthusiasm of the hunter boys from the Lord of the Flies.

I will say this for them, these pigs are smart. Far smarter than the cows that I have to persuade to go through the barn three times a year. Once the dogs get them moving they know what's up and that there is a field full of goodies to eat just through and out the other side.

I close the gate behind them as the first drops start to fall.

"Inside!"

Off go the dogs towards the house. I hurry but know I'm doomed for a soaking long before I get there as I see the squall line come through trees just behind the house.

The boys and their mom go through the front door and I hear Chanel screaming "Stop" to them. Then she's cussing Blackie.