About The West (Prologue)

Post 306:

One of the new novels I'm working at:

Prologue:

            It was near two years since the War of the Rebellion. He’d managed to survive the cannons and the cold, the swamps and bayonets. Johnny Reb stole one of his fingers and gifted him a limp that festered more than it let up. No matter. He was alive. To crawl over dead limbs and dead fields, to come out breathing at all, he figured it a sign from the Maker.

            He sought no recompense from the South. Recompense would require more accounting, going back over land already bled for. South was no longer a direction. The other three were more than enough—West being most important.  

            Like so many of the wasted might’ve wanted, he went.

            It was an isolated, simple spread, but there was plenty of grass and water. They had a cow and some pigs, more than a few chickens. A sturdy horse. Their crops came in weak the first year, flush the next. It was hard work like any, but the air was free from men’s meddling and the ground was mostly green. The only blood he saw came from too much time on the shovel or the plow.

            Different types of blood. Something never thought on before the War. Now he knew different.

            “Strange thing, ain’t it?” he asked, looking out on the worked land and beyond. Rows and rows and then forever until the mountains. It made his contribution seem insignificant in the most beautiful of ways. The stream ran lively in the background while he held fast for a response.

            “I’m supposing you want me to chase you,” she said, tilting her head down at the son they’d made together, standing between them. The boy was near knee-high to his father and strangely sturdy on his little feet.

            “Chase me?” he asked. He’d stay confused until she made herself clear. That was their way and always had been.

            She sighed and issued a smile too small for him to find. “I never was partial to fancy talking men,” she said, “but you lay your words down like a half a hand of cards.”

            He turned and used a dirty finger to push up the brim of his hat.

            “What’s strange?” she asked, deciding to give in.

            Their son raised up his arms like trying to steady a horse and they each grabbed a hand, swinging him just off the planks of the porch. He laughed at all points of the pendulum, back and forth, until their shoulders started to fuss.

            “Life,” he said, easing the boy to a solid landing. “It’s strange.”

            “I’m fairly certain that’s an observation made by many of our predecessors,” she answered. “Adam and Eve went on at length, I’d venture to guess.”

            He put one hand on his son’s head, guiding his little body forward. His other hand found a home on his wife’s cheek. “You’re always making light of things, Nell.”

            “Takes a lot of work.”

            “Does it?” he asked, kissing her other cheek.

            “Indeed it does.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and brought his lips down to hers. Husband and wife could smell each other’s day while their mouths lingered. It wasn’t pleasant or perfumed, but something better; earned and good. Life is strange, she thought.

            He took her wrists and held her arms to his chest, strong, the way she liked. “Indeed it does, you said?”

            “Indeed I did, John.” Nell gently kicked the toe of his boot. “It’s a matter of balancing the scales. Proportions and the like.”

            “I see.”

            “Oh you see,” she laughed, pushing his brim a bit higher. “You, rustling around with the deep and dark—”

            “Yes ma’am. You’re doing your part, providing the light.”

            Her eyes opened wide as their little boy tried to push his way back between their legs. “Huh. I guess you do get it. Maybe my husband isn’t the brute I reckoned I was stuck with.”

            “Maybe not.”

            “Well I’ll be sure to thank God while I tend to supper.”

            John watched her walk inside and picked up his boy. “Your mama’s something else, son.” As he filled the swine trough with water and checked on the main barn, it came back to him. His point about the strangeness of life. He was relieved Nell had derailed his line of thinking—how obvious his mind worked compared to hers. She’d gotten a proper education while he was off fighting. His wife spent years learning to use her brain while he spent the same time trying to turn his off.

            Still, he was enough of a man to understand the insignificance of the misery he experienced and took part in. One more mountain of bodies in the range of human catastrophe. No call for complaining. No reason. A pretty wife, good land. A fine boy.

            So much life. On the other side of the darkest time he could imagine, so much beauty and life. That’s all he had meant to say, staring out from the porch. Strange.