12-12-2014, 08:00 PM
This is a short story I wrote for my final in an Australian Lit class I took a couple years ago. It's my take on the Australian 'Drover's Wife' trope, which I recommend Google-ing, it's really very interesting.
It had been three years, two months, and six days since He’d brushed cracked lips against her cheek, promising to be back in a few weeks. Two years, two months, and six days since she’d last worried about Him. Three months since the voices started. She considered herself lucky that she’d held out this long, all things considered.
“Mom, Teagan stole my book!”
“Nuh uh, Temp, this is my book. Momma, tell Temp this is my book!”
“Will you two kindly shut the hell up? I have a paper due tomorrow and Mr. Lawson already gave me an extension on the last two.”
“But Teagan took my book, Tommy! Get Mom to-“
“STOP BEING A LIAR, TEMPERANCE. TEAGAN KNOWS YOU’RE THE STEALER. TEAGAN!”
“OH MY GOD, WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP? MOM ISN’T FEELING WELL, YOU IDIOTS. WE’RE SUPPOSED T-we’re supposed to be quiet. You know how her headaches are. Tegan, just give Temp the book, I know you’ve read it a billion times already. Temp, please attempt to stop picking a fight with your twin every time you see him. You’re lucky you didn’t-“
“-wake Mom up? It’s okay, loves, I’ve been up for a bit. Who’s hungry?” she asked lightly, striding into the dilapidated kitchen.
Her children all froze, as though expecting a harsh reprimanding for the disturbance they’d caused, and then tripped over one another in an effort to exit the kitchen as quickly as humanly possible. They needn’t worry today; Dragon Mom was on holiday, and Nurturing Mom was long overdue.
She almost forgot how she ended up there, some days. There wasn’t much time to reminisce when there seemed to be an incessant onslaught of chores and responsibilities and other problems that needed dealing with. Her past ended up buried beneath each new obstacle and burden she undertook; if she took the time to shovel a path to the very back of her problems, she just barely recalled the circumstances that brought her here.
Her people came from Italy. Raised in New England, she’d been expected to marry a nice Italian boy and have nice Italian babies and be stifled by hundreds of pounds of dough and tomatoes day in and day out. So, naturally, she took her Toyota and $456.13 and headed to California to become an actress. Two months later she was standing on a basketball court in a park in San Diego saying her vows with the most perfect man she’d ever met. Her family had been furious when they found out; that dirty Mexican is using you, they raged, the filthy immigrant’ll mooch everything you have and leave you for dead! She’d called them hypocrites and had not spoken to them since.
They were partially right, though, in that annoying family way of theirs. He announced that they were moving to a small farmhouse in central Texas only a week after they were married.
She was excited, back then, at the idea of living in Texas; she watched every Western they owned in preparation for the move, even going so far as to buy an authentic pair of boots and a real cowboy hat in her excitement. Her excitement wore down as she came to the realization that company would be scarce in her new home. His profession required him to go where work was available, work being that an actual cowboy, although He preferred the term ‘drover’ - said it sounded more professional, less Hollywood. The job was dangerous and work was scare and required him to be gone for weeks at a time, but the pay was good and so she never voiced her complaints.
For a good long while she was content with her life. Her dreams of becoming an actress might never come to fruition, but instead of that frivolous life she’d planned she had a loving husband and a quaint house and a baby on the way. Within a few more years she had three beautiful children, a somewhat steady income from her husband, and a small, working farm. She was lucky to have such a life. But it wasn’t long before the infinite flatness of the fields and majestic blue skies started to get to her.
The aroma of charred pasta roused her from her thoughts. She swore as she frantically scraped the pot, attempting to salvage as much of the spaghetti as she could. A mood had taken her for the last few days; she hadn’t felt too affected by it, but it had apparently shaken her to the point where she couldn’t even prepare spaghetti properly. Years ago, this revelation would have brought her to a fresh bout of tears, but she was different now. A woman couldn’t afford to waste tears on herself here.
Realizing her pasta was beyond help, she all but threw the pot into the sink and instead set to rummaging in the pantry for a can of soup or a bit of bread for sandwiches. Alli was underfoot in an instant, and she thoughtlessly shooed her away as she perused the scant shelves. The dog wasn’t good for much besides begging for nonexistent food, alerting her to the occasional unwelcome visitor to the house, and sparking countless arguments on why Alligator was a horrible name for a dog, (‘never mind a GIRL dog, Teagan!’), but she kept the mutt around anyway, citing that it was as good a babysitter as any on those nights she was able to pick up shifts at the diner.
Alli was the last gift He’d bought her, and she certainly wasn’t going to abandon one of the few romantic gestures her husband had made her since they’d moved here to this God-forsaken place.
It was almost two years ago that the crop yield dropped. Her farmhands had told her someone had salted a good portion of the fields. A hate crime, apparently – some extremist group who still disapproved of mixed marriages and immigrants and anyone who wasn’t white. She laughed away her workers a tad hysterically, clutching their letters of resignation with the desperation of a person whose life had been thrown to the floor and stomped upon. She didn’t cry, though. She hadn’t since the first year He’d brought her here.
She jumped as snarls ripped from the cage of the dog’s suddenly bared teeth, and she barely heard the warning cries from the children as she whipped around, soup can bared, and brought it down with the force of a person twice her size upon the front of a small, slender figure darting towards her. The crunch of tiny bones signified the untimely end of the unexpected threat.
A snake. In Texas. Of course it’d been a snake. She giggled to herself as she swept it up in the dustpan and threw it out the back door, her children looking on uncertainly. What was more deliciously ironic than the very symbol of evil?
Vaguely aware that Tommy, her eldest, was ushering the twins to their bedroom, she wrung her hands shakily, attempting to recollect the last vestiges of her sanity. The voices in her head chattered on, urging her to follow the snake out the door, away from this wretched place. No, she told them calmly, I’m not finished here yet. I can’t let go.
The first night He’d left on a job, a stranger had stumbled onto the property at 11:57. A friend of her husband’s, he claimed. She’d smelled the whiskey on his breathe and shoved him off and locked the door and cried for an hour. Two years later she was six months pregnant with her second child, (and third, as she would find out), when the stranger dropped by again, this time with a friend. She didn’t get the door locked in time.
She didn’t cry, but things were different after that.
The Texas plains no longer seemed alive and free but desolate and alone. Living so far from civilization was no longer a luxury but a threat. There was no more happiness or possibility to be found in her life as a cowboy’s wife, nothing to live for except, perhaps, her children.
Tommy wasn’t old enough to remember anything, but even at three he was as helpful as he could be with the twins. He helped out around the farm and, when he was old enough, got a job in town that he worked every day after school. Her cowboy’s checks had stopped coming, as did her cowboy, but her son had stepped in to help. The twins, in time, understood what their life meant, and did their best to be as well-behaved as was possible for ten year olds. It was her children that kept her sane – well, as sane as she could be.
“Are you okay, mom?”
She looked behind her to where her eldest stood awkwardly in the doorway, eyes wide with concern.
She smiled softly. “I’m fine, love. Just a bit wound up is all.”
“I’m sorry, mom. I tried to stop them from fighting, and then I didn’t notice the snake, and-“
“It’s okay, Tommy. You’re such a good boy. You know that, right?”
He smiled a wobbly smile, and stumbled over to her, wrapping his arms around her middle. “Thanks mom. I love you. I’ll never leave you.”
She hugged her son tightly to her, as if to ensure that he’d never be able to break his promise. Alli padded over and whined at her heels, and the cowboy’s wife let out a small sigh of contentment. Her husband had left, her farm had failed, and her dreams had been crushed. But she had her little family, and that was more than enough to give her the strength to go on living in this nightmare. For now.
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