I’m frozen, as the sight of the valley unnervingly subsides. Once self-possessed, the acres grew of culture, and became the place where my life was kept. Years just refined into rigid seconds, and it’s more plausible that I was changing too.
My hands seemed more keen and sophisticated. May it have been this observable alter that made me realize my never-ending persistence? Human’s creations fed off the land for multiple years. The land held a lot more than just the efforts to civilize, and I was put in this inviolate work.
Born from a family of cultivation, the town had a great reliance on our resources. With this responsibility, it became the only thing that I would worry about during the day. I can vividly remember my first experiences of plowing the land and overseeing the corn, as my father stood behind in a shower, trying to rid some jabs of pain through the beads of water. Raised in a household of silence, that was my one major contribution to the land. After the death of my father when I was young, my mother only found the comfort of life in her bedroom.
Ultimately, I was the one at 12 to keep our home. A task that seemed impossible, I was able to cultivate successfully for eight full years. There even came to a point of the family where my mother began contributing to the payments of our home. She started to work in the town and come home late at night, with the only intention to head up the stairs and sleep. With my mom finally out of the house, I have never felt so alone. It made me think about my father to the pixel of mental pictures, as he died so unexpectedly. Sometimes, it’s as if he put this heavy burden on me on purpose.
That’s when I started to pick up cigarettes. In fact an ugly habit my father has always done. After his death, I would always go and search through his office room in the house and see what he is about, and what seemed to keep him at ease. Cigar boxes and tobacco grinders fed most of the space on the mahogany office desks, with ancient books occupied around it. It’s shown through the cryptic scene, that his last days begun when he decided to reside out in the countryside, in a more introvert environment. It being more of my mother’s intention when they had me, they found that society left them discomforted to raise me around. This is where I’ve always been since I could remember.
~
One morning, I had to wake up early to start plowing the land. My mother had gone to work that morning, so I was left to do things along. The usual flow of the morning. I went over the land with a plow, but I noticed that there was a leak in the back. After a quick finish, I ignited a match to light my cigarette. The kiss of flames appeared all over corn. I began to feel all of the seasonal efforts dying, as I grew in an extreme panic. I’m frozen, as the sight of the valley of crops unnervingly subsides into combustion.
~
My eyes were affixed to the epicenter of the flames. I retreated towards the house as the stalks of corn change into a black agonizing shade. The farm was far from the nearest town, so the only thing people can regard for my pleas of help was the smoke over the trees. All of my hard seasonal work was destroying right in my plain view, as of all of my efforts to life was stripped away from “his” will. The house was screaming with its creak and groans, like it was afraid of my frantic entrance into his weary chest. I sprinted towards the kitchen to the sink that was still packed with dishes to hopelessly pour tap water into a worn out bucket from the cattle stalls.
My mother was gone, I thought. I had to handle this all by myself. Lessons must be learned when there is no designated firehouse in the town, as it seemed rather unnecessary. Before continuing outside into the scene of engulfing flames that now seemed to lick themselves to the grass, I took a moment to look at the trash can. It was now mandatory to reach into my pockets to discard the fire starters, the cope to all of my homebound agony. I take a look at the pack labeled “Cherokee’s Heart” and glanced over the caution label that flashed on the side. I shook the pack one last time. “Three left,” I thought. “It would seem a waste to let those go so easily.”
My mind started to become numb from the flames that were sequencing outside towards the window. The roosters could be heard crying in their stalls as they felt the rise in heat, yet my stomach churned as I focused more on the icon on the pack. I was giving in too easily.
“I nearly killed myself constant times to keep this house civil and heartfelt,” I screamed, staring at my reaction through the front sink window within the fire. My calloused hands clenched the pack, then flakes of tobacco started to pour onto the ground, being brushed away by the slight wind that was coming through the back door that I kept open.
I threw the pack into the trash, grasped the handle of the bucket, and helplessly ran into the now-smoky aura of the crops. I throw the bucket aimlessly into the smoke with the water attempting to repel the flames the slightest amount. I couldn’t control the continuing flames that seemed to be angered after my attempts to eradicate its ever-growing destruction. I retreated, muttering a curse, and began running blindly into the woodlands that lay still beside the barn house.