Joel Herrling

Chapter 1: In Their Blood

How long had it been since Jimmy pressed that 9mm to his temple, squeezing the trigger? The September sun’s orange hues were rapidly diminishing into the black abyss of night as Parker Hostler opened the rusty truck door. The door squealed, from lack of grease, like an old Chevrolet with countless hard-working miles should. Flinching as his worn-out leather boots met the soil, he noticed a cloud of dust erupting and pain jolted through his ankle, which hadn’t healed correctly after an old basketball injury. It was worth it to play in that high school state title game though.

He gazed upon the expansive field of unharvested corn as he adjusted his sweat-stained ball cap by pulling it down over his brow. He smiled with warm memories of days gone by. Thoughts drifting with all the soul’s past. Souls that had seen the corn in this field sowed and reaped for decades before him, spirits that linger and will not let go. The stalks’ golden husks looked like they had been toasted. On the plants beside him, Parker noticed numerous exposed ears that showed evidence of animals feeding. Coons again, he imagined, not amused.

As the pain in his ankle subsided, he shook his head and pondered. He didn’t know how his grandfather, Tug, with two bad hips, had continued to work every single day. At ninety years old, Tug had coped with pain until his final day, through both physical and emotional wounds. Tug carried a fluorescent-orange-painted wooden cane with a metal hook screwed at the bottom to help with his mobility around Belarock Farm. The attached hook also allowed him to drag hay bales throughout the barn when his grandchildren were not there. Parker chuckled as he thought about how many canes were lost in the woods and rock laden fields throughout the property.

“We ought to have stock in that cane company,” Parker would tell his cousins. “The old man lost another one in the hayfield!”

The pain ceased. Parker shivered in the evening air of upstate New York despite the best efforts of his thin flannel shirt. He reached for a flask of Jack Daniels and a 9mm handgun in the center console. Spending a lot of time in rural areas, he always kept a firearm in the vehicle as did most people. The last few of years—shit, the last couple of days—had been emotionally grueling. Just hours ago, he said his final goodbye to Tug at the cemetery. The memorial had been postponed several months to accommodate the travel arrangements of several family members. This was the third family member returned to the earth in two years. He clenched the old family bible that he had read from at the service, forgetting that he was supposed to leave it for his mother.

Walking around to the back of the truck, Parker pulled open the tailgate and put the handgun down as he heard the lone howl of coyote. He lifted the stainless-steel container to his lips; he caught his reflection. His stubbly facial hair reminded him of his grandfather’s scruffy face. The bags under the eyes were not flattering either. He took a long swig and set the half-empty flask down. Reaching into his faded shirt pocket, he took out a pack of smokes and a book of matches. The tattered, creased outer flap of the matchbook displayed a symbol from an old bar that Parker used to frequent in the responsibility-free days of his youth.

The Obscure View’s logo involved a woman—scantily clad in a shower curtain with a surprised look on her face. It made him think about a story that his grandfather enjoyed telling him often.

“If somebody called wanting to talk to any of the neighbors, one of us kids had to go relay the message,” Tug would always start in with if he heard a cell phone ding. “Being the oldest, the job usually was mine.”

“Who was the girl,” Parker would ask, playing along like he hadn’t heard the story a million times before.

“Jesse, who had just landed a job,” Tug would say with excitement in his voice. “An operator at the local exchange, she was at her parents’ home when a call came that she was needed on the switchboard in town.”

“So, you went over there,” Parker asked. “You had to go over there in the dark, right?”

“When I arrived at the house, Mrs. Baker was preparing supper, Jesse was taking a bath in the tin tub behind a flimsy screen,” Tug mentioned, back in the day nobody in the county had inside plumbing, much less a bathroom in those days. “I guess modesty wasn’t one of her overwhelming virtues, I had my introduction to the adult female anatomy in one fell swoop that evening and I’ll never forget it.”

That was his grandfather, all right…thinking about the women. Reaching into the crumpled pack, Parker took a cigarette out while hopping up on the corroded tailgate, hoping it wouldn’t fall apart with his added weight. After lighting up, he inhaled deeply and paused. Staring up at the sky, Parker thought about his beautiful wife, Marie, and his two young sons, Lucas, and Marcus. The trio chronically hassled him how unhealthy smoking was, but it relaxed him.

The cigarette burned down to the filter and he calmed down even more with another swallow from the flask. He looked out across the field of decaying corn, shaking his head, and readjusting his ball cap, wondering what choices had led him to this field tonight. Looking down at the tattered brown bootlaces, he thought of all the times that Tug fixed something with baling twine. The odors of cigarettes and alcohol lingered in the cold night air. Picking up the handgun, he checked to see if there was a round inside the chamber.

The chilling, dark metal of the gun barrel made him feel even colder as he laid it back down on the tailgate. He wondered what someone must entertain in their mind to make the decision to take their life, still grappling with the question of whether it was a courageous act or, in fact, a cowardly thing. He felt uncertain about his Christian religious beliefs.

Touching the gun made him nostalgic about the first time he had ever been deer hunting. It was the opening day of regular firearms deer season. As he hovered high in an oak tree, two does meandered their way into the alfalfa field the stand overlooked. Parker singled one out, put the crosshairs of the scope on the magnificent creature, and gently squeezed the trigger. The gun went off. He observed every movement as the deer leaped away in shock. Was it a well-placed shot? He had asked himself. From his vantage point, he was unable to see if the deer perished quickly, without suffering. Parker later learned that practice was the key to placing a perfect shot, but at the time, he endured an emotional roller coaster of not knowing. He remembered his hunter safety class instructor teaching that if you were unsure about the shot placement, that you should wait some time before getting down from the stand. This would not push the wounded deer, increasing the odds of successfully finding it.

After half an hour, he saw his Uncle Jimmy walking toward him. He climbed down from the tree stand as his uncle asked if he had shot. With the adrenaline flowing and barely being able to speak clearly, Parker described the situation.

His uncle’s suggestion, simply put in a calming tone, was, “Let’s go have a look. What were you thinking—shooting at that distance?”

He stated excitedly, “I didn’t think it was that far away, and it looked like a good shot.”

They started to walk to the last sighting of the deer as it leaped. Turning the corner of the dense, overgrown hedgerow, they saw a white belly. It was the doe. His uncle congratulated him and shook his hand. Parker was taught the proper techniques for field dressing wild game—how to utilize every piece while also respecting the precious life of the animal…one of the greatest lessons that his now-deceased uncle would teach him.

This joyous memory quickly dissipated into a sorrowful moment. Parker couldn’t help but think about his uncle taking his own life two years earlier. In retrospect, the tragedy seemed to have jump-started everything transpiring since then. Parker often thought that somehow, he could have prevented the disaster, or at least tried to protect the entire family. Being the oldest grandson, he thought it was his duty and that he had let the family down.

Whenever he expressed these feelings to friends and loved ones, they did their best to comfort him. Nothing could have dissuaded his uncle, they told him. The decision had been predetermined. Maybe it was him being too naïve to believe it, or just not wanting to accept such a bleak concept as preordained suicide. Regardless of the reasoning, it was not going to bring Uncle Jimmy back, despite Parker desperately wanting one more hunting adventure, one more conversation over a beer.

While that memory slowly disappeared, Parker took another sip of whiskey and lit up one more cigarette. The clear liquid burned his throat as he choked it down. Then he inhaled smoke, his mind going to his grandparents. Tug and Tilly farmed this rocky piece of dirt for the past sixty years. It was amazing to Parker the amount of rocks that were in this soil. He figured it had to do with the layer of bedrock that this farm was on. Whether he liked to acknowledge it or not, his grandparents had played a tremendous role in the man he had become.

It had been only three months since grandma died in her sleep. By this time, it was so dark, even the sharp outline of a lone tree in the middle of the field faded into nonexistence in the night sky. Darkness overtook him.

He considered most people were afraid to be alone in the dark. Not him; he embraced it. It made him feel at peace for some odd reason. A bluegrass tune came on the radio, reinforcing the feeling. He listened for a minute and then took another drink from the almost-empty flask. His grandfather fancied listening to bluegrass. The past two years had been a huge struggle every day, not only for his worn-down grandparents but also for the entire family.

After his uncle’s death, the amount of time he spent with Tug increased. The burden of Jimmy’s death weighed mightily on Tug. His mind was still sharp, but he sometimes just stared blankly at objects around the machine shop. His health was failing him. This shop was the hub of the farmstead. It housed a homemade sawmill, and the aroma of hydraulic fluid filled the air. Old coffee cans scattered atop the workbench housed various nuts and bolts from old equipment. Buckets of used oil and diesel fuel were littered on the floor. In the winter, the air was filled with the smell of burnt coffee and wood smoke. Parkers favorite smell was that of fresh cut lumber from the sawmill.

His grandparents were not the type who would willingly go into a nursing home, nor entertain the topic of it. Their daughters had brought up the topic several times in the past.

“No way in hell,” Grandpa barked.

Parker and his cousins always joked that the nurses would throw him out for being a dirty old man. There was nothing strong enough in the world to force Tug and Tilly from the house they had built with their own hands. They had raised children, cared for grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren visited. To ask them to live out the remaining portion of their lives elsewhere was unspeakable. They would not have any part of it.

Thanks to four of his grandsons, Tug was able to continue farming the family plot. Despite them not living on the farm, they all lived close enough. Their payment for helping was the continual lessons they never realized they were getting. The foursome had a special bond with their grandfather. On the weekends, the boys were at the farm helping. Some farm duties were too much for the old man to handle on his own even if he wouldn’t admit it. If there were not chores to do, they sat in the shop discussing current events, politics, agriculture, family, and, of course, Grandpa’s favorite topic: women.

Parker picked a scrap piece of fence post, probably from a fencing project for cattle, from the truck bed and swung it like a golf club. At that moment, he thought of the old man with his infamous canes, snickering as he remembered being threatened with them, especially the one with the hook. The old man thought it would be a great idea to screw a hook to the end to use to pull bales of hay.

Tug handed down his legacy as each day passed. It became increasingly clear as he gave his grandsons additional responsibilities. More was expected of them. Much beyond than when they were young lads just starting to learn their ancestors’ trade.

There was another coyote howl that snapped Parkers thoughts. He threw the piece of wood back into the truck, realizing that Grandpa got them started in farming. It was in their blood.

“My cousin Bill and I would joke that I gave him his start in farming,” Tug would tell his grandsons. “I think I paid him two cents a hay bale to push wires and return the block.”

Each year, two painstaking tasks needed to be completed. Before dispersal of seed into the ground to allow new life to sprout forth, rocks had to be removed, which was backbreaking. The second one was during the hot summer months after baling alfalfa—the bales needed to be picked up before the next thunderstorm rolled in. The event usually occurred after working all day at their “real” jobs. They wished sometimes that their real careers were farmers. Parker, his brother, and their cousins each lived in their own houses but were located within 20 minutes from Belarock Farm. This allowed them the ability to spend time there after work and on weekends.

At the smell of rain in the air, Tug would strongly advise, “Better get them bales picked up, boys.”

Foregoing dinner and evening relaxation—unlike most people in their early thirties and late twenties—they took their trucks into the fields and raced against the weather to get the bounty picked up and secured. Bales were plucked off the earth and stacked in the old barn. Although the structure was crumbling, it happened to have a lot of similarity to their grandfather: still reliable, protective of the precious items inside, and having an amazingly strong, rock-solid foundation.

The foursome always squabbled and seemed to hate doing these chores. Once the patriarch of the family passed on, the young men would find themselves quick to reminisce about those times. It would be mysterious to them that something so simple would cause them to break down. They cried like babies when they had time to let it sink in. No matter how strong a prayer was said or how much they wished, the four of them would never be able to get the desired one more opportunity to spend time with their grandfather, whether it be in the field or sitting in the machine shop chatting. They each religiously believed that they would in fact see him again someday when they themselves were called home. For the rest of their lives, it was something that they would each struggle within their own way.

The patriarch and the next in line were now deceased, leaving Parker as the oldest male. He was at a loss of how to pick the family up after these life-altering events.

He’d grown to rely on his grandfather’s words of wisdom to get through tough times. He found himself starting to get angry with the deceased old man, even questioning his own religious beliefs. Thinking to himself that acting this way was not fair to his children, Parker remembered hearing someone say that his grandfather would not have left his earthly home if he were not sure that his grandsons could handle life in his absence.

This thought brought him some comfort, as did the image of his own two young sons, Lucas, and Marcus. He would do his best to raise them to be polite and hardworking. Most of all, he wanted to instill Tug’s work ethic in them. Lighting up one last cigarette, Parker wiped tears from his eyes. He choked down the final shot of whiskey, needing a few minutes to compose himself before heading home to the madness of young rambunctious children—although he hoped they were sleeping. Trying to get back to the rigors of everyday life would take time.

There were many decisions that had to be made with the farm. He desperately wanted to keep it within the family; however, he knew one of his aunts had other ideas. It was her money ticket. This battle was just beginning, as he would have to convince his wife. As any married man knows, she must approve all major decisions.

He got in his truck and headed home using backcountry roads, knowing them all from his younger days. Thoughts raced through his mind about what was awaiting him in the future. Was there a way to buy the farm outright? Could he afford it? Would the purchase of the farm jeopardize the life that he had worked so hard to provide for his wife and two young boys? They were his top priority, but why shouldn’t they get the chance to grow up on a farm just as he had done?