Stepping through the back door of the farmhouse that had
been in his family for three generations, Lukas Hart inhaled deeply, letting
the enticing scent of maple syrup, French toast, bacon, and coffee offer
reassurances to his stomach that it would soon be fed. He left his sodden hat
on a hook beside a row of ponchos, and his dripping boots on the wrought iron
boot stand beside the door, before making his way to the kitchen and heading
straight for the coffee pot.
“At this rate, we’ll have to check every tree for root rot
when this rain finally decides to let up. If it decided to let up,” Luke
grumbled as he added creamer to his cup. “Might as well chalk this up as
another lost day and see what else we can clean or fix around here.”
“But think of how nice this old place will look when we’re
through,” his mother replied, as she sat down at the table with her plate.
“I love you mom and I love that you can always manage to pinpoint
something positive in an ocean of suck, but in this instance, I’ll take dusty
end tables over endless rain.”
Any further response he might have made was cut short by a
stream of loud, insistent honking from outside and the pounding of feet on the
stairs as his younger sister came thundering down.
“Hang on and I’ll wrap you up something,” Luke’s mom offered
half rising from her seat.
“No time. Gotta go. Love you mom, see ya Luke,” Billie Jean
declared, punctuating her exit with a slam of the front door that rattled the
windowpanes.
“That girl, I swear, one of these days she’s going to take
that door clear off the hinges,” Luke’s mom complained as she settled back down
in her seat. “And for the record, there in absolutely nothing positive I've ever
been able to pinpoint about Clayton St. Cloud.”
“Okay, you got me there.” Luke conceded, before digging into
his meal. For a little while, the only sounds in the kitchen were the scrape of
cutlery on plates and the soft thunk of a coffee mug being sat back on the
table.
“I know you’re worried,” Luke’s mother said as she drew
lines in the syrup on her plate with her fork. “But worrying never did a lick
of good for anyone except add a bit more silver to their hair and shave some
years off their lifespan. We’ll be okay. No matter what this harvest yields,
we’ll be fine.”
“This year, but…”
“This year is the only one that counts right now,” she told
him firmly. “We can’t sit here and speculate on what next year or the year
after that might bring. It’s a waste of time and brain power. Now, finish up
your food and go see what you can do about that apple press, we’ll need it
sooner rather than later, rain or not, so best to figure out what’s wrong with
it now so we can come up with a plan for how to fix it.”
“I hear ya, mom.” Luke replied before turning his attention
back to the two remaining bacon slices on his plate.
“Hearing me is one thing,” she replied, as she stood, taking
her plate with her. “Actually heeding my words, that’s something else altogether.”
She was right, but telling him not to brood was like telling
him not to breathe. The best he could hope for was that tinkering with the
press would offer enough of a distraction to get him through another two days
of forecasted rain. If not, he was going to see about fermenting one of those
gallon jugs of cider in the basement and seeing if that might produce enough of
a kick to take his mind off shit for a while.
He heard his mother turn off the faucet, then felt the press
of her lips on the top of his head. “There’s nothing you can do about the rain,
son but wait it out. I know your father would be proud of everything you’ve
accomplished in the past two years. You have to believe he’s looking down on us
and smiling right now.”
Luke sighed at that, even as she hugged him to her. “I can’t
help but feel like I could be doing more, if it wasn’t for this damn knee.”
She hugged him tighter than, and he could feel the moment
when she sucked in a breath and held it.
“None of us are born with a gift for knowing the future,”
she said. “I suppose if we were, it would take all of the surprises out of
life, good and bad. You and your dad and that bull riding, that’s something I
never pretended to understand, but I couldn’t ignore the joy it brought you
both. You just have to look at the photos on the wall in the den to see that.
Every time I walk through there and see the exuberance on your faces, bodies
frozen in time, just you and the bull in mid leap or twist, I can feel it. You
lived for those moments, and no matter how it ended, you shouldn’t look back
on something you loved with regret. It was a season, like so many other seasons
you’ll experience in this lifetime; some long, some short, all unpredictable. Cherish
the good, learn from the bad, carry the lessons into the future, that’s all you
can do. Dwelling just wastes precious time and none of us know how much of that
we have left.”
“I know that. But I’m also aware of all the ways it's slowed
me down and limited what I can do around here,” Luke admitted. “I wasn’t
thinking about the future when I was climbing up on the back of those bulls. I
was thinking about the challenge. Testing myself and hopefully walking away
with a buckle at the end of the season. That something could go so wrong that
it isn’t even safe for me to climb a latter never entered my mind. Don’t you
think it should have? A responsible adult would have given consideration to
more than the next ride.”
Laughter erupted from her like a rifle shot, loud and long
and echoing in the room. Luke watched her press two fingers to the space
between her eyebrows and shake her head, shoulders still quivering with the
force of her mirth.
“Responsible adults do things others might consider reckless
all the time,” she replied once she’d calmed herself. “They strap themselves
into stock cars, secure themselves in shark cages, climb up trees with
chainsaws and rope slings in order to cut them down, and yes, even sit on the
backs of bulls and attempt to ride them. You were good at it, and you made a
fine living doing it while you could. Let me ask you this, would you still view
it as reckless if nothing had gone wrong and you were still out there on the
circuit?”
“Of course not, mom, but….”
“Aut! No buts. You gave an honest answer, and it’s the one I
expected. For the record, I never once thought you or your father were
reckless. You had skill, you practiced, and you honed your craft just like any
other athlete. I couldn’t have been prouder of you both. That knee might give
you problems from time to time, but do you know what I see every time I catch a
glimpse of you in the orchard or out in the shed?”
“No, what?”
“Someone who didn’t give up,” she replied. “Instead of
holding a pity party and wobbling around here on crutches bemoaning all the
things you would no longer be able to do, you picked yourself up by your
bootstraps, went to physical therapy sessions, and regained more use of that
limb than the doctors initially believed would be possible. If we need to hire
someone for harvest time to see to the things that you aren’t able to take care
of, then that’s exactly what we’ll do. Now I don’t want to hear another word
about it and if I catch you brooding again, I’m going to give you your
great-grandmother’s silver to polish, and you know how picky I am about how
that’s supposed to be done.”
“Alright already, I give. I get the point. No more pouting,
no more brooding, see, I’m going, and with a big smile on my face too,” Luke
replied as he heaved himself up from his chair and limped to the sink as fast
as he could manage to rinse his plate and retrieve the outer garments he’d hung
up when he came in.”
“By the time you come in, I’ll have our supply list ready
for you to take into town,” she told him as she stuck her head through the
doorway while he was yanking his boots on. “I’ll go ahead and make up the
flyers too, since you, my stubborn son, will come up with every excuse to put
it off. You make sure you get them put up around town when your down there.”
“I will,” he replied. “You’ll just call Angus to check in on
me anyway, so I might as well get it over with. If only to spare myself a
second trip over the sloppy mess the roads have likely turned into.”
“I don’t know why they waste the money and the manpower
putting new gravel down year after year when the roads always end up a mess as
soon as the big trucks start flying through here like it’s the qualifying track for
the Indy five hundred, the fools. One of these times they’re going to meet
another vehicle in that curb, and it’ not going to be pretty, let me tell you.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, mom,” Luke replied as he
plopped his wet hat back on his still damp hair. “I’ll stop in and have another
word with Sheriff Dohlman if it’ll make you feel better, but you know what he’s
going to say.”
“Yes, and it’s a crock of horse pocky if you ask me but
speak to him anyway. At least this way we can say we’ve done all we could do to
try and prevent the inevitable.”
“I hear ya,” he replied before heading back out into the
rain.
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