Sawing On A Jawbone Violin (The Drought of ’36) (986 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: one-part_stories red_right_hand
Rating: 1.71 on 25 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Stagger Lee (View user info) at 2006-04-23 13:02:13 EDT
Caffrey couldn't remember the last time a drop of rain had touched the parched soil of the county. There wasn't a living piece of vegetation for miles, and Caffrey's crops had gone belly-up. Caffey's last mule died the day before, twitching in the dust, kicking its legs, its large eyes staring at nothing. Caffrey had seen his reflection in those dead eyes, and it frightened him. He wasn't a particularly religious man, and that was no comfort at times like this.
He'd been surviving on water from his stores in the rain tank, but even that was running low now. Furthermore, two days ago the remaining water had reached a point of stagnation that Caffrey couldn't stomach, no matter how his mouth and throat cried out to be moistened.
Caffrey started seeing things yesterday. Little things, at first, and it started after his mule kicked the bucket. He was lying on his cot in his fetid single room when he saw something dart across his floor, right in the corner of his eye. He turned to look, but it was gone.
That night, Caffrey's dead father appeared before him, without preamble or fanfare, as Caffrey was rolling around, borderline delirious from the thirst and the heat. He looked at Caffrey with distaste wrinkling the edges of his leathery face.
"You sicken me," Caffrey Snr said. He was wearing the suit he was buried in. It didn't look any the worse for wear. His hat was pulled low over his eyes, and a cigarette sent smoking wafting over his face. "Look atcha. Drought's gone n ripped all your crops to pieces, an' what've ya done about it? Nothin'. Ya just sit in here an' mope."
Caffrey cowered on his bed. "Git out, Pa," he said. "You dead, you got no business up here."
"That's you all over, Junior," his father said, shaking his lifeless head. "Ya ain't gonna deal with the problem at hand, you're gonna complain about it instead. Useless."
"No, Pa," Caffrey pleaded. "It ain't like that! I just didn't expect to see ya so soon, y'know? You dead..."
"Yeah," Caffrey Snr snapped, "I'm fuckin' dead. And do ya bring me flowers n shit? Naw, you just sit around and mope cos ya ain't got the sack to do nothin'."
"Pa! That ain't true! I work the land, hard!"
His father snorted. "Y'call leadin' a mule around for a couple hours a day workin' the land hard? Naw, son, ya ain't never worked the land hard. And now the land's payin' ya back. She's taken your rain away, and ya ain't man enough to admit ya deserve it."
After that, Caffrey's father was gone. He couldn't recall exactly the moment of his departure, but he was gone, that was a fact
Caffrey couldn't sleep that night. He rolled he pummelled his bed and he sent empty prayers out into nowhere. He prayed for rain, for sleep, for release of any nature that would set him free from his bonds.
Twice more he thought he saw something run across his floor, but when he turned his head, it was gone both times.
Caffrey dragged himself from his bed as dawn's red rays entered his one and only window and stroked light across his hovel. He rubbed his face and eyes. He couldn't remember much of what had occurred during the night, but some of what his dead father had said remained with him.
He walked outside, into the desolation that had once been his farm. When his father was alive, the farm thrived and they were prosperous. Then the grand old farmhouse on the hill burnt to the ground, killing everyone but Caffrey Jnr. Now he spent his days holed up in the single-room shack down by the fields that used to house the man that tended to the mules.
He looked across his dusty, unfruitful fields and said, "Alright, I'm here. I'll work ya. How can I work ya? Ain't nothing to work. No real soil. Nothin' will sprout here."
Nothing stirred in the fields, but a massive black crow spiralled from the sky and landed at his feet. He flapped his arms at it, and hissed, but the crow merely stood its ground and regarded him with one glossy black eye. He yelled at it, "Git, crow! Git!" and it cocked its head in the pure, inquisitive fashion that only a bird can manage.
Caffrey saw himself then, reflected in a crow's eye, and he shuddered at his own image; a gaunt, unkempt man in a dirty singlet and shorts, with wild eyes staring from a leathery, contorted face. He thought of the mule, twitching in the dust while Caffrey stood helplessly, incapable of aid.
He hastened back inside and collapsed on the floor. His eyes drifted to the dry, useless spigot that jutted from the wall.
Caffrey succumbed to dehydration and his head slumped to the floor. It was 6:34 a.m.
It was about seven hours later when the room shook and blurred before his eyes as he opened them. His dead father was sitting on the bed, eyeing him with disgust. Another cigarette hung from his lip. Caffrey suddenly realised he couldn't tell if his father had ever smoked in his life.
"Well, son, another day is well an' truly on its way, and the fuck have ya done? Ya make me sick."
Caffrey attempted to speak, but the words became clogged in his parched and swollen throat.
His father stood and then crouched before him. He blew smoke into Caffrey's face. "Forever squirming," he said, and there was no mistaking the vitriol and hatred in his tone.
"But there was nothin' left to do," Caffrey managed. His voice sounded weak and petulant and pleading, even to his own ears. "Ain't nobody can farm a dustbowl...there just ain't any rain."
His father spat on the floor next to Caffrey's head. "Hush up your whining, boy! Ya gotta give yourself to the land! Ya gotta mean it! Ya can't pay lip service, she'll know if ya do."
Caffrey pushed himself up to something resembling a sitting position. The light from the cracks between the ill-fitting boards of his walls and the single window played across his face, but it didn't touch the shadows surrounding Caffrey Snr.
"Go on!" his father shouted. "Git yourself out and tend your land, son! Tend her!"
Caffrey placed his hand on the floor, and his other hand on the wall. Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet. He stared into his father's face but he could not see his father's eyes. Deep wells of shadow had swallowed them.
His father slapped something into his hand, and said, "Hallelujah! The boy rises! Come on! Give yourself to the land and she will give you release!"
Caffrey stumbled into the heat of afternoon. Staggering and reeling from side to side, he made it to the first field and dropped to his knees in the dust. For the first time, he turned his gaze to the object that his father had given him. It was a simple, viciously efficient-looking knife, with a slightly curved blade and well-worn, plain handle. He stared at it, uncomprehendingly.
The crow landed beside him and regarded him quizzically. He regarded it.
"Oh," Caffrey said. "I see now. That's easy."
He drew the knife down the inside of his wrist, and spilled his life's blood into the greedy dust.
Once he judged that he had spent enough, he stood, dropped the knife into the dirt and made his unsteady way back to the shack. His father was gone.
Caffrey crawled into his cot and sleep took him nearly instantly.
It was about an hour after nightfall when the largest storm for nearly twenty years broke in the sky above Caffrey's farm. The rain hammered down, relentlessly, driving fist-like drops deep into the earth. Soon the dust of the farm was a rich, layered stratum of mud.
None of this disturbed Caffrey from his rest; not the incessant pounding on his roof from the rain and not the flooding that occurred a mere half an hour after the storm began.
Caffrey's life ebbed away shortly before midnight, a combination of dehydration and blood loss, just as the flood was rising to the level of his bed. He died with his face pressed into his pillow and his bloody arm trailing in the water.
By the time he was found, the flood had receded, and nobody could recognise his face or remember his name.
User Reviews
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-06-21 02:10:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I don't like you
Submitted by Method (user info) at 2006-05-17 06:57:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
SOMEONE'S SHIT DOESN'T STINK, HUH?
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-04-28 02:52:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Cheers Jack.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-04-27 13:37:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Missed this. Stupid me.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-04-24 10:31:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Damn, really?
I've gotta get my ideas across better.
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-04-24 09:24:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
AHA - Another vote for hallucination! That means I win Stagger!
Although, beating my alter is like having an argument with yourself. Or a civil war.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2006-04-24 09:13:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'll cast a vote for hallucination.
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-04-24 05:03:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by gravitas (user info) at 2006-04-24 00:34:58 (#)
Ranking: 2
I figured it was an hallucination from dehydration, and the fact that it finally rained the night he 'gave himself to the land' was cruel irony.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2006-04-24 01:41:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Impressive.
Submitted by gravitas (user info) at 2006-04-24 00:34:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I figured it was an hallucination from dehydration, and the fact that it finally rained the night he 'gave himself to the land' was cruel irony.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-04-23 22:43:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Thanks everyone.
Inion, you're damn right you do. I've started a second one, too.
Bubba, yes, they were.
So, who thought the dead father was:
A) The ghost of his father
B) An hallucination
C) A demon in the guise of his dead father
Well?
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-04-23 16:58:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Great job!!
I'll be the one to ask. The things he saw run into the corner, just out
of his line of vision: were those supposed to be signs of his impending
insanity? God, I hope not. Happens to me all the time. . .
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2006-04-23 16:29:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
this is why i never want to be a farmer. investment analysts and lawyers don't die like this, they just od on coke and stuff.
actual critique on the writing: for some reason i just thought you overused his name a little and it got repetitive ya know? but still that didn't really detract from the story.
i need to go finish the monster story.
Submitted by gravitas (user info) at 2006-04-23 16:21:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by LSD420 (user info) at 2006-04-23 15:51:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
really coolly awesomely wickedly rad
lol, i said rad
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2006-04-23 15:44:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Ok read it. Stagger, you are a fucking cunt, I want you to die a slow and painful death involving a kangaroo.
-2DIE </sarcasm>
Submitted by Anansie (user info) at 2006-04-23 14:49:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by MrSparkle847 (user info) at 2006-04-23 14:38:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by goferforhire (user info) at 2006-04-23 14:08:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You cut me to the quick! Ah, yes, you did read that, I see...
But really, really good show on this one.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-04-23 13:56:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Cheers red and gofer.
Ahaha, shameless, gofer, shameless. I already read that one.
Submitted by goferforhire (user info) at 2006-04-23 13:17:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Awesome!
Hey, and speaking of the 1936...
http://www.ubersite.com/m/86594
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-04-23 13:16:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Sorry, I don't follow you there, Razor.
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-04-23 13:16:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Black magic.
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2006-04-23 13:16:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
test?
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2006-04-23 13:14:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm too tired to read this right now, so I'll just assume it kicks ass.