Down the Dirt Road (10 page)

    “Hello?”  Jennie answered in a breathless rush, wiping the garden soil from her hands onto her cut-off jeans.

    “May I speak to Jennie Marshall?”  The voice on the other end of the line was
vaguely
familiar.

  
“Speaking.  How can I help you.?”

    “This is Hilda Worth at Econoline Papers.  I am calling in reference to your employment application.  Are you available to interview at nine on Tuesday morning?”

   
A job!  They were calling her about a job. 
Ms. Susie in human resources had come through for her after all.
         

     “I definitely can.  Should I bring anything with me?”

    “Just your resume and a copy of your birth certificate
. Oh,
and your social security card.  You will be meeting with Jack Smithson and myself.  Ask for Hilda Worth at the front desk.”

     “I will. T
hank you Ms. Worth, for calling.  I am looking forward to meeting with you.”

     “I am too, young lady.  I am very interested to meet the daughter of John Marshall.  If you are half the person your father was he will have left quite a legacy behind.”

     Her heart skipped a beat at the mention of her father’s name, followed by the in
evitable moistening of her eyes but she cleared her throat and answered
with determination.
    

   
“I hope that I can live up to your expectations, Ms. Worth.”

     The older woman clucked into the phone quietly.  A sort of
well, we will soon see, won’t we?

     “We will see you on Tuesday morning at nine sharp.”  With a click the line went dead.  Jennie slowly replaced the handset onto the receiver.  They were one of the last families on earth to still have a wall phone with that ear splitting shrill ring of the eighties.
  Her father was revered by more people than she ever could have guessed.  Could she ever fill his shoes?  Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea trying to get into his former place of employment.  With expectations so high, was she simply setting herself up for disappointment?

    No matter, she needed a job and they were willing to consider hiring her.  So what if it was only because she was John Marshall’s daughter?

   From somewhere in the house, she heard a loud crash.  Following the sound to the front room where Momma sometimes sat to read in front of the large windows that let in the natural light of the sun, she found her mother
kneeling on the floor in front of a pile of soil and broken pottery.

   “Momma!  What happened?”  Dropping to her knees, she could see her mother was crying.  Large tears ran down her face and fell from the end of her chin in
to the dark potting soil of
her favorite tea roses.

   “What have I done? 
Oh! ! 
What have I done?”

   “It’s OK Momma
.  I’ll get a broom and clean it up. It’s just dirt.  There’s more pots out in the barn.  I’ll fix it right up.”

    “What am I gonna do, Jennie-girl?  What am I gonna do without your father?  He was my whole world!
  We were supposed to grow OLD together! 
Oh, how
I wish I could be with him now…”  Sobs wracked her momm
a’s thin shoulders.  She yelled,
she pounded
her balled up fists against
the
hardwood
floor
until they turned red. S
he cursed God and the heavens and all that was holy for taking her true love away from her
as the tears ran untapped
.  All Jenni
e could do was watch helplessly and try fruitless
ly
to gather the remains of the tea roses and the handmade pot that had held them. 

    No wonder Momma was so upset.  It was the last gift Daddy had given her, a Mother’s Day find from the local flea market.  Momma had cried then too,
when Daddy presented it to her.  Th
e sad little rose plant
had been quickly losing its grip on life but Momma had nursed it back to beauty in no time at all. 

  The soil trickled through her fingers as she tried to scoop it into the remains of the broken clay pot.  The dirt had fallen on Daddy’s casket little by little as they filled in the space around h
is final resting place.
Jennie began to sob along with her mother.  The agony that filled the room echoed throughout the house like a Siren’s wail over the ocean.  They clung together crying, a never ending flood of tears.  Jennie had no idea how much time had passed when
the first loud crash
of thunder rumbled the
very
timbers of the house.  A flash of lighting lit the accumulated darkness of the storm and Jennie jumped to her feet. 

     “Momma!  Bessie’s still outside!  I have to go and let her in!
” She was already up and running toward th
e door as another bolt of light
ning parted the black sky.  The crack of thunder that followed was deafening.  She barely heard her
momma calling out to her not to go as she grabbed the copper door know of the wooden half door in the kitchen and ran across the back yard toward the barn.

    Rain drops and hail as big as golf balls pelted against her arms and legs.  A hard rock of ice slammed into her forehead nearly knocking her to the ground as she slid through the muddied yard to the ramshackle building that housed their animals.  Blood trailed down the side of her face running into her left eye.  Rubbing at the warm liquid with her fist, she shoved her now soaked hair out of her face.  The door to the barn swung open in the wind, slamming against the side of the barn with a loud crash over and over again.  Jennie ran into the barn grabbing the door and yanking it closed behind her.  The horses whinnied and neighed as they sto
mped their hooves in irritation.  The wind whipped through the eaves as the hail scattered against the tin roof.  The noise was as deafening as the never ending crashing thunder.
 

    The back door to the barn leading to the small pasture where old Bessie spent most of her days, struggled against the onslaught of the storm.  The bar holding it in place was
the only thing that kept the wind from ripping it off its hinges. 
Her hair whipped against her cheeks stinging her skin as
Jennie yanked the wooden bar away and threw th
e door open.  The wind caught the door
immediately and whipped it back ag
ainst the side of the structure, tearing the top half off its hinges.  The door hung precariously as it swung back and forth in the angry weather.

     “Bessie!  Come here, old girl!  Come on, Bessie!”  Jennie clanged the old bell on the side of the barn, banging the clapper against the side of the bell over and over as she yelled for her favorite animal.  A bright flash illuminated the small pasture briefly.  Jennie scanned the area still crying out for Bessie to come home.  The words stuck in her throat when she finally saw her pet. 
The two thousand pound cow lay on her side in the mud, her tongue lolling lazily out of her mouth, her big brown eyes reflecting agonizing pain.

     “BESSIE!”  Jennie screamed as she took off at a run across the field.  Blood still ran freely from the wound on her forehead, rainwater running it into her mouth as she ran.  Her flip flops were completely saturated, the foot bed
slick.  Halfway across the field, the thong snapped away from the soul, tripping her and sending Jennie sliding, right shoulder to the ground, a good ten feet across the past
ure.  When she slid to a stop,
Jennie jumped to her feet, ignoring the burning pain in her should
er
and ran barefoot the rest of the way to her fallen animal.

    Bessie brayed qui
etly as Jennie dropped back down to the ground
in front of Bessie’s head.

    “What happened, old girl?!  What happened?!”

     Another round of tears began to stream down her cheeks mixing with the blood and rain water. Bessie lifted her large tongue and lolled it toward Jennie’s hands as she rubbed the animal between the eyes.
Bessie was dying.
 

    The rain began to lighten ever so slightly.  Thunder still crashed but it was further away, a longer time after each crack of lightning.  As the wind began to recede and the black clouds shifted to the east, Jennie spotted a charred are of flesh on Bessie left haunch.  The beast had been hit by lightning!

     “Oh, Bessie!  I’m so sorry!  I’m so, so sorry!”  She wra
pped her arms around the cows thick neck, the tears and
blood on her face mixing with the water saturating Bessie’s coat.  Bessie brayed ever so quietly in response as she flipped her tail on time against the muddy ground.  As Jennie laid her head against her favorite animal, she could feel the chain as Bessie’s body relaxed against the ground with the onset of death.

    There was no telling how long she lay there in the soaking field crying into Bessie’s fur.  The rain stopped, the sun began to warm her back and the birds resumed their chirping conversati
ons when she felt Momma’s hand against her back.

    “Come on child, come on.  Let’s back to the house so I can tend to that cut on your forehead.”

    “NO!” She cried
into the side of Bessie’s still body.

     “Come on, Jennie, get up out of the mud.  Let’s go inside and clean you up.  Bessie’s gone, nothing we can do for her now.”

     Her sobs drown out the sound of Momma’s pleas and eventually Momma just gave up.  When the screen door slammed against the back of the house, she knew she was alone with her favorite pet.

    “I’m sorry Bessie!  I’m so sorry I didn’t get out here in time.  I didn’t know it was gonna rain and then the storm came outta nowhere so fast…”

    She cried until the tears ran dry, fists gripping the wet coat of old Bessie.  There was no way to tell how long she lay there in the mud mourning the loss of so many things she loved in so short a time.

    “It was an accident, Jennie-girl.
  Bessie was a good animal but she was tired.
”

     The deep voic
e, warm and smooth as fresh maple syrup
, made her freeze.  There was only one man with a voice like that.

     “Da…Daddy?”   She turned her head real slow away from Bessie’s still body and followed the sound of the familiar voice.

    Standing behind her, the light of
the
sun enveloped him like the light of heaven.  “Daddy?  Is it you? Is it really you?”   

    “It’s me Jennie- girl.  Ju
st dropped in for a quick visit- thought Bessie might wanna see a familiar face on her way.”

   “Oh Daddy!  I have missed you so much!”  She jumped up, feet sliding in the mud throwing off her balance and sending her back to the ground where she landed square on Bessie’s haunch.

    “I’ve gotta get Momma!  She’s gonna want to see you too!  Ma….”

    “Don’t Jennie-girl.”  Daddy smiled at her warmly, love shining from his eyes.  “Don’t call your Momma.”

    “But…but, why not?”

    “Because she will want me to stay, and I can’t stay, sweet pea.”

     The tears came again, running down her cheeks unchecked.  “But Daddy!  We miss you so
much
!  Why did you have to leave?  We need you.  I am trying to keep things going, trying to take care of Momma and the farm, but I don’t know if I can do it all on my own.  Look what I did to Bessie…!”

    “It’s OK Jennie-girl.  It’s OK.”  Daddy’s voice was soft, comforting.  His words wrapped around her the way his strong arms used to.  “You can do it, sweet pea.  I have faith in you. You are so much stronger than you think.  You
are gonna be fine.
Marshalls always come out on top and you are a Marshall through and through.
But your Momma, well
now,
she’s gonna need you for a while.
”

    “She’s so lost Daddy.  All she does is cry and sleep.  I beg her to eat, I plead with her to leave the house but she won’t.”

    “It’s just gonna take her some time, Jennie.  But as long as she has you, she will be fine.  I am countin’ on you to take care of your Momma.  Don’t let her do anything stupid.  She will be with me soon enough.  Soon enough…”  His words trailed away as he looked toward the house, the home he had tried to build for his family.

    “You will always be my best girl, Jennie.  I love you and I always will.  It’s time for me to go now.  Remember, I love you.”

    “No!  No, Daddy!  Don’t go!”  The plea in her voice was heartbreaking, even to her own ears.  A heavy cloud passed in front of the sun suddenly, throwing the landscape into darknes
s,
before moving quickly past and allowing the bright sun to prevail again.  Her eyes struggled to adjust to
the extreme changes and she rubbed both eyes with mud
covered fists.  When she was able to see clearly again her father was gone.