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Hostile Country

Michael Cardwell

    I got lost, the directions were as simple as simple could be, but I got lost. The man at the gas station, who told me to call him Soap, said to head out County Road 450 West until it T-boned into County Road 200 North, break to the left and go three miles and I would see what I was looking for on the south side of the road.
    Soap said the name on the mailbox would read ‘Finnegan’ and the house would be up a long lane, almost hidden by tall corn growing high this year due to plentiful rains we’d got in the spring. He jabbered on about the weather, the local diner that served wonderful blueberry pie ala mode, and how he had no idea why I would want to go searching for ‘those’ Finnegan folks.
    He leaned in close for the last part, raising his head and lowering his voice to almost a whisper, “Those Finnegan’s be a strange lot, keep to themselves and don’t cotton to strangers just dropping by unannounced. I’d think again about visiting them, don’t do much good to get shot on a nice day like today.”
    I smiled at him, looked deep into his concerned eyes, and patted his arm. I said I was willing to take my chances, thanked him for the worry, pulled onto the gravel road and headed down 450 West.
    Fifteen minutes later I stood with my hands on my hips, the dust from the gravel road drifting to fade away into the fields of corn bracketing the road. I had followed Soap’s directions to the letter, going even so far as to track the three miles on the car’s odometer.
    I turned to look in each cardinal direction; but no driveway, no mailbox, no nothing, just a bright green forbidden jungle of undulating, whispering corn. It was just shy of two decades since I had trodden these roads, and the passage of time robbed me of any sense of the place. I had been raised here and should remember the way, but I was lost and adrift as if I was wandering the moon.
    Just when I had about given up hope and resigned myself to heading back to the T and pacing the miles out again, a mangy mongrel wobbled out from the corn on the north side of the road.
    He was brown. Well, he was mostly brown. Maybe he was black, and the brown was dried mud. It was tough to tell, but he was the only living thing in sight, so I took comfort in his company. The unknown dog, of an unknown breed and an unknown color, wobbled up from the side-ditch and took a seat in the gravel. He was twenty or thirty feet from me, but neither of us seemed interested in getting any closer to the other one.
    I remained standing, hands on hips and the dog remained sitting, staring by turns at me, at the Jeep, and at the corn on the south side of the road.
    At length, since he wasn’t going to start the conversation I asked, “You wouldn’t by any chance know the Finnegan’s?”
    He continued to stare at me, remaining both silent and obstinate. I took the high road, figuring he was just the quiet sort and a dog of few words, none of which he was willing to spend on a stranger.
    “No worries,” I continued, as I reached in my pocket to retrieve my keys.
    With lazy ease, signaling his dismissal of me as interesting and worthy of attention, the dog stood and wobbled down the road in the direction my Jeep was pointed. He went only a short way, wandered off the south side of the road and melted into the corn.
    Bemused, I walked down the road and came to the point where he had vanished. But he hadn’t wobbled into a corn row, he had found a ribbon thin driveway, more a bike path than a proper drive. I stared down the path and saw my stoic canine acquaintance making his way the length of it to a barely perceptible house, whose roof was the only thing visible above the corn.
    Stepping off the road, I melted, much as the dog had, into the corn. The blades of corn leaves brushed my shoulders as I made my way forward and onto the firm dirt of the path. I felt transported to an earlier time and place, to a past I had abandoned. Memories of a simpler, earthier time came rushing back to me. The crunching of the gravel faded, replaced by the soft padding sound of feet on bare earth opened my ears to a world I am all too often too loud, too distracted, or too oblivious to hear.
    Walking up the path, a wind caressed the corn in a relaxing sigh, passing through it and across me, trying to release the weight of the day and lighten my burden with each forward step. The further down the path I walked the wider it became, until walking with arms out-stretched to both sides I could no longer touch the stalks.
    Coming closer to the house now, I could see two people sitting motionless on the front porch. The weight of the day and the heft of my burden returned to me twofold and I struggled to move forward. I knew them both and they knew me. Neither moved as I came up the path, emerged from the corn and entered the small yard.
    I stopped a few yards short of the porch, not feeling brave enough to climb the stairs and approach the lion’s den. I saw the dog had been braver than me and lay midway between the man and woman on a latch-hooked rug. He lay there, head on paws, with a mournful look in his eyes as if he knew the news already I had come to share.
    The man was Franklin Finnigan, farmer, and father. Franklin sat with a shillelagh across his knees, a gnarled, arthritic hand holding tight to the knob. He was stout, fair haired, clean-shaven, and dressed in the same clothing he had worn every day for the last thirty years; a short sleeved western shirt, Blue/White Hickory Striped overalls, and Red Wing work boots. His eyes were babyish blue and unfocused as always, giving him a perpetual look of bewilderment.
    The woman was his wife Delma, farmwife, and mother. A wire basket of eggs sat beside her chair and a sanding brick lay limp in her hand. She had always reminded me of a lemon, both in the geometry of her body and her puckery temperament, but today was not a day for recrimination. Delma was dressed in work clothes for chores; a sleeveless linen top, loam green dungarees, and calf-high gum boots.
    The pair glared at me with unbridled hatred and I melted under the intensity. I dropped my eyes to the brown and green of the yard. When I twisted up enough courage to look up again I saw the unfocused stare had soured to pure hate still in Franklin’s eyes, but in Delma’s I saw a touch of sadness.
    “You’re not welcome here, boy,” said Franklin.
    “Saoirse died,” I said, the words tumbling from my mouth as I opened it, tears brimming in my eyes.
    An oppressive, uncertain silence descended onto the porch and permeated into the yard. For me, no words, just tears for my dead wife. Franklin had no words, just jaw muscles working and crippled hands clenching and unclenching, remembering the day his child had chosen me over family. Delma had no words, just red-rimmed eyes, and the track of a single tear on a single cheek in memory of the daughter who ran away to marry me so many years ago.
    “How did my daughter die?” asked Delma.
    “It don’t matter how she....” stammered Franklin, only to be cut off by his wife.
    “I want to know,” Delma roared, her eyes alighting in fire, glaring at her husband.
    “Leukemic,” I said.
    A shudder went through Delma and I witnessed her reassert control over herself, I saw the hatred come back to her eyes when she looked at me. She pulled a handkerchief from a pocket, wiped away the track of the single tear and returned it to the pocket in short order.
    “Franklin is right,” she said, a resolution in her eyes as they settled back on me, “You’re not welcome here, boy.”

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