I stroke my beard as I stare across the vast plain and all I see is the dusty swirl of my lost happiness and the emptiness of my despair. It’s been 2 years since Rita died but I do miss her so. I can still hear her now.
“Get up, Walter. Time to milk the cows.” She would say.
“Come on Walter milk faster you Nancy” She would encourage. The payoff of course was when she would let me milk that bountiful Midwest bosom of hers. I do mean that as she had a lactation problem and had to be milked on a regular basis. However, since I have a milk fetish and she a getting milked fetish I guess you could say it all worked out just fine. Then came the dark times.
I had never seen a dust storm. My pappy used to tell the tale of a dust storm that reached the moon in his days a boy farmer in the last 1800’s. He would get all kinds of riled up spinning his yarn about the size of the storm and the amount of dust that it left behind. I found out later that he had a dust fetish so I am not sure where the truth lied. My mammy would say he could exaggerate from time to time but she had an understatement fetish so she was hard to read at times. I remember the first storm. I stared at it for quite some time. At a distance it looked like any normal storm. I say that but something just didn’t sit right. I went about working the farm and by the time I looked up again it was too late. I tried to corral the cattle and upswing the yarn spin before Rita could uncluck the chicken giblet. I yelled for my boy, Sarah (family name) but he was nowhere to be found. We barely made it inside when it hit. I quickly wrapped my beard to protect it from damage. In these parts a man without a beard is like a man who doesn’t have facial hair covering his cheeks and chin. The storm shattered the glass in Sarah’s room where he was unfortunately pleasing himself as teenage boys are want to do. The doctor said that the shattering glass happening at the exact moment of his orgasm is what cause his broken glass fetish that plagued him for the next year. That is until his death.
The farm fell on hard times. They all did. Most of the cattle died because there was no grain to feed them. The land was bare because of the drought. The preacher said it was Gods will but his fetish of having will imposed on him made him a bit biased if you asked me. The science men said it was bad farming habits. “Oh yea, well you have a bad farting habit!” yelled an enraged Ted Bannister to the science men at a town hall meeting. He later apologized as it turned out one of the men did have a bad farting habit but fortunately his wife was an eproctophile. It didn’t matter. It was what it is and wasn’t what it was not. My boy died in 1934 from an accident no one was clear about. It involved a carbide bucket a mule and a shit load of dimes. The boy around town seemed to know something but they weren’t talking. My lovely Rita was rocked with sadness. I felt for her. I missed my son but in all honesty I never liked him too much. The loss of the cattle was worse.
Rita died on a Tuesday. I buried her myself. No way I was going to let Paul Manfeld near my wife’s graves. He was the local grave digger with a digging fetish. I had lost my cattle, my wife, my boy, and my farm. I didn’t know what to do. The soil was useless. There would be no crops. Word was the entire country was in upheaval. There was no other work. That is when I made my decision to stay. Many were heading west. I knew they wouldn’t find anything better. This was my farm. A farm that had been in my family since my Grandpappy Sarah Lactosington had dug the first well with his bare hands.
I have 4 cows, 1 horse, and a carbide bucket I use for a thing now that Rita is gone. They say it will turn eventually. Well, it has too. I stare at the graves of my wife and boy. Rita Reeta Lactosington and Sarah Familyname Lactosington. This isn’t for me. This is for them. This is to keep the family farm alive. A tear rolls down my face and is lost in the tangled mass of my face crop. That tear finds its grave with so many others as I have stood looking on where my family is buried. But this tear will be the last. I smell rain in the distance. I look out and see it far beyond the plains as it blurs the sky. Flowing like milk from my Rita’s bosom. Its heading this way. Looks like things are turning around. Tell those nancy boys in New York to stop jumping. Walter is about to farm some Goddamn land.
-Walter Lactosington
April 1937