Chapter 2
Jake
“Here you go ladies,” I say as I sprinkle scratch grains on the grassy floor of the chicken run. The hens peck around my feet to try and find the treats. “Hey, peck the ground, not me.” I wiggle my foot so that the hens know my foot is in fact, not a treat.
After the hens are distracted, I take the eggs out of the laying boxes and Henrietta lets me know that I’m running behind.
She bleats from her pen to let me know she wants to be let out.
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I’ll get to you in a second.
” After I secure the door to the run I head over to the lean-to next to Henrietta’s pen.
As I let the water pail fill up, I grab some oats.
I juggle the two pails while I release the latch on the door and Henrietta, knowing the drill heads like a missile for the oat bucket.
It’s my attempt to bribe her to the stanchion but she attempts to get the treat without the work.
“Henri–” I begin to chastise her and then I realize that I say the same things to her every day.
“Nevermind.” I walk backwards, inching the bucket away from Henrietta so that she eventually ends up in the stanchion and I close the mechanism behind her.
She finishes her oats before I’ve finished milking and lets out a huff of disapproval.
“Hey, I tried to warn you not to go so fast, but it’s the same old same old with you. ”
While Henrietta can sometimes make it a pain, milking has always been one of the chores on the farm that I find calming most days. The rhythmic motion combined with the pitter patter of the milk hitting the steel bucket is soothing to say the least.
As usual, I let my mind wander while muscle memory finishes the task at hand. Today, my mind chooses to think about my dad. He’s the reason I’m here milking Henrietta anyway.
When I was a teenager Dad thought it was a genius idea to buy a thirty five acre farm in southeast Colorado and become a farmer.
He knew a good deal about farming anyway and what he didn’t know he researched and asked other surrounding farmers.
Unfortunately, just being tenacious or intelligent can’t make a farm successful.
After years of drowning in debt and never being in the black, my mother left him.
And I guess I left him too. When I was eighteen I did the typical thing of running as far away from home as I could get in order to not end up like my parents.
I went to college, got a degree in business and set off to turn into a dick in a suit.
If it hadn’t been for the town doctor dancing around a HIPAA violation, I don’t know if I would have made it back in time.
Dad got really sick about fifteen years ago and just like a typical stubborn old farmer he refused to ask for help. Cue Dr. Gerald Block giving me a call. Now, he never once said that Dad was sick on that phone call but he got as close as he could.
“Jake, how long has it been since you came home for a visit? You know, the fall festival is coming up.” Gerald said.
“Hey doc, uh, it’s admittedly been a few years,” I said with a sense of hesitation.
It wasn’t like I had never talked to the doc before but usually when I had, I was in his office.
This was the only time we’d talked on the phone and the entire vibe just made me feel like I wasn’t hearing his actual point.
“Oh, well then, it sounds like now would be the perfect time to visit!” The exuberance in his voice was forced.
“Yeah, I just don’t know if I have the time right now,” I thought about the deadline I was under.
“I get that son, but I really think you should come home.” Doc was serious now. Something in the tone of his voice made me hang up and book a plane ticket.
Try as I might, I’ll never be able to forget the day I landed and walked through my childhood home.
Now I won’t sit here and pretend our house was pristine all the time but Dad was pretty good about keeping it presentable.
Even after Mom left. What I walked into that day was a trainwreck.
Newspapers were stacked in the corner, the pile nearly toppling over.
The dining room table was stacked with close to every dish we owned, dirty.
What wasn’t on the table was stacked in the sink with flies buzzing all around.
Mud and dirt coated the floors from what appeared to be months, at least, of not sweeping or mopping.
Mysterious stains blotted the couch in the living room and the smell inside the house was close to what you’d find in the goat pen.
“Dad?” I called out, my voice a little wobbly. He hadn’t known I was coming. The only response I got was a sputtering coughing coming from the master bedroom. With purpose, I drove myself forward and opened the door without so much as a knock. “Dad?”
Walking through that door was like walking through a portal. I didn’t stand there as a grown man in his thirties, I stood there as a child. A child who saw his dad hanging halfway off the bed, his head in a stockpot coughing up blood.
“What are you doing here?” He said, his voice weak, forcing the words around the phlegm in his throat.
“That is hardly the question that needs answered right now.” I went to the bathroom off the side of his room and grabbed a couple of tissues and brought them back to Dad.
He used them to dab the blood off of the side of his lips.
“Dad, what’s wrong?” There was no point in asking questions like are you sick?
Or, are you okay? The answers were clear, yes he was sick and no he wasn’t okay.
Typical Dad, he tried to blow me off, “Nothing,” was all he got out before the coughing kicked up again.
As he leaned over into the pot again I noticed just how much more gray he had in his dark hair.
What was once black as coal when I was a kid, was now nearly all shades of gray.
His beard was long and unkempt, another trait that was unlike him.
Most of his body was covered up with blankets but what I could see of him was thinner than I’d last seen him.
When did I last see him? Guilt stabbed me in the chest. This man had been my everything as a kid.
Watching him go after his dreams of owning a successful farm was inspiring, but after my mom left I wondered if it had even been worth it.
I left knowing that if I wanted someone to stick around, farming probably wasn’t the way to do it.
Once the coughing stopped again I said, “Nothing is a bullshit answer Dad.” I gave him a version of the stern look he always gave me when he knew I was lying, hoping it would work on him like it did on me.
“Doc says it’s lung cancer,” he finally answered through wheezing breaths.
“What stage?”
He let out a small under control cough and answered simply, “Four.”
I rose from the bed raking my hand over my face. “Are you doing treatments?”
Dad took a deep breath as if preparing to answer, when it led to another round of coughing he simply shook his head in answer.
“Why the hell not?” I crossed my arms over my chest as I waited for the coughing to cease again enough for him to answer.
“Doc said… it’s everywhere.” He gestured around his body, seemingly pointing out where the cancer lies.
I helped dad get into the bath and get cleaned up, once he was done and dried his thin frame began to shake from being so cold.
After I got him back into the bed and piled the blankets back on him he rolled onto his side and fell asleep.
My dad, taking a nap in the middle of the day was unheard of and all of what I had just witnessed piled on top of me rooting me to the ground.
I called my boss as soon as I left my dad’s room and put in my resignation.
I left once, but I couldn’t leave again.
He lived another torturous year, losing more and more of himself while I worked around him to keep his vision alive.
Originally I planned to sell the farm when he passed.
Thinking there was no way I could stay here.
But when he lay in that bed, not much more than a skeleton, he asked me if I loved farming.
I didn’t know what to say exactly, I didn’t mind the work.
I got more satisfaction from working with my hands and breaking my back than I ever did at a desk.
And over the last year with him I had used my business degree to work on updating the farm to the twenty first century.
I had obtained contracts with local businesses and restaurants to use our vegetables.
After some research I planted a few different types of wheat and grain in the fields that had been overgrown with weeds when I arrived.
I sold those to local breweries. I sought out craft shows and farmers markets where I could sell the goats milk, cheese and soap that I learned to make.
I sold farm fresh eggs everywhere I could and for the first time in my lifetime, the farm was in the black.
I was proud of everything I had accomplished.
More proud than I can ever remember being.
“Yeah dad,” I said, tears brimming my eyes.
“Then promise me son, that you won’t leave it.”
It was the last thing he said to me.