Endless Rocky Road

“Do you love mom?” Calvin asked.

In the darkness, Harlen saw his son pull his coat tight and hold his wool cap against the last gasps of winter. Calvin’s bare hand flinched as he touched the soggy hat. He had forgotten his gloves.

“What?” Harlen’s gruff voice was as gentle as he could manage for his son. They had been walking in silence for some time and the question had come unexpectedly.
“Well, I just mean you guys fight a lot.”

“Hmm.” Harlen raised his light to see his son, all of thirteen and on his first pre-dawn patrol, yet still a questioning child. He removed his gloves and slapped them against Calvin’s chest. “Do you know what love is, boy?”

“Of course,” Calvin began, with all the confidence of youth, “it's like you like things… more…” Confidence fading.

The wind died down. Calvin took the damp gloves from his father and slipped them on. He held his hands out to see his fingers not quite reach the tips of the gloves.

Harlen gave a slight chuckle. He tucked the two copper pipes he had been carrying under his arm and slipped his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, it all seems simple until you start talking. Think about it like this. Love means you want someone to do well, to prosper. You want what’s best for that person more than you want what’s best for you.”

The father and son continued to follow their black and white collie mix, Sunday, along the perimeter of their small pasture. Each year as the seasons changed, coyotes would press closer to the homesteads surrounding the Carter Copper Mines in search of an easy meal. To protect his herd, Harlen had walked this path countless times, and now hoped to pass this chore on to Calvin.

“There’s got to be more to it than that, dad.”

“Yeah a lot of people try to add more to it, but that just overcomplicates everything. Now, there’s more to being with someone than just loving them. You have to be nice and show respect. But none of that is love. Love is important but so are all the other things.”

“Why do you fight then?”

“Some things need fought about.” Harlen said it too quickly and didn’t like the answer as soon as it came out. He waited, hoping for another question. None came.

As they continued with the patrol, every part of Harlen’s body, except for his mouth and mind, tensed and ached as if they were poised to explode with the exact words that needed said, but whatever insight they might have held remained lost.

“Am I gonna tend the herd all my life?” It wasn’t the question he’d hoped for, but Harlen turned it over nonetheless, searching for the best answer.

“What else would you do?” That probably wasn’t right either.

“I’ve heard the Baxters are looking for help! Helping guard the deliveries as they come in. I could learn to shoot from them too, over the summer you know? Carol Anne says—”

“They ain’t no good. I mean they help, sort of… but I don’t know if that’s the safest thing for a kid.”

“Aww, safe? We’re out here looking for coyotes. Sunday won’t do much good and what if we see a pack right now? You ain’t even got a gun.”

“Coyotes ain’t no real danger. The Baxters deal with… You don’t need to be a part of their kind of work. It’s no place for a kid.” Harlen had been trying to reconcile his description of love with the reality of his actions over the years, and so he’d missed the yearning in his son’s voice. It was all so clear a moment too late.

Calvin looked away.

“I’m not saying you can never work for them, but not every path is going to be good for you. For now, let’s keep the herd alive. Let the miners have more than bread and potatoes next winter. Maybe pay some debts too.” The matter was closed; a door slammed too hard for the fragile spirit of the boy.

“How’s that Carol Anne?” Harlen tossed it out, praying it was enough.

Sunday stopped, gave a growl, then bolted into the trees. Calvin, still silent, stepped to follow, but was stopped by Harlen’s firm grip. Too firm. “Wait. Grab the poles and hit them together. It’ll drive them off easy enough.” The words came out too hard.

Calvin did as he was told. Clang, clang. Clang, clang, clang. Then faster again.

Less than a minute later, though Harlen knew that to Calvin it must have felt like an hour, Sunday came bounding back. “The beasts just look for easy meals. We scare them off and they go eat rabbits or birds. They’re cowards, though, so long as they aren’t too desperate.”

Calvin didn’t say much for the rest of the walk. Of course not, Harlen told himself. I crushed his dream before he could even say it. Made him feel dumb. The boy will never understand what I'm trying to do.

The sun crept over the horizon, painting the clouds a deep purple and orange as the two neared their house. Harlen watched the morning come in silence, unable to broach any subject. As they came to the front steps, Harlen started to order his son to the chicken coop, but stopped himself before the words came out. “Head inside. Dry off. Get something warm in you.”

Calvin skulked away, reaching the second step before Harlen called after him, “Hey. The gloves.”

Calvin turned on his heels and held them out, his eyes still on the ground.

Harlen took them. “You’ll be alright.”

For the next hour, Harlen went about the morning’s work. Through years of repetition, he’d worn each chore down to a series of simple, mindless tasks, which allowed him ample time to think. Too much time. By the end of the hour, though, his thoughts were lighter and less precise; more a general sense of ease.

Finally, he set his herd of goats to pasture and whistled for Sunday to head off with them. The sky had turned a perfect pale blue in the clear morning. All the clouds and rain of the night seemed never to have touched the land.

Harlen stepped into his house, still wearing his boots.
“Oh, you’re tracking in all that mud again. I just swept.” Jennifer, his wife huffed. She stood from the table and grabbed a broom. Harlen, still by the door, removed his boots.

Love you. He kept the words in. It didn’t seem like the right time.

About midday, Harlen had set himself on a new task, a new immediate problem. A small abscess had developed on the left cheek of one of the goats. The Carter Mine would surely use it as an excuse to lower the price or pass on his herd all together. Harlen held the goat between his legs. He gripped its horn in one hand. With the other, he brought his sharpened knife to the abscess. He hesitated.

Sunday’s barking sounded from the front of the house.

Harlen freed the goat, relieved, yet at the same time, the all-too-familiar sour feeling of a job unfinished seeped into his soul. He entered through the back door and cut through the kitchen and front sitting room with ginger steps, so as not to track too much mud. Just as he reached for the tarnished knob, four sharp knocks sliced through the silence. Jennifer leaned out of the bedroom as Harlen opened the door.

A porcelain white, stern-faced woman in a finely tailored, black wool dress met him with an icy blue stare. Her yellow curls were pulled up and pinned under a matching hat. Two larger, far dirtier men flanked the woman. A third man stood with their horses on the path near the edge of the tree line. Sunday had gone. Jennifer quietly ducked back into the room.

“Yeah.” Harlen hung his head and let the words fall out. “Come in, then.”

The woman, Mary Elizabeth Carter, born a Baxter, had married into the Carter family. She held no official title with either the Carter Copper Mining Company or their unofficial security brutes the Baxters, but she had managed to rise to a position of unquestioned authority. She achieved this status, Harlen knew, through her unflinching willingness to do the difficult thing. She crossed the room and took a seat at Harlen’s kitchen table. One of the men towered behind her. The other walked around and leaned on the back door, absent-mindedly thumbing the worn grip of the revolver on his hip. Harlen sat across the table from Mary Elizabeth. No one hurried.

“It has been six months.” Mary Elizabet said. There was something unmovable about the words.

“Coming up on it. Yeah.” Harlen’s gaze hung, resigned to the rough wood floorboards. Every conversation he’d ever had with this woman felt like a mere presentation of facts and not at all like a discussion with a real person.

Mary Elizabeth adjusted slightly in her seat and folded her hands in front of her. “The agreement will end in eight days. Our company was not paid in full last season and you have failed to make the agreed upon payments over the subsequent months.”

“Well, yes... I missed two but... It's been...” Harlen started, but his words fell flat. He had no facts to present and anything else, he knew, would be pointless. The woman’s words might as well have come to him carved on stone tablets.

“Tuesday the eighth, you are expected to be out of this house and off of this land.”

The weight of it all threatened to crush his pride. Before it fully failed him, Harlen raised his head and, doing his best to imitate Mary Elizabeth’s cold tone, he said, “What of the herd?”

“Sell them at the market. Take them with you.” Mary Elizabeth slid her chair back and stood. “We’ve an agreement for beef from Texas. The cattle drive is already on the way. Your goats are of no interest to us.” Before Harlen could respond, she walked to the door. Her two dirty friends followed her out.

Harlen stopped in the doorway and watched them swing atop their horses and disappear among the trees. Sunday crept out of whatever hiding place he had found and sat by the small foot path. Silently, the dog looked from the trees to Harlen, seeming to pose the same question Harlen asked himself. What now?

Harlen turned over his shoulder. Jennifer stood by the bedroom. Tears welled in her eyes.

I love you. It still didn’t seem like the right time, and just then he wondered if there ever would be a time for it.

Calvin ran from his room on the opposite side of the house into the arms of his mother. “I love you mom.”

“Love you too, baby.” They disappeared into the bedroom.

Harlen stepped out of the house. He sat on the top step of the porch and let his tears fall. Sunday bounded off toward the goats, perfectly unaffected by any of it.

The night had brought a heavy rain. Harlen didn’t wake Calvin for the patrol. He needed the solitude. He needed to think.

True thoughts didn’t come though, only feelings. He felt the pain of the conversation with Jennifer the previous night, the weight of the long silences and the sting of her thinly veiled disappointment. He felt his life slipping away and wondered what grasp he ever truly had on it.

With the morning chores complete, Harlen headed for town to arrange the sales. He knew Mary Elizabeth would have already informed Darryl or Hannah at the market and his part would be simple: a couple signatures.

Having sold the last of the horses to cover the few payments he’d managed to make over the past year, Harlen began the four mile walk to the town of Carter. About half way, the dirt path merged in with a wider, more rocky trail hardly fit for hooves, let alone a man’s feet. He walked in the soft, wet grass along the side the rest of the way.

As expected, Hannah met him at the door of the market’s main office. She smelled faintly of vinegar and lye soap. “Come on in, Harlen. Darryl’s got the paperwork ready.” Her words seemed steeped in pity, which somehow made it all worse.

Darryl wore every bit of his seven-plus decades on his face. He stood behind the long-stained oak counter with the papers laid out in front of him, and gave Harlen the same look as his older sister. “Hey, bud.”

Harlen shook as he stepped to the counter, doing everything he could to maintain something close to a calm, easy façade. He picked up the pen, not raising his eyes from the papers, though he could hardly focus to read them. “Nothing worth reading, anyway.” His words escaped.

“Yeah, it’s a tough spot there, bud. How’s the family taking it?”

Harlen couldn’t answer.

“Well, life’s full of tough spots like this, ain’t it? You and your family will be alright, though. You know that?”

Harlen knew he had to agree and scrambled for words that wouldn’t be too painful. “I suppose. Just a setback, is all. We'll make it one day. We’ll get there.” As he went, the words seemed to form themselves, “I don’t know what we’re going to do.” He shuddered as he heard himself say the last part.

“Ahh. Well, that ain’t quite it, is it?” Darryl stood up straight, his frail frame seemed to inflate with a more vigorous spirit. He took a few steps down toward the end of the counter, running his calloused, wrinkled hand along its beveled edge, then he turned back to Harlen. “Nobody really makes it anywhere, bud. Not really. You’re a father,” he pointed at Harlen, “a husband. My wife and kids are all long gone. Lost them to the winter back in fifty-seven. Every single day I think of them. You hear me, don’t you, boy? I’m telling you, there ain’t no finish line to all this. No grand victory. No big winners. You might well be facing the devil now, but don’t you go spoiling what you already got.”

Harlen left as quickly as he could. The walk home seemed almost too short. He stopped at the split in the road. As far as he could see, that rocky path stretched off into some distant future. It seemed endless as it curved around the hills, disappearing at times down into valleys only to climb again. Harlen knew his life lay down that rocky road – on it, not at its end. He turned down the small dirt path towards his home.

Harlen ran.

Jennifer had been sitting at the table, head in hands, and stood as Harlen burst through the door. He crossed the room in his muddy boots and wrapped his arms around his wife, pressing her close.

Her arms slid around his neck. Calvin came from his bedroom. Harlen pulled him close, too.

“I love you.”