Hedge of Thorns: Rocks
I picked rocks, countless rocks. None of them were diamonds, that would have paid for the art education I craved. I’d sneak away from the wall-building work detail and sketch as often as I dared.
Grandpa caught me at it, and on my nineteenth birthday gave me a cruel gift: a hunting blind, and four nine-person tents, all made of plain canvas, and four cans of exterior acrylic paint.
“There you go, girl. Make ’em camouflage to match the terrain on our land.”
Still sours my stomach… how does someone become so trapped in valuing everything, every object, every gift, by its usefulness alone? Beyond loathing the task of painting those tents, I despised living in them.
What’s wrong with a nine-person tent? Dad and Mom shared one, Bobby and Grandpa had another, and the other two kept all our supplies under shelter. Why did Mom think she needed enough vinegar to pickle every vegetable in the state for the next decade? The stinking barrels loomed over my cot, crammed into the last corner. Adding insult to annoyance, everyone else snored. I couldn’t wait until the day we had a solid house.
It’s nearly as warm and still as the day the rented draft horse died after hauling the tree Dad chose for a future cabin ridgepole up the slope. The poor animal reached level ground, folded its knees, and collapsed, a ton of flesh Dad had to pay for, and dispose of. To this day, the butchery defines gruesome for me.
The resultant blood and manure were dumped in the area we’d designated for the garden. Bobby got the job of working it into the soil. Dad and Grandpa hauled carcass chunks to a distant ravine and scattered them for the coyotes.
The ironic part? After all that work, Dad discovered that the ash embedded in the tree bark dulled his chainsaw blade.
He reverted to using an old-school ripsaw.
The cabin, built using chiseled mortise and tenon construction, stands low and solid, its back wall to the hillside. Its door and main windows face north. North light, ideal for doing art, were it not for Dad’s tool chest, Grandpa’s cobbler’s bench, and Mom’s quilting frame taking over the largest front room, leaving no space for an easel. Grandpa slept in the middle room, and the kitchen with its window was the east end. Again, I shared space with the vinegar barrels in the rear upstairs loft. Bobby got the front one, with the window.
Hedge of Thorns: Rocks is a serialized short story that posts on Fridays.
Find other, previously posted serialized stories here.
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