Short Stories

Newspapers In The Well

Nana grabs the keys from the hook in the kitchen and asks me to turn the TV off and help her. We walk down the hall of her ranch-style home and out to the breezeway. For those unfamiliar with the term, a breezeway is basically a part of the home kind of like an enclosed porch with a door on both sides to allow a breeze to cool the space. Cool is a relative term in this case as it never gets very cool during a Texas summer. 

We get to the breezeway, she leads me over to the back door next to the deep freezer. This is where she stores their old newspapers. When newspapers didn’t get used as fire starters in the winter, they just piled up in the summer. There is no trash service where we are. If we want to throw stuff away, we can pay a king’s ransom for trash service or make weekly trips to the dump the next town over. Most trash ends up in the burn barrel, but not the old newspapers. 

Newspapers, phone books, and old magazines all in paper bags from the grocery store. I grab one by one, as many as I can carry, and put them in the back of Nana’s car. A boat of a car, yellow, its an Oldsmobile with a trunk that makes up about a third of the whole car. Once all the papers are loaded up, we got in. Nana backs the car out of the garage and continues in reverse down to the old well at the front of the property. 

I didn’t know it at the time, but the old well was originally out front of the house where my Granddaddy grew up. Long since not used, this well is not like the ones in children’s stories. This was more like a sinkhole in the ground. My granddaddy put up a fence around it, so, me, other kids, or the livestock didn’t fall in, and in my mind, sink never to be found again. 

Brown overgrown grass, mangled wire mesh fence built with “T” posts not one of them still standing straight. Some faded papers still visible from the last trip. From an open trunk we’d throw the old newspapers in. The paper would flutter and flap; then the thump once the bundles came to an unceremonious rest. The sides of the well, like little cliffs of black dirt, we were ever careful not to get too close to the edge or become a victim. 

I go back there in my mind—the flickering sepia tone images cycle and glitch. I see the wind turning the pages of old Sears catalogs and Southwestern Bell phone books. Faded circulars with smiling faces crumpled and caught in the rigid overgrown weeds dried by the perpetually long summer. The rusted wire mesh fence catches what it can, but the discarded paper has broken out of its resting place and is now littering the fields. I can almost feel the hot wind like an open oven. I linger, but not for long.

Ferris Red Brick

When I was five, my mom and dad built their dream house on a piece of land carved out from the family farm. A place to put down roots and give room for a family to grow. Long before we all packed up our stuff and moved into the new house, the land was a place for us to explore when we visited Nana. In the rainy season many things would be exposed by the suddenly harsh weather and, at times, history would be uncovered.

My great-grandad once leased a part of the property to a man who raised pigs. His pen was at a low spot in the creek. Not sure of the time but I could imagine that during the depression feeding livestock can sometimes be difficult. This farmer has made an arrangement with the local school. He would take all the food that was thrown out after the kids had their lunch, and feed it to the pigs. Often times, mixed in with the food waste, were the tops of food cans and utensils. After a hard rain it would not be unusual to find a fork or spoon when on a hike. 

Near that same spot, mysteriously exposed once after a heavy rain, were red bricks that appeared as if they were rolling from out of the black dirt creek bank. In 1985 our family home was finished and sealed up. The porch, ideal for tracking thunderstorms on the horizon, was complete but a walkway was needed in order to connect the driveway to the porch. 

In that time, when bricks were made, the factory would imprint their brand on the face. Sometimes it would be a year other times a name. Unsurprisingly, some of the bricks uncovered after years of lying dormant, were imprinted by a factory in a neighboring town, “Ferris”. Mom set out to retrieve these bricks to be put back in service. While many things my parents built had their thumbprint, the brick walkway leading up to the house, has always been in my memory. I can imagine now, the bricks returning to their sleep after years of service to my family and I.

Tallow Roots

Behind the house where I grew up was a wooded area. Running through that wooded area, was a creek. I didn’t live in a neighborhood; it was a ranch, more or less. During the summers off from school, and between baseball practices, I was mostly on my own. Parents both worked hard to keep our needs met, and my sisters were off to college by the time I stopped being an annoying little brother. 

Those summers, like most kids, were full of boredom forcing one’s imagination to take over. My mom was a wealth of knowledge about what this plant or this tree was called. There was this old fallen over tree that looked like it never aged, “that’s a Bodark tree," she said (thats pronounced BOW-dark). “That wood is so hard that it would dull your chainsaw." Never skip a hike with Rita. We had one tree on our hikes where we would follow the livestock trail as it matched the wind in the creek. When the wind blew through the leaves of this tree, it would sound like applause. 

This tree was grand. You could see and hear it from almost anywhere on the ranch if you knew what you were looking for. When I asked, Mom let me know that grand tree was called a Chinese Tallow tree. This tree was my favorite. Not only did the subtle sound from the clapping leaves provide some sonic therapy, but it had a huge root that spanned over the creek. The water rolled underneath the root and on its way. 

No matter what was going on at the time, I could go to where the creek turned and dipped underneath the Tallow Roots.