Fargo Tate, District 7 [Done]
Feb 1, 2015 19:00:16 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2015 19:00:16 GMT -5
Name: Fargo Tate
Age: 15
Gender: Female
District 7
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy
The thing I remember most about being small is the way that we would huddle around the wood burning stove. Red and yellow sparks would click in the cast iron creature, and our shadows would dance behind us on the wall. Our cabin never had enough space to keep us from stepping on one another, but I guess that’s just how Edgar wanted it. He was not—and would not be—my father, but the man that my mother took to after my father died in a tree felling accident. I was three at the time, my sister was barely a year old. Edgar weaseled his way into our lives by hauling the wood in the winter to our lean-to, and by spending the evenings sipping whiskey with my mother reminiscing about how good a man my father had been.
My mother had never been sturdy or strong. She was the same as the saplings that dotting the little forest just up the way. She liked to blow in the way, and always seemed to be on the verge of snapping in half. She had done the best she could in life, finding a man that would provide both the shadow and the strength for her to carry on. It was no surprise that she was assigned to a carving division. Her eyes were more accustomed to little details, and her hands were careful with fragile things. Her biggest lesson has always stuck with me: there is no need to make a name for yourself by speaking loudly and beating your chest. Your work should be able to stand on its own, without the need for you to advertise its strengths.
I don’t remember much of my father. My friends ask if I have any connections to the few photos my mother has… pictures of them on their wedding day, or me sitting on his knee with a smile on my face. In truth, the only thing I seemed to remember was that he always smelled of hickory—a strong, odorous smell that was stronger than the smoke from the wood burning stove. He had calloused hands, and a deep voice. Did he yell? Not that I remember. Did he give any bits of advice, or aphorisms that I’m suppose to have carried on for him? Nothing comes to mind. I know his skin was dark like mine, but his face? Nothing but the smell of hickory, a beard that scraped against my little cheeks, and a name—Zeke.
Edgar became a part of our lives by addition—growing was a frequent trait of his throughout his life—adding not only one, but two to our little family. His mother was sick and ailing, and needed somewhere to live. She couldn’t spend the long, cold winters alone, and her eyes had clouded up, making work with her hands close to impossible. My mother obliged because—how could we not? And so Eleanor moved in, cane and all. Now you must not think that I’m rude for saying that the woman was the same as her cane: cold, rigid, and unfeeling. She was the disciplinarian of our household, and became as much by watching my sister and eye on afternoons when my mother and Edgar worked.
You will address me as Miss Eleanor. She would say, and there were two hard knocks against your shin if you did not. Despite the fact that she could scarcely walk on her own, her mind had not dulled as a sense at all. There were always bits of wisdom for me or my sister. A chatty woman never catches a man. Was one of her favorites. Wide hips don’t fit through doors. Was another when she thought my sister and I needed to skip a meal. It was only when I turned reaping age did I realize she would tell us this so she could finish the food that she had prepared for us. It was then that I started to want to tug at the whiskers that had grown on her chin, and drag her straight out of the front door of this house.
For her part, my mother never changed from the sapling. Miss Eleanor would squawk at her attempts to make dinner, to sweep the floor, to tidy up, or scold us. And any disagreement was met with reproach from Edgar, who barreled in from work with a yell. His face would grow so red at night, I thought he would burst a blood vessel from all the screaming that he would do. He wanted to toughen us up, or so he would always say. We were too soft, and too small, not to know how to stand up for ourselves. Funny how he seemed to see us as little porcelain dolls that he could smash over and over again. Piecing us back together was no better than turning us to dust. I’m not sure which he would have preferred.
My sister took to her lessons like a good little girl, but I—I suppose I looked too much like my father for Edgar’s liking. I was too much trouble. My hair was always a mess; I didn’t want to be a carver, despite being rail thin and having tiny hands. I chattered too much about the way things were and then too little when I was supposed to be praising him for his hard work. He took the belt to me when I was small but I learned, he did this to shame us from our own thoughts. Better to keep them to myself than to let an ogre twist them, or worse, beat them out of me. The bruises he gave me would heal but I did not forget them—or the type of man that he was, even for all of his apparent love of my mother.
But whatever they had found in one another at first sight was long gone by the time I started marching to the town square. He openly mocked my mother at the dinner table when she hunched her shoulders, or complained of being too tired. He would yell at my sister that she didn’t eat enough, she wasn’t growing fast enough even when there was hardly enough to eat between the five of us. Miss Eleanor and Edgar always had more—always wanted more—than they would give to the three of us. And despite our best efforts we were soundly beaten, threatened, or tossed to bed with no supper for the slightest bit of disagreement.
I found a lot of solace in the woods, when I decided I would learn how to scale the trees and mark them for cutting. Edgar fumed that I wouldn’t be a carver—he said carvers often got a bigger share because the capitol valued their products more than men and women in the woods—but it was the one act, perhaps the last act of defiance my mother had. I was allowed to continue learning, and do what I wished, as long as I caused no trouble. I think it may have been what pushed Edgar over the edge, from begrudging ogre to an ugly, deceitful monster.
My mother had never had any bruises, but it did not become uncommon to return home from the woods to see her pressing ace or a cold rag to her arm. She would make up the excuses for what had happened, but Miss Eleanor would boldly state that someone as clumsy as my mother deserved what she had gotten. My skin would crawl thinking about the many ways that I wanted to slice the old hag’s throat, but worse was the thought that a twelve year old could do nothing to stop Edgar. My mother had invited in a devil, and now we were paying the price. At least—that’s what I had thought.
It was early last year when he decided to lay into my sister. She had been stuttering, and doing her best to beat the problem back—when Edgar finally decided he would not have that sort of daughter at his house. We were around the table, knives and forks scraping the old porcelain plates, when she stuttered out a story about school. He looked up at her, eyes wide, and snarled. The purple vein popped on his forehead and he told her, Don’t do it again. You’re going to stop this nonsense. And she said nothing, eyes all wide, and looked from my mother to him. I’m going to fix this, He said. Repeat after me: My name is Cecilia, he stood now, walking over to kneel next to her.
M-my n-name is c-c-c… He slammed a hand down on the table, and all of us jumped. She took a breath and started again. M-my n-na… He grabbed her by the shoulders then, and I heard her scream. I remember the prickle underneath my skin as I watched him start to shake my sister. How he screamed at her, that she needed to stop, this was for her own good. M-my… And then he struck her, across the face, so that she fell out of her chair. I stood and clenched my fists, and rushed from my spot. Miss Eleanor already saw—she swung her cane under my foot and knocked me to the floor. We were both on the floor then, broken by the same ones that we offered so much to.
From there, it was not uncommon for us to have slumped shoulders and marks on our bodies. The neighbors would talk, but who would do anything to help us? If we were miserable, there had to be a hundred other families just as much so. I never stopped thinking of him hitting my sister, of him shaking her, standing over us, lording over the fact that he had the power.
He and I were assigned to the same team in the forest—him a cutter, me a marker. We spent the better part of a month avoiding one another, me in the trees and he tossing limbs, branched, and bushes into the wood chipper. It was a day in late spring when by chance, I had marked a set of trees not far from his camp. He saw me jump down to the base and had a hand on my shoulder before I could so much as turn around. I should’ve been able to hear him—but not a few feet from where I was working stood the chipper, grinding away odds and ends.
I don’t like how you been talking, Edgar said. He left his hand on my shoulder. I grit my teeth. Men around here say it ain’t right what the Tates got going. Like to remind me of my place. You need to tell them there ain’t nothing wrong.
I blinked and grit my teeth. After a moment, I swirled around my tongue, and spat a loogie into his fat face.
To say that hell hadn’t opened up beneath us would be an understatement. His fist was across my face, and knocked me hard to the ground before I could even see the stars form. His foot also found my side, and I struggled to let out a breath. And there he was, grinning. Just looking at me like he owned all of it, all of us—and there was nothing that we could do about it. I felt my blood run hot, and I clenched my fists together. I jumped up, and lunched my shoulder into his stomach. He must’ve thought I didn’t have the fight in me—because the man stumbled backwards, hard enough that he landed just at the mouth of the chipper.
Now I will tell you what I told the other men and women on the team, that accidents happen. Because it is a terrible tragedy that he fell into the chipper, that he was so clumsy, and top heavy, that his body was caught, and ripped to pieces, in huge chunks, until there was no more Edgar than there was a mixture of sawdust and flesh. And all of us would mourn that something so tragic could happen, that someone so strong would make such a foolish mistake.
But that’s just how life is—accidents happen—and you move on, a bigger person for it. A happier one, too. Because you know there are some lives that only get better, even in the face of tragedy.
Odair
