Will the (Circle) Be Unbroken {unitato}
Apr 9, 2018 5:42:27 GMT -5
Post by Lyn𝛿is on Apr 9, 2018 5:42:27 GMT -5
[googlefont="Pacifico:400"]
ana sage
ana sage
will the circle be unbroken | by and by, by and by? |
We used to have an old pecan tree on one side of our orchard, right on the edge where its branches could hang over the road.
The Keepers always ignored it 'cause the nuts were little hard things, tough to crack and with not enough meat for the Capitol to give so much as a second look at them. Good for shade and nothing more, they'd scoff, but Pa thumped the tree in the fall till the nuts fell down, and when the winter months came we'd roast 'em and spend evenings by the fireplace, my sisters and I picking out the lobes of nut flesh from the shells until Ma's favorite flower-shaped bowl was filled to the brim (which always took longer than it ought to, given that half the nut-meat tended to end up in our mouths instead of the bowl).
Pa's eyes would crinkle in a smile when he said "No more, no more, girls," and packed up the rest of it in an empty flour bag to trade with the family across the road for squash, for beans, for corn, and sometimes they'd even send us back a slice or two of their pecan pie and we'd fight over how to split it between the four of us.
But that was years an' years ago. Then one time he came back instead quite displeased, with no cornmeal and a bag still full of pecans. We stopped trading after that.
That was the trouble with fruit trees, he always said - something about supply and demand, how people never needed peaches or apples or pecans the way corn was needed by Ten for feeding livestock, by Nine for making into all sorts of chemicals, by Eight to use the fiber in weaving clothes.
So the whims of others determined our bountiful years and our lean years, and when the year Ma died was a particularly lean one we cut down that pecan tree and made good money selling the sturdy wood of its trunk.
When I sit on the tree stump and count the rings - there are thirty-eight - I can still remember the taste of those pecans from childhood. I can still remember Ma filling the house with the smell of cornbread and - I'd like something to keep those recollections from fading, even if all we have to go off of is a yellowing recipe page, stained with oil and written in her barely-legible scrawl.
We have no more pecans, but plenty of peaches and plums and almonds, and - this year I'd like to try trading again, to return pumpkin pancakes and corn muffins and breakfast grits to our kitchen.
The tall stalks quickly swallow me up as I set off, basket of fruit in my arms, and it's not long before the sun disappears over the edge of the topmost leaves. Don't go scarin' yourself for no reason, I tell my mind as it conjures up images of big bad wolves hiding in the field like in the stories, waiting to gobble up young girls carrying baskets of food, and to distract myself I hum an old hymn, one of those I still hear Pa singing sometimes when he's alone, one that brings back those memories of innocent early childhood.
I still can't help but flinch, mid-note, when I hear leaves rustling behind me. Of course, I turn around and it's not a wolf, nor a Keeper. Just a classmate that happened to be out in the field like me.
"Funny running into ya here, of all places - Abherrlamb?" All I knew of him was his name, that he lived a ways away from here, and that he tended to keep to himself at school. There were rumors about his family, but I could no more judge if they were true than figure out why he always smelled of mustard.
Unitato15 The Keepers always ignored it 'cause the nuts were little hard things, tough to crack and with not enough meat for the Capitol to give so much as a second look at them. Good for shade and nothing more, they'd scoff, but Pa thumped the tree in the fall till the nuts fell down, and when the winter months came we'd roast 'em and spend evenings by the fireplace, my sisters and I picking out the lobes of nut flesh from the shells until Ma's favorite flower-shaped bowl was filled to the brim (which always took longer than it ought to, given that half the nut-meat tended to end up in our mouths instead of the bowl).
Pa's eyes would crinkle in a smile when he said "No more, no more, girls," and packed up the rest of it in an empty flour bag to trade with the family across the road for squash, for beans, for corn, and sometimes they'd even send us back a slice or two of their pecan pie and we'd fight over how to split it between the four of us.
But that was years an' years ago. Then one time he came back instead quite displeased, with no cornmeal and a bag still full of pecans. We stopped trading after that.
That was the trouble with fruit trees, he always said - something about supply and demand, how people never needed peaches or apples or pecans the way corn was needed by Ten for feeding livestock, by Nine for making into all sorts of chemicals, by Eight to use the fiber in weaving clothes.
So the whims of others determined our bountiful years and our lean years, and when the year Ma died was a particularly lean one we cut down that pecan tree and made good money selling the sturdy wood of its trunk.
When I sit on the tree stump and count the rings - there are thirty-eight - I can still remember the taste of those pecans from childhood. I can still remember Ma filling the house with the smell of cornbread and - I'd like something to keep those recollections from fading, even if all we have to go off of is a yellowing recipe page, stained with oil and written in her barely-legible scrawl.
We have no more pecans, but plenty of peaches and plums and almonds, and - this year I'd like to try trading again, to return pumpkin pancakes and corn muffins and breakfast grits to our kitchen.
The tall stalks quickly swallow me up as I set off, basket of fruit in my arms, and it's not long before the sun disappears over the edge of the topmost leaves. Don't go scarin' yourself for no reason, I tell my mind as it conjures up images of big bad wolves hiding in the field like in the stories, waiting to gobble up young girls carrying baskets of food, and to distract myself I hum an old hymn, one of those I still hear Pa singing sometimes when he's alone, one that brings back those memories of innocent early childhood.
I still can't help but flinch, mid-note, when I hear leaves rustling behind me. Of course, I turn around and it's not a wolf, nor a Keeper. Just a classmate that happened to be out in the field like me.
"Funny running into ya here, of all places - Abherrlamb?" All I knew of him was his name, that he lived a ways away from here, and that he tended to keep to himself at school. There were rumors about his family, but I could no more judge if they were true than figure out why he always smelled of mustard.
