The crisp autumn air whirled fallen leaves about the yard in miniature cyclones. The leaves made a dry, furtive crackling noise as they skittered quickly across the hard-packed dirt of the country lane. Set just yards back from the lane, the clean, simple structure of a farmhouse was painted warmly with streaks from the early October sun. From the absolute tidiness of the house and surrounding grounds, many said was a leap of faith to believe the house was inhabited by one widowed mother and her seventeen children.
Presently the widow stood on the front porch of her modest home, surveying her domain and all that it encompassed. She took this small bit of time each morning, these few moments to look about her and examine her life. After returning from taking the school-aged children to the Mount Carmel Parochial School in town, she stood in the same spot to breath the air and appreciate the life that the Good Lord had given her and all the gifts he had seen fit to bestow upon her.
Her pale blue eyes scanned the three barns, the equipment garage, the grain silos and corn bins. She then turned her gaze to the fields of winter wheat and shriveled corn stalks that reached as far as she could see to the north, east and west. For one moment she let her emotions become visible on her lined face as she wondered how different life might have been had her husband survived the aneurysm that had cut him down at the age of forty five.
There was so much to be done today, she thought, so many chores that ate up the hours of every day. She used these tasks, both the menial and the monumental, to dull the loneliness and pain she might have felt at the absence of her husband. She had taken over the management of the farm and its thousand-plus acres a mere seven days after the burial of the only man she’d ever loved. It was only the illness of ten year old Janet that kept her from jumping immediately into the fray.
In the eight years that had passed since his death she rarely allowed herself to dwell on the regrets and pitfalls of her situation; her faith in God and love for family had been enough to sustain her. But this morning had brought a disastrous blow and she let the doubts invade. Her eldest son Russ, her second hand and mainstay, the true reason was able to keep the place afloat, had voiced his plans to leave the farm. Lines of worry dissected her curving forehead and a tear escaped her eye to flow down her cheek.
The widow’s silent reverie was cut abruptly as, from the main barn, the laughter of two young men floated across the door-yard to her sharp ears. She moved swiftly from the porch, her mind sifting through possibilities as she went. She knew for a fact that Russ was in town buying seed for the spring because she had dropped him off herself. She also knew that Bruce and LeRoy were in the far east field digging out a drainage ditch that wasn’t living up to it’s name. That the left her two youngest sons, and they were supposed to be at the Catholic high school along with their sisters.
Her footsteps were quick and silent as she let herself into the barn. She tried to remember if they had been in the back of the truck with the other twelve of her school-aged children when she had made the trip into town this morning. As only the mother of seventeen children could, she shuffled through the faces in her memory, finally coming to the conclusion that no, they hadn’t been on the truck.
She was totally silent as she rounded the corner to stand in the doorway of the tack room. The bitter scent of gun oil wafted up to tickle her nose. She folded her arms firmly across her chest and assumed what her children had long since dubbed ‘the position’. She watched her youngest sons, ages fifteen and sixteen, for a full minute before she spoke at all.
“BOYS.” It was loud and clear and full of unchallenged authority.
The teenagers jumped, startled a bit by the voice- but more shocked that it happened to be the voice of their mother, who was supposed to be in town with Russ. The widow noted how comically wide their round eyes became. It was not abject terror, because none of her children were afraid of her; it was just a healthy respect for the leather belt she kept hanging on a hook on her bedroom door. And these two boys, in particular, had a long and intimate relationship with that leather strap due to their inquisitive and adventurous natures.
“If I’m not mistaken, this is a school day for you two. Since it’s a school day for everyone else.” She kept her arms crossed, kept ‘the position’ in tact and her voice firm despite the mirth that was creeping into the corners of her eyes.
She looked hard at them, taking in their tall, dark good looks. They closely resembled their father with deep, soulful brown eyes and thick curly locks. Ray and Ed were rambunctious, to be sure, and perhaps a bit on the wild side, but they were both good boys. And they were such cheerful boys, untouched by the hardships that they’d been forced to bear along with the rest of the family. These two, she thought, would never let life beat or break them.
“Explain yourselves.” The widow was curious to see how they would try to squirm out of this.
