The Drought

            The land wasn’t beautiful anymore, not in reality. What had been sweeping fields of mixed flowers and weeds and the odd blade of grass was now a barren plain of yellow stalks. They didn’t bend when the wind pushed at them; they barely even moved. It was like they were indifferent to the forces of nature around them. Well, that, or they stopped caring about the big, wide world when they were allowed to die where they stood. It’s hard to continue reacting when someone has left you for dead.

            But the land was still beautiful in Zach’s mind, and that was what was important. As long as he had his memories to fill in the gaps, he could handle the sights that made him want to stagger back and ask for mercy. He could carry on with his day and ignore the crunching sound beneath his feet.

            But not today. It was harder to ignore today.

            Today his foot touched the rock that sat, inconveniently, two hundred feet from the house and he was transported back. It was enough that it took some effort to get to, but was much too close to be a getaway from the house. An altogether unnecessary thing. Still, it was where seven-year-old Zach chose to sit that day.

            His feet made a comforting tramping sound as he stomped towards it. When he got to the rock, he realized it was going to be horribly uncomfortable, but it was too late. He had made up his mind, and he didn’t want his family to think he had made it incorrectly.

            Zach’s elbows rested on his knees and he used his tiny hands to rub his eyes. He knew they must still be red because they stung. He just wanted it to stop, but he didn’t know how. The side of his face throbbed, and he started to wish he had brought an ice pack out with him. Something, anything, to make this feeling go away.

            But he didn’t have anything. He was sitting on his rock,  thinking through the last few minutes. He wouldn’t be moved, not for anything. He would show them all who he was, and they would never forget it.

            Still, the wind started to blow colder and colder, and the sky twisted into a burning red. He began to wish someone would come out to get him. Maybe one of his older sisters, maybe his mother. He wouldn’t be moved. Well . . . he’d only be moved if someone came and made him. If they promised that things would be quieter when he came back inside.

            His resolve was breaking. Zach looked down at his shoes and tapped them together a few times. Then the screaming, the tears, the sickening pain, they were all there again. He didn’t want to go back inside anymore, even if it meant sitting out here after nightfall.

            But surely, surely, someone would come for him. In spite of himself, he twisted around and glanced at the front door of his crooked home. No one. No eyes peaked out from the window. So . . . waiting.

            He waited for hours before finally slinking back inside.

            The memory of this didn’t make his stomach turn anymore. It didn’t do anything, except exist. It was too far away to care about, to wonder at. Besides, he had gotten good at willing himself forward.

            Sweat dripped down the back of his leg. He was grateful for it. Despite the fact that this stretch of Midwestern land received a blanket of snow during the winter, this was how Zach always remembered it. It was the place where the heat tried to swallow him whole as soon as he left the house; where the weak of heart were reduced to piles of ashes in a few minutes. He couldn’t imagine the rain, although it must have rained throughout his childhood. It had been so long since he had last seen rain that he wasn’t sure he would recognize it if it finally showed up.

            The old blue barn sat out in the middle of the field, more crooked than it used to be. Zach wondered if it had truly shifted over time, or if he had just thought of things as sturdier when he was little. The building he had seen as strong and permanent was actually just a bunch of old wooden boards, hastily thrown together by his grandfather. The eerie curve of it ran straight into his brain and made him shudder.

            It was there that he had returned after his high school prom, his sweaty right hand firmly grasping his date’s. He had thrown the huge doors open, his eyes nervously searching the dark depths. His date cleared her throat and tugged at his arm. He turned and kissed her quickly. She tried to put her arms around his neck and draw him in, but Zach avoided this and turned back to the dark barn. His legs started to feel twitchy and his nausea grew. This place was different at night. He had spent so much time here, had thrown things up into the loft and chased out the snakes. He probably knew every corner of it, and yet now it looked at him like a stranger. Zach didn’t want to be here, and desperately wished they had never left the dance.

            His date cleared her throat again and said, “Well?” She let go of his hand and moved so she was standing in front of him. Zach almost reached out to grab her arm and stop her from entering the looming darkness, but gained control of himself. It’s nothing, just let it go and focus on who you’re with. Tonight’s the night.

            She smiled at him, a strand of her blonde hair falling across her forehead like . . . a worm. Zach shook his head and tried to clear his brain.

            “Is something wrong?” she said, her smile turning into an expression of worry and vague annoyance.

            “No,” he said, “of course not.”

            “Well, good,” she said. Her hands reached up to where the straps of her dress met at the back of her neck. She carefully untied them, her face lost in a frown of concentration, and let the dress fall to her waist.

            His mind cleared. Zach’s fear briefly forgotten, he took a step towards his date and reached out his hand . . .

            Suddenly the barn was flooded with light. Zach froze in place and blinked. He barely had time to process the horrified expression on his date’s face before the laughter started. Zach was overwhelmed by the thought that, somehow, hyenas had infiltrated the farm. His arms shrunk around him to cover his body. But . . . it couldn’t be . . .

            The faces of his two sisters appeared over the loft railing. Gasping for breath, Amelia yelled, “I’m sorry, are we interrupting something?” His date ran past him out of the barn. Zach couldn’t tell if she was sobbing or out of breath.

            “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted up at the loft, his voice cracking a little.

            “Sorry, sorry,” Rachel said, “we just couldn’t help ourselves.”

            “We were hoping you’d come back here,” Amelia said, “and you did! So, thank you. That was . . . entertaining . . .” She locked eyes with Rachel and they both burst into another fit of laughter.

            “You’d better stay up there!” Zach shouted. “When I get my hands on you two . . .”

            Rachel leaned her elbow on the railing and pushed a clump of her hair back. “You’ll what? Please let me know what you’re going to do once you get your hands on your tiny female siblings.” Zach felt his face burn. He wanted to hurt something, but Rachel was right, it couldn’t be them. His body was trembling uncontrollably from the combination of fear and humiliation that had so quickly run through him. He stalked over to the ladder that accessed the loft and put both hands on it.

            “What are you . . . Don’t!” he heard Amelia yell behind him. He ignored her and pulled. The wood protested, but the nails were so old they couldn’t hang on. The ladder came off the loft in a flurry of dust and wood chips. Zach threw it down next to him.

            “What the hell?” Rachel screamed. “What’d you do that for?”

            “Do you seriously not know?” Zach yelled back.

            “Well, thank you, now we’re all fucked,” Rachel said.

            “Good for us!” Zach threw out his hands. “You could always jump down.”

            “Do you want me to hurt myself?”

            “It wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

            “Oh, shut up.”

            The three siblings glared at each other. Amelia put her hands on her hips and then dropped them. Rachel was still leaning against the railing, taking deep breaths and chewing the inside of her cheek. Zach clenched and unclenched his fists. The silence covered them, and stoked the anger floating between them.

            Suddenly, Zach felt two hands land on his back and give him a push. He stumbled forward. He whirled around, only to be greeted by the sight of his mother clutching his date by the wrist. In her rush to get away from the barn, she hadn’t quite managed to retie the straps of her dress. She was covering her breasts with her free arm and looking around like a wild animal.

            “Who is this?” his mother demanded, her grip tightening.

            “Mom, stop, it’s my prom date. Let her go,” Zach looked from his mother to his date. He wanted to say something, apologize for this whole night, but the words died on his lips.

            “I will not let her go,” his mother said. Her face had turned red and her eyes bore right into his spirit. Suddenly he was eight years old and had broken a plate while drying it. “Please explain to me why half of her dress is off.”

            His face had to be bright red. “Mom, please just let her go . . .”

            “And what are you two doing in here? What is this? Some big orgy?”

            “Mom!” Amelia said. “It’s not . . . Just . . . Don’t worry about us, we’re fine. Just deal with what’s in front of you.” She gestured down to Zach. He glared at her. Her nose crinkled in a mocking expression.

            “Good God, boy, when I am done with you—“ His mother’s eyes caught the ladder behind him. She stepped forward, pulling the poor girl along with her. “What’ve you done?!” she screamed. All of Zach’s instincts told him to make a break for the door while she was out of the way. Instead, he pivoted in place and made a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a nervous laugh.

            “That was Zach!” Rachel said, pointing to her brother as if her mother didn’t know who he was. “Zach did that because he was mad at us!”

            “I swear to God, you three are going to be the death of me,” his mother said, her tone quieter. The sound of it cut through him. Her hands were shaking.

            “Look, it’s going to be okay, mom. Besides, it wasn’t really us,” Rachel said. She sat down and put her legs over the edge of the loft. “I mean, we technically started it, but . . .” She jumped to the floor. Everyone stared at her in shock. Her face went from her usual self-satisfied expression to one of sudden pain. A moment passed. Then she started screaming.

            His mother rushed forward. “What have you done?” she asked, her voice strained as she leaned over Rachel. In her worry, she had released Zach’s date. The girl ran back out through the doors and into the night.

            “A stupid thing, mom,” Rachel said, rolling back and forth on the ground. “I did a really stupid thing.”

            “You can say that again,” Zach said, relieved that the focus was briefly off him.

            “Shut up, fuckface,” Rachel said.

            “Rachel!” his mother said. “Language!”
            “Mom!” she said. “I think my ankle’s broken!”
            “All right, all right,” his mother said. She looked out the door, in the direction of the house. “Zach, do you think you could go get your father?”

            Zach’s stomach lurched. He looked from where Rachel lay on the ground to the door to the stressed curve of his mother’s lips. He didn’t want to go, but he needed to.

            “What are you waiting for?” Rachel yelled. “Go!”
            “Please,” his mother said, her voice softening, “it’ll be okay.”

            He nodded and turned. He focused on the movement of his feet. Soon, he was out in the night and approaching the house. It was okay. His sister needed him.

            Zach pulled back out of his memories. It didn’t matter now. He reached out and grabbed the doorknob. Despite all the years, the door held the way he remembered, then gave under the pressure of his hand. He pulled it open, and the scent of ten deserted years hit him and almost made him crumble to the ground.

            The kitchen light was on, and he made his way toward it. His lawyer was standing at the counter, the contracts laid out in front of her. She had offered to bring them to his apartment, but he’d wanted to see it again. All the furniture that his mother had lovingly collected had been scooped out, the house a shell of what it had been. The smell lingered, though: the smell of roast cooking, and the smell of his sisters’ perfume. He smiled at his lawyer, and reached out to the counter.

            And when his hand landed, it landed on his father’s, twelve years ago. His father was lying in a hospital bed, his eyes half closed. His skin had lost all of its harsh, ruddy complexion and stretched tightly over his skull. His hand twitched away when it felt Zach’s touch. He grunted.

            Zach sat down in the chair next to his father’s bed, his hands clasped in front of him. He tapped his feet and looked at the clock on the wall. His mother was supposed to come back at four, an agonizing thirty minutes away. His eyes flickered to his father, and then flickered to the wall.

            His father grunted again, and his eyes widened. His fingers twitched. Zach swallowed, and watched. His father’s eyes met his. “What . . . what are you doing here?”

            Zach took a deep breath. “You asked for me, dad.”

            His father wheezed in and out. “What are you . . . what are you doing in my bedroom?”

            Zach leaned forward. “We’re not in your bedroom, dad. We’re at the hospital. Do you remember coming here?”

            His father’s face pulled through a series of angry and bewildered expressions before arriving at something like acceptance. “I’m here . . . I’ve been here for a long time . . .”
            Zach nodded. When he had first heard of his father’s liver cancer diagnosis, he’d been ashamed of the relief he had felt. Of the overwhelming release that had gone through his body when they’d found out it was terminal. So many good people were taken from their families before their time, but his father wasn’t one of them. His father had been with them fifty-one years too long.

            The weathered man’s expression became panicked, and he made an effort to turn his head and face his son. “Zach,” he said. “Zach . . . I need to . . . I couldn’t . . . Please, I can’t . . .”

            Zach opened his mouth, then closed it. He wanted to hear it and he didn’t.

            “I just . . .” his father said, and then his expression glazed over. Zach watched, and his nerves pulled tight. He needed to call his mom, his sisters. They should get here, they’d be too late if they got here at four. Oh God, oh God . . .

            And then he heard it, as though it were a million miles away. That faint beeping that had served as background noise for so many weeks. It slowed, and then stopped. Then the constant whine of the heart monitor began as it warned the doctors of their patient’s distress. They rushed in. Zach stood up.

            He walked out, and as he walked out, he felt something he hadn’t felt since he was eighteen. Since that night in the barn, when his sister’s carelessness had led him back to the house. Zach felt his father’s fist collide with his cheek, then his stomach. All the air was knocked out of him. He walked faster, then stumbled to the ground, catching himself with his hands. He brushed them off on the sides of his pants, got up and kept walking. The blood was pounding in his ears. He felt his father’s hand wrap around his seven-year-old wrist, his head slamming into the wall behind him. He wanted to be out of the hospital, he needed to be. The sliding doors were in front of him, welcoming him back into the warm, blue world.

            Zach signed the contracts quickly. He had spent weeks working them out, and knew them almost to the letter. It was all there, it was fair. The land was being sold to their neighbors and would be consolidated into their farm. The rate his family was getting was better than the average, and they needed the money. Amelia had lived with their mother since their father died, the two women clinging to each other like they were the last people on Earth. Rachel had moved to New York, and nobody had heard from her for over six months. They were all still rooted in the past, just as he was. It was time to cut a few of the heavier strings.

            It was over faster than he had imagined, his lawyer’s eyes bright, her grip firm in their handshake. He didn’t linger over the house. Zach made a beeline for the front door and let himself out.

            He tried not to look at it as he crossed to his car, but his eyes wandered anyway. It hadn’t changed, but the land didn’t look as dead anymore. Maybe he was being swept up in the last of a gasping nostalgia, maybe it had just gotten later. But something about it welcomed him in as it said goodbye. The smell of the grass weaved its way into his hands, into his blood. He could cut the strings, but these things would always be here. They would always have formed him, loved him, and given him away. There would always be a place where it would never be done.

            And maybe that was okay. Maybe he could live with that. His lips twitched up. Then he climbed into his tiny car and drove off.