Wheelbarrow. (Blogging Lounge #2)



The dust flew up Kari maneuvered the ancient bus down the road. It had been so long since she had been to the farm, not since her Grandmother passed away.  One of her cousins ran it now, she couldn't remember which one.  All she remembered from her few trips out when she was a kid is nothing happened and it was very, very green, like the pot Charlie Cramps used to bring to the bar.

A strange feeling came over her as she came closer to the old gate. A joint would help calm me down, she thought. She wasn't sure why she had been summoned out here.  Something about distributing the estate of her father.  The farm belonged to that side of the family.  The family her mother so often tried to hide from.  The only thing she had from any of them was the silver brush with the Cherokee Rose inlaid into the head. The silver had burnished to mach her own color, almost as if it had chosen her for its steward.

Indeed, the brush was an object with its own spirit.  One that had sustained her many times in her life.  Those times when Mama was drunk and she was high and the clashes and recrimination flew the the tiny railroad shack. Each woman laying the blame for their shortcomings on the other. Over time, Kari realized that was futile. In her bar tending days, she would avoid the conflict by crashing at various friends' houses, sometimes for exchange of sex or house cleaning. It didn't matter to her.

As she drove , she noticed the old wheelbarrow.  The one Grandpa had built in the workshop. Someone said he could build anything. He had died when she was so little,she didn't have an image in her memory.  Only of Grandma.  They had never approved of Mama. They had been from different worlds.  Mama never knew hard work and sneered at those who performed it. Whereas Grandma was always about the farm and work. It didn't matter in the end. Daddy took off and left with nothing but the unending hatred of Mama. But none of that mattered. 

Someone had filled the old thing with a hydrangea big enough to almost cover it. Like Daddy's family, covering the splits and faults built up over time.  Kari pulled into the last space on the drive. 

Maybe now she could get some answers.

And some peace of mind.

Comments

  1. k~January 27, 2014 at 9:04 PM

    Nicely done Christopher. You took that wheelbarrow quite the distance. :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Another Government EmployeeJanuary 27, 2014 at 9:42 PM

      Thanks. I had been playing with different things for Kari and this seemed to work.

      Delete
  2. JoJanuary 27, 2014 at 11:10 PM

    That Kari took you to a good place! Answers...yes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. sueJanuary 28, 2014 at 12:25 AM

    You and Steven were n a similar wave length

    ReplyDelete
  4. StevenJanuary 28, 2014 at 5:10 PM

    "Covering the splits and faults built up over time." Very nice.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Tyler MyrthJanuary 29, 2014 at 6:43 AM

    Somehow we all come back to our roots

    ReplyDelete
  6. Brenda StevensFebruary 7, 2014 at 6:43 AM

    aww why are these making me tear up?

    ReplyDelete

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