Browning
This story is inspired by the literary journal The First Line. The journal's premise is a great challenge to a writer to play with a given first sentence. A literary prompt if you will. This sentence was a starter prompt from the summer issue.
Browning
By Ryan Richard Nych
By the fifteenth month of the drought, the lake no longer held her secrets. The trophies lie withering all around. Paulie walked the shoreline with tears in his eyes, the once dark depths that held his joys becoming a small mud hole. The acrid smell of rot burned his nostrils he walked the cracked, cratered mud, trying to avoid the blackened, sickly leathered scales of eyeless paper fish. He could see the darkened and blistered backs of the few survivors, swirling in the mud with the pigs praying for a savior storm or suffocation. His grandpa stocked them years ago and taught Paulie how to catch them all over again. Catching and releasing. Grandpa used to say that life on the farm teaches you life. Lately Paulie felt it teaches death.
Paul wasn’t worried about the bass like Paulie. Paul lost all his crops and his pigs were losing weight. The wildfires took out the wheat, the heat took out the corn, the smoke took out the beans, the dry air took out seedlings, the year had taken all life. They had Anne’s family in the southeast, but the truck wouldn’t be able to make that trip. Her family hates that she fell in love with a poor farm boy. Hated it even more that she moved out there. Paul always felt they blamed him for her passing. Paul and Paulie would refuse to leave the farm anyway. She is still there with Grandpa and Grandma.
Paulie reached into the newly made wallow and grasped a near lifeless 9lb. largemouth bass, no fight left, giving itself to the merciful hands of death. Paulie ripped the muddy gills out of the gill plates. The lunker shivered quickly and all movement ceased. Paulie carried the bass to the little shade given by the tall browned scrub oak where he and grandpa spent many days’ afternoon casting into the deep black mysteries, now nothing but a shallow pig pit.
Dying memories. Dying land. Dying passions. Paulie noticed the white of the basses belly, the purple of the clot in his hand, the light olive-silver of the bass, the red on his knife while filleting. The sun baked the world into a dry light brown. Paulie noticed the wet red of his hand. He wondered if how much longer the drought would have to last for his own blood to dry in his veins, until he is part of the leathered brown landscape. Dying bodies from a dying lifestyle. He wondered what the grocery store life of the city would be like. Wondered if anyone knew or cared that his family is drying out, dehydrating. The two left walking to care for the stones of those left. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust takes a whole new meaning these days. The dying embers of day left cursed sun setting on cursed land. This world looks foreign now, like the sepia prints that Grandpa used to show him of the ol’ days.
Paulie thought of his mom and thought of his grandpa. He thought of the papered scales of the fish. He wondered if they all were the same. He wondered if he and his dad were any different than the hogs eating mud for the last drops of moisture. Wondered what he was holding onto. He then heard his father call him in to come to supper.
They enjoyed a meager meal of bass and baked beans that Paul had bartered for bacon. Paul apologized, “a father should be able’r do more f’r ’is son.” Paulie told him everything is okay, they don’t need nothing but some water.
At night, Paulie could hear his father’s cries. His prayers. To God, then Jesus, then to papa, and then to mom. All were asking for strength and rain, forgiveness, health for his kid and crop. Dad’s sobs were worse than his thirst or his hunger or his sadness. He crawled out of the window and walked across the field to his scrub oak. He looked up through the brittle branches. He couldn’t pray, felt more like cursing. The plagued world of brown and black and red. A world of dying, death, and suffering. He couldn’t cry here, he felt his mom and grandpa so close by. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he noticed the water had settled. He watched the dorsal fins pierce the mirror of night. A portal into the heavens, reflecting a heavenly indigo. He remembered the green of the scrub oak, the silver of all those bass, the electric oranges and yellows of bream. He imagined distant crack of thunder rumbled the night and shook the dust and sand. He watched the last of his pond’s survivors performing a hopeful raindance. Hope? Burned backs and sucking pig droppings and these fish had more hope than he. His dad still had hope. He stared at the black hole in the earth and figured that is his home now.
A brilliant white reflection streaked across the water and the skies opened up with hope. Paulie sat stunned as the life poured down, soaking his head and legs. The earth drank each drop, dirt exploding toward the sky in rapture. Paul ran to the porch and both stood in the rain. For hours they watched as the earth drank and the skies provided. Paul fell to the mud and chanted thank you. Paulie went back to the pond. The muddy waters had risen and he could no longer see if Grandpa’s bass were dancing. The depths again swallowed their secrets. Grandpa’s secrets. Paulie tried to think of what Grandpa said. “Life is about holding on and letting go. Life is hope and death. Life is about the depths and colors. Life is about seeing beauty for what it is.”
