So year after year they rose each morning before dawn, the old man each day dressed in the same plaid shirt and overalls and his wife in the same sack dress, with her hair wrapped in a tight bun. Living on a farm, they never considered themselves poor though they were poor. But they knew they wouldn’t starve. And looking around at other people, they knew that they had it pretty good, and there’s was a choice piece of property, and Uncle Ned had his eye on it for a very long time. So Uncle Ned was willing to risk a large section of his pasture for Salas’ river-bottom. And there was the bad blood between them, old scores to settle, and the fact that Salas would never turn down a sure bet. He didn’t acknowledge at first then that Truman was behind in the polls. His eye instead was on Uncle Ned’s land. He thought he knew his uncle, knew him well enough to outsmart him, so the two men exchanged a friendly greeting, inquired after their respective wives, and shook hands after they made their bets.
Without Helen there, Salas followed an impulse that he later regretted. And there were friends who warned him, too. But he didn’t hesitate.
Salas didn’t think of Helen and all the work they’d put into the farm. All the projects that went on at the same time. Over the years. The fences they built. The wells they dug. The front porch Helen insisted he screen. Truly an accomplishment and he was willing to throw it all away. “What do you mean he wagered his farm? He must’ve been drunk.” And throughout September he hadn’t touched a drop. Whenever the urge to drink became strong and intolerable…whenever the thirst after a long hot workday made him think of capitulating, Helen did something special for him. Added pork to a pot of beans or baked peach cobbler or stopped the iceman to make ice cream. Loving, kind. Felt as if she were conquering a demon, yet knew it would be a very long struggle. Whenever he came in from a long, hard day, perhaps discouraged over something, she smiled and invited him to sit down to something special. Something she baked or cooked. Like she knew what would please him. He wasn’t a man without a woman who loved him. And whenever his sense of failure and inadequacy almost overwhelmed him, he had someone to lean on. He depended on Helen and found comfort from their collie. Then how could he betray her? Think people didn’t know? Or hadn’t heard of his drinking problem?
The color in his face drained. Helen knew something was wrong. She then tried to confront him, but he pushed her away. He wouldn’t talk to her when he came home, knowing that he’d made a mistake. While he spent most of the night tossing and turning, in a bed next to Helen. Sweating in November. Shaking, no, not from the booze. He had to go to the bathroom almost on the hour, and he tripped on something because he didn’t turn the light on. Helen in her cotton nightgown, Helen kept awake. Furious at himself, he said, “What if Truman loses?
“I don’t let “what ifs” ruin my day. Now go to sleep.”
And from that point on, Salas tried to hold perfectly still and stared at the ceiling wondering if he could live through another round of ridicule.
“I need your help, Lord,” he prayed.
Always when Salas had a chance, he embellished past exploits. His life had not always gone smoothly. But he was always able to talk his way out of trouble. Sometimes Helen was afraid to ask him what was going on. She had learned to be patient and let him tell her what he needed to tell her when he could. If there was something that he needed to tell her, he eventually got around to telling her it, or she thought he would, or he always had in the past. She knew that she wouldn’t get anywhere, if she asked him directly.
They both knew first hand about hard times. They had to start from scratch before.
“Where once we had a farm; now we don’t have one.”
Thinking, “I hate Uncle Ned. To hell with him.”
Where he used to feel confident and enthusiastic and could shrug off hardships, now he wanted to crawl into a hole. He used to smile when he talked about toughing it, the part about living on rabbits and cooking what he killed over an open fire and sharing a huge pot with the boys who like him rode the rails. He never forgot those experiences. Because the track of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe ran right along the creek that ran along his northern property line, Salas was never far away from the sounds of trains and the memory of those days. You’d have thought, he still rode the rails.
Randy Ford
