Kate's Bluebonnets

[Guest guest]

Jim looked out over eighty acres of red dirt

where he had spent over fifty of his seventy plus years.

No rain in almost three months, the cotton was gone,

and with it the farm. The bank would own it next year.

Didn't matter much, nothing really did since he lost

Kate last year to the stroke.

He looked down at his hands, knotted with the

arthritis, the backs burned red by the relentless sun,

and thought of Cricket. Remembering how Kate

had loved that little bundle of fluff that someone

in town gave her so many years ago. As a rule he

didn't care much for dogs, and told her so, but as

usual Kate didn't pay him no mind and Cricket became

part of the family. In time he became right fond of that

pup but he wouldn't think of telling Kate.

But Cricket had got old, like him and Kate, and last

night she had died on her pillow in the corner of

kitchen.

Jim was tough as they come, but the tears came

while he was digging the hole out back for the pup.

Knowing that, once more, he was putting something

he loved into that dry red dirt, that had taken more

than it's share of blood and sweat over the last fifty years.

On his way back up to the house he walked through

the only piece of his land that he didn't plant cotton on.

It was a half acre of bluebonnets that he had put in

for Kate, the first year after they bought the farm, so she

could see them out the kitchen window. More than once

he had caught her standing at that window crying softly, and

when he asked her why, she would look at him with those

tear filled sky blue eyes, kiss him, and whisper in his ear

" Because I love those bluebonnets and I love you for

puttin em there for me."

Now there was nothing left but dry brittle twigs that

shattered and fell into the dust as he walked through them.

Looking down at the remnants of Kate's flowers,

something inside him came apart like an old watch,

his knees buckled and he fell, sprawled in the red dust

and the dead flowers. As a cloud of darkness descended

on his mind, the wind blew the sand in waves over his

motionless form.

 

To Be Continued

 

Mace