by Darrell Case
When moved Alison to Washington nine years earlier she purchased a townhouse in Georgetown. Here at last was her own home. Sometimes she would rise at night and wander through the rooms. She marveled at the woodwork, carpeting, and chandeliers. Ownership gave her a sense of wealth.
It quickly became clear she was in over her head. The mortgage payments ate up her earnings and then some. She supplemented the difference by dipping into her meager savings. With no money for furnishings, she bought a mattress and slept on the floor. That was for the few nights she was home. During the first six months, she spent less than two weeks in actual residence there. The rest of the time, she was on assignments in distant states. Overwhelmed she put the house on the market. Here was another area of her life where she failed. A week later, she sold the home to an attorney. The man had a wife and two kids. The boy and girl ran through the place picking out their rooms. She reluctantly turned the key over to the excited couple and left the house as something died inside her.
Now she lived at least a few weeks a year in a small one-bedroom apartment. To someone who grew up on a farm in Indiana the city seemed to crowd in, its noise and traffic plunging into her small space.
Alison filled the bathtub almost to the brim, and then realized it was overfull. A Spanish family lived below her and their kids’ bedroom was directly under her bathroom. After draining the tub halfway she eased into the hot water. Lying back, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift back to her childhood. She loved growing up on the farm. When she was six years old, her father gave her the task of feeding an orphaned calf. She named him Brucie. Alison adored the animal and cried when it was sold. Her father took pity on his daughter’s sobbing pleas and returned the buyer’s money. Brucie grew to up to be fat and content. He followed her through the pasture like a dog. She always carried lumps of sugar for him as a treat. He died in his stall the night before Alison's sixteenth birthday.
Her father farmed the land, as had his father and grandfather. In spite of the backbreaking labor, Frank Stevens always made time for his wife and daughter. During planting or harvest season, that might have only been when they brought him dinner in the field or if Alison rode with him to the grain elevator. When she was 12, she discovered why the large full moon was called a harvest moon. One night she and her father and mother worked the fields until midnight. With only the headlight of the tractor and the moonlight to guide them, they brought in the last of the corn. Frank would regale her with stories of his childhood as they shucked the fields by hand. Nights when they would leave the barn, Alison would lie in bed listening to it drumming on the tin roof. There was a sense of romanticism about the farm.