EMMETSBURG:Part One

We are storms and banks and reeds
Whipped by the wind we rise to bluster and succumb to our own floods
We are fear and desperation and pointlessness
Cold we huddle for fear of being forgotten, yet that is our fate.
We are hope and need and desire
Dragged from our homes with cries lost to the tumult of the world
We are tragedy and sickness and alone.
And if there is any redemption left to us it lies in the sacrifice of love











Silver. The leaves of Oak and Maple trees across Pleasant Street turned over in anticipation of the rain. In the moonlight, before that light was obliterated by storm clouds, the leaves shone polished and ghostly against the midnight sky. From the semi-consciousness of a restless sleep John was vaguely aware of the approaching storm. It came at first as a sudden gust pushing the long branches of the old willow out front against the small white wood frame house. The wind was scented with rain and cool, breaking a string of broiling days that had taken hold of Northwest Iowa.

There hadn’t been a drop of rain in nearly a month. There had been that sudden all too brief downpour just as church was letting out the week before, but not enough to help crops withering in the fields. But for scattering the usual social congregations on the steps of the old Saint Mary’s church, it dried almost before hitting the ground. Soaked a few folks caused Mabel Conlon to take a spill down the steps of the church. Mabel is a large woman though and, but for a possible bruised bottom-which only Mister Conlon could verify, she could only lay claim to an injured ego.

A few counties over some cows had come up sick. The government had sent out inspectors to make tests with the authority to condemn whole herds if need be. It would be a disaster for a family to lose a herd (pennies on the Dollar was as good as a loss). In times such as this it was, well, a declaration of war on decent salt of the earth folks. It was only a matter of time before it brought good men to the end of their rope, and showed conniving men for their darkest character.

The cost of everything had gone up, while paychecks went down. Banks called in bad debts from folks with no means to pay those debts. Those banks foreclosed and threw good god-fearing people off their land and out of their homes, then closed their own doors for good. Other families didn’t bother to wait for the bank to call in their notes, and overnight packed up and left Iowa forever. Every day brought some new insult, some new weight around the neck of a struggling economy that was, in the end, not international bankers and corporations and industry but millions of men and women toiling and bleeding and dying for their god-given right to carve out a small plot of this earth.

John sighed heavily and turned towards the window. He’d seen all this coming. This great slump, as it had come to be called, didn’t happen overnight. Nothing happened overnight, except to fools and those fighting desperately to fend the constant indignities of being down and out. John had seen this coming, at least as much as an average working Joe could. Maybe it was the war that had opened his eyes, or darkened them enough to see how fragile and arrogant the veneer of civilization was. He eschewed the allure and temptation of debt. It meant that he and Ana had to go without during the spend and boom years of the Twenties, but they had a roof over their heads and a chance to weather this better than most.

Anna was beside him. Her buttocks were warm through the thin cotton fabric of her gown he’d bought her last Christmas for a buck and change from the Sears & Roebuck’s catalog. She was breathing rhythmically, her lips fluttering ever so slightly. For a moment it built, disturbing his sudden onslaught of thoughts and worries and memories. John reached back and ran a hand across her hip and stilled her somewhat. It was the first decent sleep she’d had since, well, in some time anyway. That thought led him invariably to a place he preferred not to be.

It was best not to dwell on such things, force them from the mind and get on with living. Of course it was easier for a man than a woman. Men are so much farther from the body. They are ego drenched in misgivings, but they by force or by necessity buried those misgivings deep. They buried them deep enough that it takes a lifetime for them to resurface again. Women, by contrast were worry vainly longing for lost innocence. Theirs was an ill-defined ideal alternately negotiated with or abandoned to men.

There was something more though, something that John struggled to fathom. It was that marital rhythms came more naturally to women. She knew his secrets, while he could barely come to terms with them himself. She knew desires and thoughts he endeavored to keep for himself. It was that which made him desire and despise and long for her and run from her all at once. It was that which kept him at her side while wishing for the far horizon.

“Oh,” he sighed, exhausted. It came as a trembling breath that escaped him almost without knowing. It was a lament. It was a lament over life and all its many burdens. It fell like a weight on his chest, and protested the purpose of existence at all. His thoughts led inevitably to some end, with the realization that the precious nature of each life was alternately a definition of its ultimate futility. It was a thought that reflected the tragedy of the past several months and of a growing cynicism that engulfed him like a cancer.

Sleep fell away from him now, like metal shavings on a concrete floor. Sleep gave way to primal stirrings and more rational worries over the tarpaper roof he’d put on the summer before. It had taken the worst Iowa winters could muster, holding on by hardly more than a wish. But John could sense this storm was something more. He could feel its power as it fell upon little Emmetsburg, and knew it would be a hard night. What he couldn’t know was how this single storm would call into question everything in his life, and even life itself.