Four Curses: Part 1

Note: This started as a bit of free writing. My hope is to develop a longer narrative for this, but I don't know where it is going really. Enjoy.

 

The rain came just as Sarah commenced the latest battle in the long-standing war with the rusted, metal latch of the barn door. The barn, built with the sweat and ingenuity of her great-grandpa on her momma’s side, had a lean from tornado winds in ’78, and likely since then, the door latch stuck in the ring on the inside every morning, and that malady struck worse on days of rain, snow, wind, ice, sleet and, as grandpa liked to say, “on days when grasshoppers refuse to hop.”

From inside the barn, she could hear Gingersnap whinny and snort with impatience. Sarah pulled the hood of her slicker over her frazzled hair, glancing back toward the house, where only the light outside the front door glowed. Rose and Faith hadn’t woke when she left the house, and by some divine grace, appeared to be still in bed. All the better, Rose was old enough to handle herself, but the two together would have the house in tatters, if they woke while Sarah was doing chores.

The frigid raindrops slapped against her back like the icy fingers of death playing piano up her spine. She cursed the latch twice, using the “shit-fart” combination of the four family curses under her breath, before the latch clicked open as the wind changed direction. The door burst to life, and Sarah yelled, “Oh hell,” reaching out with both hands to catch the edge of the door as the wind tested the strength of the hinges. A stab of pain pulsated from her yellow work glove on her right hand, as her finger tips pinched down on one of the splinter-ridden boards. She hurried inside, managing to fight the wind to close the door and then force the latch into the ring with almost no trouble.

Flipping the switch, Sarah assessed the scene before her while pulling off her glove. Gingersnap, an aging draft horse, stuck his head out of his stall, the spots of white on his otherwise brown face looking grayer today than ever. He was blind in one eye, but never failed to see everything. A larger stall housed two quarter horses ­– Jack and Diane ­­– the forever bickering pair who were unhappy together and miserable when separated. The final stall on the far end housed Stinker, Rose’s pony, purchased by her papa when she was born. Stinker was probably sleeping, and like a kid being harassed to get ready for school, would want to remain that way when Sarah tried to lead her out of the barn to the pasture in a few minutes.

“Morning ya’ll,” Sarah said. “Oh, damn.” She added seeing the half-inch long splinter buried under the skin of her index finger.

Sarah studied the sliver, knowing it’d take tweezers to pluck it out, and thought about using the four curses. It had been in this very barn, up the ladder in the hay mow, where Grandpa John taught her the words. She was nine or ten, probably slightly younger than Rose, when the two sat down on one of the prickly bales of hay. This was before the barn had been converted for horses, and the main floor was filled with stanchions for their Holsteins. 

“You’re old enough for this,” Grandpa John said in that way he had of making a phrase both a statement and a question at the same time. He wore a pair of spectacles that were always spotted with dirt and his gray beard stretched in tangles down to his shirt collar. “Sometimes the world gives you a slap, sometimes a punch, and sometimes it drops the big bomb on you.”

“The bomb!” Sarah giggled.

“Now, hush,” he said. “When the world beats on you, whether it’s a tiny bit or a whole wagon load, it’s gonna make you want to say things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like the word your momma used soap to wash outta your mouth awhile back.”

“Oh.”

“I ain’t scolding you. The fact is you can’t run around screaming them words, but sometimes you need them just to fend off the world a bit.”

“Really?”

“It’s true. But some of them words are too naughty no matter what.”

“Really! Which ones?”

“Ha. I ain’t going to tell you, because I don’t use them. I only use four of them, and trust me, that’s all you’ll ever need. The rest can be for the rest.”

“Can I use them too!”

“Yeah, but they ain’t to be used all the time, you hear. Just when you need them. Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Good. Shit,” he said, and she giggled, “fart, hell, and damn. That’s all the curses you need.”

Sarah grabbed her stomach because it hurt as the giggle lost control, and she rolled off the hay bale they were sitting on.

Sarah smiled at the memory, but then repeated the four-word litany in her head again. Twenty years later, she was dripping wet while standing in the barn, knowing this is what grandpa had meant by the bomb. Her husband gone, leaving her for a single bedroom apartment in Lincoln and more freedom to spend evenings at The Corner Tap. Leaving her with two children to rear, a farmstead to manage, and these stubborn animals to feed. Sometimes the words didn’t feel like enough, but she used them just the same.