Marsh Antlephore
Six generations of his family have worked this land. His son will be the seventh when the boy tires of chasing women. Forty's daddy started teaching him to love the land just after he'd mastered the use of his legs. He'd done the same for his boy, staying out to capture fireflies when other men were camped in front of the TV, watching whatever game was in season.
The boy never calls anymore and there's planting to be done.
The local farmers all have nicknames. Hog's sow always takes the blue ribbon at the conty fair. Thistle has a fine chunk of acreage that he lets go to waste the minute his barn is filled. Barb's name seems a little too normal until you notice the name on the mailbox is Carol. She's tough as any strip of barbed wire and well able to look after her own land without the help of any man.
The family joke was that Forty could always be found in one place. Don't bother knocking on the door of his house, he's in the back 40. His wife even had a sign painted to hang over the door, a little wooden square that read "The Other 39".
A pang of loss goes through Forty every time he looks at that sign but he can't bring himself to take it down.
Growing any crop takes a great deal of patience. You've got to keep the water volumes right, control the weed growth, and know the ideal time to make your harvest. A wise farmer restrains his eagerness for the first taste of the season. Patience makes the taste all the sweeter.
Raising boys is not so different. When you explain why it is rude to pull a girl's pigtails, you must e as patient on attempt number one-hundred and one as you were on the first.
Forty stares at the powder blue phone that never rings as he goes in for a drink of water. It's genuine well water, not that poisonous stuff the city puts out. His own great-grandfather dug that well back in the days when you didn't need a city permit to blow your nose.
His tractor rarely sees the outside of the shed now. His knees are getting too bad for him to go climbing up and down all the time. In its glory days, Forty affectionately referred to it as The Fuel-Guzzling Green Beast but his tractor never let him down.
Unlike most of the people he's known.
A knock at the door brings him to his feet with a grunt of annoyance. The long-awaited nap in his recliner will have to wait.
His boy is standing on the other side of the screen, holding the hand of an olive-skinned man.
Forty rarely turns on the TV but he reads the paper every day. Nobody's going to call him a bumpkin. He may not care for the modern world, but that doesn't mean he's ignorant of it.
His son comes right to the point. The boy is just like his mother that way.
"Father, this is Oscar. He's the love of my life and we're going to marry."
Oscar looks from father to son, growing uneasy in the stony silence that follows. Forty does not invite them inside. He does not offer them a cold glass of lemonade, a staple of hospitality in this part of the country. He just stands there and stares.
What he needs more than anything is a piece of straw. A man can't think over a problem properly without a good length of straw to chew.
"Say something, you old goat! You haven't said a word to me since Mom died and I'm tired of feeling like an orphan."
He has more important things to do than stand around and jaw. He won't be getting any help with the harvest this season. The thought that this might be his last year of planting makes him feel hollow inside but Forty knows well that the loss of one's family is the death of a farm.
Oscar slips outside after shooting his boy one worried glance. Forty watches through the big kitchen window as the curly-haired stranger takes up the hoe leaning against the garden gate and goes to work weeding the cabbages. The old farmer is drawn through the screen door like a moth that cannot resist an evening lamp. A farmer can always tell when he's met another soul that cares for the land.
They work for nearly an hour, clearing every last weed out of three rows. His boy is standing by the gate, stunned into silence. Forty never was much of a talker. He left that to his wife. He looks to his son at last.
"There's another hoe in the shed, boy."
He sits at a corner table the day his son is happily married, getting a good conversation going with a woman who grows organic herbs. He's not sure he approves of her pink curls but she knows her stuff when it comes to soil conditions. When he sees the way his boy's face lights up at a kiss shared with Oscar, he cannot deny true love is present.
This year's harvest is nearly as impressive as the ones he took to market during his glory days. The boys who bring the produce truck gape at his new house guests until he gives them a look that could curdle milk. People in farm country know how to mind their own business.
With the harvest complete, Forty can relax and start leafing through next year's seed catalogs, letting his son feed him bizarre culinary concoctions that are actually pretty good.
His land will be in good hands and that is all that matters.
Credits:
Profile by 
Ziva
Story by 
Pureflower
Tractor (original image) from Here with alterations by Ziva
