Country people

• Horror
• Short story
• Fiction

								
Most people don't know that if you are quiet enough, you would know that the wind has a sound, one that is all-consuming and makes you know what it means to be alone as it whistles in your ears, like it did in Lunette's ears, her dress filled with dirt, the sun beating down on her as she wishes that she was not the one in charge of getting the eggs from the chickens every morning. Her dog, Lady, barked a hard echo as it broke the whistle around them even if it was just for a second.

 Lunette stopped her monotonous walking to look back at the dog. She had been taking care of Lady since the dog was an abandoned pup found in the middle of nowhere, so she ought to know not to mess with the hand that fed her and she told her so outright. “Lady, we are almost there. If we stopped because you found a dead bird again, I'm going to let Pops make you sleep outside like he was planning to.”

 She knew it was an empty promise; it was not in Lunette’s nature to be stern like her mama. She knew that even though her eyes were getting clouded with dirt, she would let her lady take the bird home, but instead, the dog was telling her about a figure in the distance. When she went to where the dog was looking, all she saw among the dirt clouds was a shadow. When she tried to make it out, it looked a lot like the shadow of a rabbit, except… No, it was a hare. She learned In school that there was a difference between them, and she knew that hares had much longer ears, and that's what the shadow had, like it was trying to get signals; and the more she looked at it, the more a sound that was unlike the whistling of the wind but like a whisper—as if someone was telling her a secret, but she couldn't understand what they were saying—kept going until the familiar bark of her dog came back to her. It also made the shadow run away. She was glad for the dog and she told it so as she felt the soft, slightly dirty white and peanut butter colored fur. 

“Good girl! I knew pops was wrong about you!” And Lady, in response, licked her fingers, and they continued to the chicken coop. She liked the inside of the chicken coop; it was filled with hay and chicken shit, and the red paint that her papa painted for the walls was nearly chipping away, but she didn’t care because she loved hearing the chickens as they made their sounds. She wanted to thank them for greeting her as she came in, but Lunette knew that was unlikely.

“Ok, Lady, let’s get these eggs and go. We spent too much time as it is.” 

Her stomach started growling as soon as she said that, and she thought, my family is likely also starving, but Lady just watched Lunette put the eggs in the basket. As she was reaching for the last egg that she was going to put into the basket, a creak from the wooden floor of the coop stopped her, but when she turned around, there was just the sound of the chickens and the wind, she looked at Lady for confirmation, but what she got in her sheepdog brown, mud eyes was confusion, so Lunette dropped it, thinking that it was the aloneness getting to her; but just as she held the egg in her hands, she felt a sweaty hand touch her arm. She still had the egg in her hand as she heard a hushed voice say into her ear, 'I'm so hungry…”

 That made her throw the egg at the voice which made them stumble and fall on the hard floor. She then turned to see that the voice was her brother, Ricki, as he said, “Aw, Lunette, did you have to get egg on me? I was just playing. It didn't mean anything.”

 She didn’t realize that she was breathing hard until Lady came in to comfort her, but that didn’t stop her from yelling at her little brother. “I'm sorry, Rick, but you scared me. Maybe don’t try to surprise me when I’m collecting eggs!” 

He was getting a bit of shell out of his hair, as he explained.  “Ma and Pa sent me to come get you and the dog.” He said this as he gestured to Lady, who just happily wagged her tail at being mentioned, Lunette knew the reason Lady didn’t bark to tell Lunette that someone was behind her was because she trusted Ricki.

Traitor, she thought as she saw her dog lick egg off his face. As she helped him up he asked, “Why were you taking so long?”

 This made Lunette think of the shadow of the hare. She still couldn't tell if it was real or not, and even if it was… would Ricki believe her? She thought it best to not tell him, at least not until she knew what it was herself, so she just replied with, “Lady wanted to eat a bird.”

 And he rolled his eyes, saying, “That dog.”

 As they were walking home with Lady walking beside them, Lunette asked, “I made Pops mad, didn’t I?”
 Ricki, trying to reassure her, says, “He’s only a little bit mad. Ma got him off your back a little by saying that you just got stuck in the dust.”

 Lunette felt grateful for her mother right then. Getting Jack Gale to not rise in his temper is like getting rain—it rarely ever happens. “Besides,” Ricki added, “you know he's just mad because he hardly got anything out of fixing that fellas truck last week.”

Their daddy fixed rich folks' cars in a town miles away. The children once asked their daddy why they didn't live near the town and why they had to take the school bus unlike other children. All he told them was, “We can live on our own with just the three of us. If you want to go so bad, I can take you.”

 But they never did. They guessed because they soon realized they were stuck with their daddy no matter what. “So that means more soup and rice,” they both said with boredom. Every time their daddy didn't get enough money, they were stuck eating what they had left in the pantry.

 ”To make up for it,” their mama always told them, “we can make muffins the next time your father brings the items to make them.”

 But they could hardly make bread. The children know where most of the money went: to his friends who use it for gambling and drinking, but they don't dare mention this to their daddy. He’d rather think it's because of his blood saying, “Them rich white folks don't like a Mexican American being capable of fixing things for them, so they pay me less than the others.”

 Lunette knew it was a half-truth but she still often thinks about her heritage. She knew she and her brother were of a different color than the other kids in school. They had tans, but some of them were as white as snow, with blue eyes and blond hair. These kids were mostly the kids whose daddies had nice paying office jobs working for people in big cities. The other kids were just as poor as them, except they still made jokes at their expense.

“Hey, Lunette, do you and your brother ever get tired of eating beans all day? I can’t believe we have wetbacks in Texas!”
 But Lunette knew that the kids who said these things just acted out the frustrations of their parents. They couldn’t be rich white folk, so they attacked the people who were even lesser than them. It was easier than fighting people who could do combat, but that didn't mean their family didn't adapt.

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes