Kansas Dreams (1)

Introduces Danny, the farm, and the pumpkins.

 

 

 

 

There were five of them this year, and Danny was proud of that. In recent years the crop had grown too rapidly, their orange hulks bursting under the sun’s rays. Last year all but one had survived the onslaught of woodland critters and crows flying south early for the winter; the others either gnawed open by hungry teeth or pecked to death by ravenous beaks, pulpy guts and seeds ripped out for food.

         Not this year though"there were five of them, glowing in the sun, Halloween only a couple more weeks away. Yep"five beautiful pumpkins…

         Danny bent down onto his knees, inspecting his orange treasures. The moist dirt underneath him felt cool and soft, prefect for growing any crop. It was also perfect for gophers, which dug beneath the patch and chewed through the pumpkin’s roots, killing them.

Since he couldn’t let that happen, he carefully lifted each pumpkin’s vines making sure not to tear any of them, and meticulously checked for any of the vermin’s homes. Finding none in the soil surrounding the crop, he grabbed the pumpkin’s bases and checked under them making sure they weren’t being eaten from the bottom up.

Finding none of the dreaded gopher holes, he dragged a bag of manure out of the barn and carefully spread it around the patch, making sure no pumpkin got more than the last. The manure didn’t smell exactly the best, but he wanted healthy pumpkins"especially for this year’s Halloween festival. It may have been fun to pull out the seeds of fresh pumpkins and bake them, but it was even more fun to have a First Place ribbon put on one of his crops.

His father had won the award many times for various vegetables"never fruit though, the land wasn’t good to it"and Danny had always wanted to experience that feeling of pride. Standing up there on the winner’s podium, eyes gleaming, crowd cheering, and shiny new blue ribbon in place…it was a ten-year-old’s Kansas dream.

Pushing his stringy black hair out of his eyes (his mother meant to take him for a hair-cut soon, but money on a farmer’s budget was always a problem) he stood up and laid the last of the manure, stretching his back. He was skinny for his age, not skinny enough to be picked on, but skinny nevertheless. Brushing dirt off his hand-me-down shirt, he looked at the pumpkins one last time, devoted to their perfection.

He was still staring at them when his mother shouted called for dinner, her words echoing throughout the fields.

“Danny! Wash up and get inside, soup’s on!”

He grimaced. “Soup’s on” meant Tuna soup, something he’d always hated. His father loved it, his mother loved it, and he could care less for it than he cared for a rotting pumpkin.

Sighing, he grabbed the empty bag of manure.

He walked through the corn fields home, and heard the gentle sounds of the cows in the barn as he passed. Deciding he wanted to take as long as he possibly could to eat dinner, he walked back and entered the barn, stopping at stall three. There, Bessie, his cow, stood chewing on some grass, eyes staring through him, not at him. Bessie was a good cow, but not a very smart cow. She was his only cow though"the others all belonged to his father"and he took more pretty great care in her. She would never win him any sort of prize, but he still cared for her.

Across the barn from the cows his father also kept two horses, pure-bred stallions that he had raised since they were born. Their stalls were twice as big as the cow’s stalls, and the horses stood with an unrivaled majesty. They were the farm’s signature animal, and if people in town talked about the farm, chances are they were talking about the stallions. Danny’s father took them out for rides every day, and they were strong and fit as could be.

The first horse, a gray beauty that easily stood a foot taller than Danny was named Clint, and was his father’s favorite. It was lean yet muscular, and if you didn’t control it was likely to kick you in the face.

The second horse, Rob, had a much sunnier disposition, and was the one Danny preferred"it was the only one he could ride. Neighing, Rob stomped on the floor, wanting to go out into the open fields. Danny wished he could grant him that, but looking outside, he saw that the sun was barely a sliver of pie against the far-off mountains. Time to go eat…

Rob stared at him as he walked out, his mother beginning to scream his name now.

Author's Note

The first chapter in my story, Gestation