Charlotte's Legacy

I wrote this short story last year.  It was my first and only venture thus far into writing a story.  The writing prompt was a picture of Earl.  The characters easy to develop and I felt a kinship to them as I wrote.  Sometimes even pretend stories are based in reality.  Grief has many faces and hope in my mind looks like Grandma Charlotte. My Grandma Charlotte gave me my first Bible and took me to VBS one summer and that planted the seed of God in my heart that has brought me on this journey of love, that I call my crazy life.  

 I hope you enjoy my Earl story, I enjoyed writing it. 

Charlotte's Legacy

Earl sits out on the porch of his old, grimy potato farm.  His kids have all grown and left.  They’ve begged him to move into the city with them since his wife Charlotte passed away but, Earl is a stubborn man.  So stubborn that when his teeth started falling out and everyone said he should get dentures Earl just flat out refused.  As a matter of fact, he told the dentist to just pull’em all out to speed up the process.  He didn’t care, he would just gum his food…after all, and he said, “nothing tasted good since Charlotte died.”  He just ate because it’s what you’re supposed to do. 

So there Earl was on his small potato farm plot that he had worked his whole life and now he was sure he would die there, at least that’s what he was hoping for.  This was where his kids had been born and where his precious Charlotte had died.  His stubborn mule self was not leaving until they drug him out in an old pine box.  So day after day he sat alone rocking on that old front porch, birds chirping, bugs jumping and Earl spitting his tobacco through his old wrinkled, stained toothless mouth in the hot sun with the fly’s buzzing all around. 

“Die already”, he was thinking one of those hot days when all of the sudden in the distance he saw a figure.  It was a small figure in the distance with a stick.  Earl remembered for a brief moment seeing one of his boys walking up to the house like that.  Only that time his precious Charlotte had run out to greet their son, Tom.  She was mad as hell and screaming all the way about how he had scared her to death, disappearing like that, but mad as she was, she had thrown her arms around him and showered kisses on the boy until he begged her to stop.  For a slight moment, Earl could hear the laughter between them, but then, suddenly, the laughter grew faint and slowly faded away, as did Earl’s moment of peace.  No more Charlotte, no more farming and no more children.  Oh sure, they came to visit every few months but now they too were old and had their own children and grandchildren.  His eyes misted over as he yearned to go back in time, but suddenly the boy was closer, a lanky tow-headed boy wearing overalls and a crooked grin. 

Who is this boy and what is he doing on my property,  thought Earl.  He pushed himself wobbly out of his rocking chair and yelled at the boy, “Whatcha doin here boy?” The boy with the crooked grin answered back, “Whatcha doin here?”  Earl, exasperated already, spit right at the boy’s feet and said, “Well I live here boy, now answer my question, Whatcha doin here?”   “Well, I reckon I’ll answer your question then sir, seeing how this is your place and all.  My names’ John and my grandparents live down the road aways,  maybe  you know them, the McDaniel’s…the corn farmers bout a mile or so down the road.” The boy paused waiting for a response but Earl just stared at him.

Truth be told Earl was deep in thought.  He was thinking about how long ago, that was the Cummings farm and he and Charlotte would go play bridge on Saturday nights with them while their children played together in the yard and chased fireflies.  The boy cleared his throat as if he understood the man had somehow gotten lost in thought and he wanted to bring him back.  “Hhhmm, hmmm..sir?”

Earl snapped back to the present time and appeared visibly shaken.  He looked backward at his rocking chair longingly then looked at the boy and decided he didn’t need to keep standing.  He settled himself back into his chair, turned his head a bit sideways and took a good long look at the boy.  “Kid”, he said “you sure are young to be out by yourself.”  The boy quickly replied, “I’m not young, I’m a whole lot older than my sister, she’s only three!”  Earl feeling a bit crabby about having his day interrupted even though he knew each day was just a series of wake up and go to sleep with a whole lot of nothing in between, but still this boy was reminding him of his own son and he didn’t much like it.  He didn’t like it at all!  Just like he didn’t like it when the lady from the Baptist church brought him his Meals on Wheels and wanted to talk about Jesus.  Talk about Jesus, he didn’t wanted to talk about anything and certainly not about Jesus.  He didn’t want to talk, he didn’t want to feel, he just wanted to be left alone in his chair, put food in the birdfeeder, watch the news, call his kids on Sundays and hurry up and die. 

But now this scrawny, tow headed, freckled face boy was messing everything up.  “What’s your name kid?”  Earl asked.  The boy answered, “ I already told you, my name’s John.”   “Ahhh, that’s’ right kid, John that’s your name.  So again, whatcha doin here? “  “ Well, I’m looking for my dog”,  the boy replied.  Earl raised his voice and and said, “He ain’t here kid…I ain’t seen a dog all day.  So go on and get on your way.”  Right about then the clouds seemed to roll in thick with rain.  Earl looked at the boy. The boy looked at Earl with big saucer like eyes.  Thunder split the air, the boy jumped half out of his skin.  Earl snapped at him, “Get on back to your grandpappys house kid a storms a comin.” 

Just then the rain began to fall, big giant drops, soaking the boy almost immediately.   Standing there drenched, with thunder and lightning going, the boy’s face went through a series of strange expressions.  First shock that it began to rain so quickly, then fear that it was so loud, then he screwed his face up real tight trying to control his emotions.  Then, just as suddenly as the rain had begun, the tow headed, freckled face boy began to cry big crocodile tears. 

Earl watched the boy’s face with amusement but his hard heart was having no part of helping this boy out.  “Run boy” he said to the kid, but something had happened to the boy, something Earl didn’t understand.  The boy had gone from being scared to suddenly just sobbing uncontrollably with his shoulders hunched over and his head just hanging there with no pretence of trying to get out of the rain.  Earl thought to himself, this is sure something…what on earth is wrong with this boy?  Then  he thought well maybe if I ignore him he’ll turn home and run. 

Earl kept staring at the boy as he rocked in his chair but the boy just kept standing in the rain sobbing.  Ah hell, thought Earl this kid ain’t leaving.  “C’mon kid, come up on the porch out of the rain.”  The boy lifted his head and looked at Earl, something in his eyes looked familiar to Earl.  A  loneliness, a sorrow too great to bear seemed to stare at Earl from the boy’s eyes.  For just a moment Earl related to the boy then he shook his head and yelled at the boy again, “C’mon kid, ya fool!  Get outta the rain.”

The boy moved slowly at first like he just wasn’t sure how to make his legs work, then with a couple of quick steps, he was up on the porch, collapsing in a heap into Charlotte’s rocking chair.  Earl just stared.  The boy was sitting in Charlotte’s chair; even his own grown children didn’t sit in Charlotte’s chair.  Earl hated the boy in that moment, he wanted to muster up all his strength and pull the boy out of the chair, but he was tired and honestly not sure if all his strength would be enough.  And now the boy who Earl decided must be about seven or eight years old was not just crying but howling.  Earl was getting madder and madder.  He didn’t want to watch this kid cry and scream, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do.  He’d never been the type to coddle a kid, that was Charlotte’s job.  She was the one who would smother a crying child into her chest and whisper, “Hush child…now now everything is gonna be all right, hush child.”   Charlotte would have known what to do right now, Earl thought. 

So Earl just sat there a little mad that the boy wouldn’t stop and a little mad that he didn’t know what to do about it.  He fidgeted and rocked as the rain beat against the hard dry ground and he wondered what could  this kid possibly have to cry and make such a fuss about.  Suddenly his mind went to thoughts of Charlotte.  Charlotte laughing as she washed potatoes outside in a big wash basin, Charlotte too old to stand and pull potatoes so she would sit on an upside down bucket and as Earl turned the ground over she would loosen and pull the potatoes out and chuckle and say she loved doing it.  He knew she didn’t but she want the workers to know she was willing to work right alongside them.  Then just as suddenly he saw Charlotte in that box, cold and lifeless.  Not looking at all like the Charlotte he loved.  He felt a stab in his hear that made him never want to love anyone or anything again.  A cold feeling crept over him that made him feel like he was dead already.  Hard was how he looked and hard was how he felt, just hard. 

Finally the boy lifted his head, grimy tear streaks down his face and mumbled something that Earl couldn’t quite make out and he didn’t really care about and so they just sat there a bit in silence watching the rain.  Before too long the boy whispers something quietly to Earl.  Earl looks at the boy and wonders why on earth this boy would have ended up on his porch and would be trying to whisper to an old man who can barely hear a regular voice, let alone a whisper.   “Speak up boy!” snapped Earl.  The boy’s eyes pooled up with tears again and Earl thought he was going to start up all over again.  Earl quickly tried to do something, anything to keep the kid from crying.  Something to drink maybe, “Kid, you want a soda?”  The boy nodded yes and Earl shuffled off to the kitchen hoping there was an old soda stashed somewhere in his fridge.  Soda left over from Charlotte.  Charlotte, who liked to have soda in the house for the grandkids, but wouldn’t drink it herself.  Charlotte, who could have made this boy cookies and probably knew his grandparents. 

Charlotte had kept up with the neighbors when Earl had decided he was sick of people and didn’t see any point in making new friends at their age.  Charlotte had just laughed and called him an old fool.  “Earl”, she had said,  “We all need each other and someday you’ll be gone and I’m gonna need some friends.”  So then what did she do?  She went and died first and Earl felt sure he prove her wrong, he didn’t need anyone. 

He found the soda stashed in the back of the fridge grabbed it and headed back for the porch, half expecting the boy to be gone.  The boy however was not gone and the rain had not let up, it was still raining cats and dogs.  He sat down by the boy sitting in Charlotte’s chair and handed him the soda and put more chew in his lip.  The boy began to rock in Charlotte’s chair and Earl felt his anger rise up against the boy again but before he could grump at the boy, the boy started talking.  The freckle face, tow headed boy had a story to tell and it came tumbling out faster than Earl could understand it and his hard heart could not let it in until suddenly Earl caught up to one simple word.  Dead.  Dead, Earl tried to really understand what the boy was saying, something about his dog, somebody being dead and having to move here to his grandparent’s farm.  So when the boy paused, to take a breath Earl took the opportunity to speak up.  “Listen kid, you’re gonna have to slow down so I can keep up.  What’s this you’re saying about somebody being dead?”  The minute he said it, he knew it was all wrong.  Charlotte would have never said it like that.  The boy’s eyes filled up again and spilled over but this time he held onto his emotions a bit better and he simply said, “My parents are dead.”  “Dead”, said Earl, “Both of them?”  “Yes”, answered the boy with a deep sadness in his voice.  Earl thought to himself, well don’t that beat all…poor kid. 

Earl looked at the boy and suddenly Earl with his toothless mouth began to tell his story about Charlotte, bit by bit he mumbled about finding Charlotte in the field, sitting by her bed for three days until finally she left him and suddenly Earl realized he was crying big crocodile tears were rolling down his and the boy with the freckles was standing beside him and whispering, “Hush now..hush now everything’s gonna be all right, hush now mister everything’s  gonna be all right.”

Suddenly Earl felt a dam burst in his heart and he gathered the boy to his chest and stroked the boy’s hair and said right back to him, “Yes kid everything’s gonna be all right.  You and I kid, we’re gonna be all right.”  Earl looked up to the sky and remembered all the times Charlotte had looked up at the sky in a moment like this and said, “Thank You Lord!”  He couldn’t quite bring himself to say it but he thought it.  Then he thought, maybe just maybe there was still a little bit more life to be lived.