Prevention Maintainance

by

Barry Judson Lohnes

Things were tough, but I didn’t think life was that bad. I mean, not much seems hopeless to a twelve year old. Sure, you go to bed with hurt feelings, but then you wake up in the early morning, sun sifting through the curtains--you can’t help but think good when the sun is out. It was my Daddy that had all of the bad luck, and it wasn’t because he was lazy. Other farmers grew corn seven feet high while ours wilted at my waist. Dad’s Farmall tractor blew a piston clear through the block. Fibber French and Stu Gantly owned Farmalls much older and never had a lick of trouble--they ran quieter than cream separators. Dad was up at five and went to bed after sundown; anyone could see that he wasn’t afraid of hard work. I didn’t know the answer to my Daddy’s problems until I overheard Stu Gantly say once during market day that Dad wasn’t good at prevention maintainance. Five or six farmers standing around smoking pipes agreed with him. I made up my mind to find out what this ‘prevention maintainance’ was all about. In the meantime, my Dad grew more silent every day, but he still worked the long hours, always wet with sweat.

Mom left us a month and a half ago. She said she was going to find a new life but I think she had already found one. A Bible salesman named Wesley from Eagle Lake had been hangin’ around for a good while, finding any excuse to visit. And then he just happened to meet Mom near our mailbox, smiling nervously, looking over his shoulder while he helped with her suitcase. I wondered why Dad didn’t smack him right in the snot locker but here again, I suppose Dad was just feeling too blue to care much about anything. Events would prove me right. My Mom ruffled my hair when she left and told me to be good. But she forgot to tell me when she would be coming back--that made me feel terrible. Now it is just Dad and me. Little sister Jessie was born with damage to her brain and couldn’t be taken care of at home. She stays down Bangor at a special building, waiting for us to visit her on holidays. In my heart I believe Jessie will snap out of it some day and come home to live with us on the farm.

The heat rose that morning so stifling that the barn rats stayed underground when I fed the livestock. The swallows, usually so full of noise, hardly sang at all. Just before noon our irrigation pump quit, puffing black smoke and smelling like burning tires. Dad looked up at the sun, hanging overhead like a giant fireball. He shook his fist and shouted there was no such thing as God. Then he threw a pitchfork straight at the sun, looking like one of those Olympic javelin throwers. It was surprising just how far the pitchfork flew--I didn’t know my dad got so strong when he got mad. Then Daddy wiped his face with an empty grain sack while he walked toward the house. The screen door snapped shut, sounding like a gun shot.

Dad came out a minute or so later, shoving open the door with an open hand. As his luck would have it, the rusty spring snapped, and the door stayed open. He carried his leather holstered Army .45, the one he brought home from Korea where he fought the Chinese communists--Chicoms, as he called them. He looked at me watery eyed and nodded, then he just stared through me.

“Where you goin,’ Daddy?”

“Goin’ huntin’ a spell,” he answered, looking toward the copse of beech trees down in the back forty, breaking the horizon.

“Where’s your rifle?” I asked, chewing hard on a piece of straw. “You don’t hunt around here with no pistol.”

“Change of pace, son, a change of pace,” he told me, his voice sounding dry and tired. “Sometimes a man needs a change of pace when ever’thing breaks down.”

“Can I go with, Dad? I’m good at spottin’ gophers and crows.”

“No Harold, some things a man has to do by himself,” he answered, looking at the ground as if he were wondering what was underneath. “Go inside and have some lemonade--there’s some in the ice box.” He turned to walk toward the stand of beech, raising dust with his old boots.

“There ain’t none, Daddy. We drank it up after the heat come up this mornin.’” All of a sudden I started feeling real nervous, like the time a cornered raccoon sprang at me when I cleaned out the chicken coop.

“Well, go ahead and make some, son. It’ll taste good with the hellish heat comin’ down on us, sucking whatever’s good out of us.”

“There ain’t no lemons, Daddy.”

Dad walked toward the far fields, sweat forming around the cross buck of his red suspenders. Horse flies settled on the wet splotches.

“I love you, Daddy,” I hollered. Saying it surprised me because we never talked that way around our house. We just didn’t have time for those things.

He turned and gave me one of those smiles that you make when you don’t feel like it. “Thank you, Harold,” he said, sounding real serious. “I love you, too.” Then he turned toward the fields again. “Go inside now and cool off.”

So I went inside, surprised how dark it was. The house had not seemed the same since Mom left with the Bible salesman. On the table between our breakfast oatmeal bowls was an insurance paper, unfolded. I picked it up and noticed that Dad had crossed out Mom’s name and put in mine and Jessie’s; then he had signed it underneath with the date. I turned sick to my stomach and ran outside, expecting to upchuck at any moment. Dad was a speck on the far horizon, heading into the swail, which fronted the grove of beeches. I yelled out for my father, but he kept on, maybe walking a bit faster. I ran after him, so fast that the sweat started to burn my eyes in no time at all. I threw up while running, turning my head to keep the puke off my overalls.

I heard the roar from the pistol just as I came up from the swail in front of the trees. I screamed, “Stop it, Daddy--damn it all!” I didn’t know what else to say because I was so scared.

My father was coiled up in a ball when I first got to him--he bled hard from his head, and his arms and legs were twitching. I smelled gunpowder from the pistol, and next I smelled the musty moss that he had fallen on. I knelt down and brushed the flies that settled on my father’s head. Next, I picked up the black pistol by the handle and hucked it into a clump of alders. I ripped the pocket off my shirt and pressed it into the gash on his head. He turned over slowly, gasping for air. He looked at me, pale and teary eyed, with a look as though the sky had fallen, never to rise again. It took a moment for his eyes to focus.

“I can’t even kill myself right, Harold,” he whispered, slowly lifting his hand toward his head wound. “I’ve failed at everything.” Then he started to cry--I had not seen him weep, ever. I gave Daddy a big hug, being careful of his head. Then I started crying like a five year old.

“Dad, you and I can make the farm work, I know we can, by Jesus!” I had never added the Lord’s name to a sentence before in front of my father, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Dad touched his head and winced. And then he shook his head.

“Nothing works, son,” he said, closing his eyes, squeezing out more tears.

I knew though, that he was going to be all right. The blood had stopped gushing. His eyes were clear and his voice sounded like it always did. Thank you Lord, I said to myself. I will pray every night, forever—bet your ass. I caught myself before I whispered a ‘by Jesus’ to my promise.

“Daddy, we can have the best farm in the county! I am going to learn how to make money. We’re gonna do ‘prevention maintainance’.”

Dad cried some more when I said ‘prevention maintainance.’ I waited a few minutes then I helped him to his feet. I told him to hold the cloth tight to his head until we got home. Later, I will rinse his wound with boiling water, then kinda dab it with bag balm. After Daddy gets cleaned up, I’ll put him to bed. Then I’ll get out the army cot and put it next to his bed. He can be watched over during the night. Then I will check on the animals before it gets too dark. That broken door spring can wait until morning--prevention maintainance cannot. I’m goin’ to call Stu Gantly before bed and find out what it’s all about. Then I will commence to do this prevention maintainance business.

With the sun setting behind us Dad and I meandered toward the ramshackle set of buildings where we make our home. The peeling, whitewashed farmhouse shone bright in the late rays of the sun, with the windows taking on a bright red. The place looked as peaceful as I had imagined it to be in heaven, when we all get called to the great beyond. Life ain’t so bad when you know things are gonna get better.