if hind-sight wasn’t already 20/20, it was now. the simple fact for robert was that he always found a chance. he wasn’t a betting man, by society’s measure, but he begged to be the definition and nothing short of it. he called it being a Flume. it took him a little while to realize what he had, but once he did, he laughed; he laughed out loud.
the only thing he could tell about the opposite sex was that milk from the farm came from female cows. his favorite cow, he called Emma. other than that, he was indifferent. he was numb to it all, and he thought there was no sense in really evaluating or investigating it further. he would sit in his chair with his coffee as he read this really old book every morning as the sun came up just across the field. he could feel the bad days coming as soon as the sun was visible. once he felt them, he did a little better during the day than others. behind closed doors vernon was a different person. he went from quiet to silent, and from thoughtful to worried. i guess that what happens when a man lives by himself for the thirty years following the last year of school in the tenth grade, if you could even call central high a school at that point. if he couldn’t play football, he didn’t need to be there; so he left. or maybe the Team just left him behind.
this sounds like a morbid existence, but vernon knew no better. he was glad he got himself to where he was. farming meant a Lump Sum, which meant food, and the simplicity of life made it something where he knew nothing else. contentment was more of his worldview than a state of mind.
there was something though that he always thought about, and when he had that spare time in the morning and at night before it was time to get his tasks done, his mind drifted. Imagination is one hell of an idea. you have to keep on trying avoiding placing yourself in alternate realities. vernon had placed himself in so many that it was as if during the day was his escape from his real life- expectation. in reality, he was internationally known for his efficiency and supremacy in the cotton industry. in his mind, he was working himself into a state of depression because nobody even knew his farm existed outside of the people in the county who bought from him so that they wouldn’t have to travel and support the conglomerates that had already left the county to rot and ruin.
there was always the chance that what he had hoped for would come true. there was always the chance that something else besides the colors of the cotton fields would be revealed upon sunrise. there was always the chance that maybe one day he would have a visitor. there was always the chance that while he was lying here in this cabin by himself that what he was writing would make it. there was always the chance that this idea of reality was nothing more than an alternative way for him to write to Emma. though it was forever ago, dreaming like a forgotten farmer was a simple way to take his mind off of what was, Forever Ago. this Skinny Love Blindsided him, just like when The Wolves struck Creature Fear into his soul.
he decided to write. maybe this was good, and maybe this was bad. he got out what he wanted. after all the time by himself, this is it. he titled it “For Emma”:
someday my pain, someday my pain will mark you harness your blame, harness your blame and walk through with the wild wolves around you
in the morning, i'll call you send it farther on solace my game, solace my game
it stars you swing wide your crane, swing wide your crane and run me through
and the story's all over you In the morning i'll call you can't you find a clue when your eyes are all painted sinatra blue what might have been lost - there's a pull to the flow
my feet melt the snow for the irony, i'd rather know 'cause blinded i was blindsided.
i am,
vernon
he wrote more, but it was all lost in the Stacks. Re, Stacks. i guess some good things are universal. that is what he learned and taught all those who stayed on the row after he left. thank you vernon, thank you.
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