Waiting.
He had to go. That’s what he said. That we didn’t have enough to get us through the winter. That he’d go, make some money, be back before I knew it. The kids would work the farm until he got back.
Tommy was a shade over fifteen, Sam was younger and Emily had only just started walking. He asked me to wait for him, in that cold building, our house, another family lives there now. Last I heard they were struggling.
We did the best we could. The ground was hard and the air was dry, nothing grew, except the children. Could hardly keep the one room warm that December. The snow fell thick and it fell fast. All that moisture, wasted on the red dust we mortgaged.
I remember the folks in town laughing when we told em we took it on. Said nothing good had ever come from it. We said we’d show em. We made it through that winter without him, and when spring came, he still didn’t come. We spent the last of what we had on the few seed and head we could afford.
They never sprouted, and the cattle were gone before long. We were easy pickings for less honourable men. Coming up on the second winter I sent Emily to live with my sister. I know she made it, my sister wrote me.
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She used to beg me to come too, bring Tommy and Sam. But I had to be here when he came back. Tommy and Sam wanted to go, but I needed them. They both took jobs at other ranches, their pay kept us going, until it didn’t. I took a job in town.
I remember coming home and there was the letter. They’d gone. Hoped I would follow them. I couldn’t. I said I’d wait. Not long after that the bank came. I lost the house. The land. So I waited in town instead. Living, and working at the only place that’d take me. Until I couldn’t take it there no more.
Found a new town, few miles away. No friendly faces, and no one laughed when they saw me there. No one looked my way at all. Found another job, another dirty bar.
Then one day, couple years after the last letter from my sister, I saw him. Propping up the bar, brand new clothes on his back, talking about his money, his pretty young wife and their children. I’d waited, and he didn’t even recognise me.
All that life and love wasted, waiting.
I asked him about his family, and I took the gun from under the bar. In the second before I killed him, he recognised me. That bastard smiled. He wasn’t smiling long.
Now, I’m waiting in a cell. Don’t think I’ll write another letter.
