The Eternal Road

A story based on the famous Migrant Mother photographs

             The woman stepped out of the car, and it was startling to see someone dressed the way she was.  It had been many months, perhaps even years, since he had seen someone dressed that way.  All sense of time had been dissipating steadily into the monotony of being on the road, and it seemed as though the woman stepping out of the car was from another time, another planet.  She turned around, gracefully, and said something brief to the man driving the car. He assumed that she was saying something.  It didn’t really matter.  The woman in her clothing seemed to matter the most.

            Many months ago, he had seen someone similar to the woman.  Something similar to the woman.  Something that soon became the reason it was the last time, until now, that he saw anyone in such a manner, in such dress.  Something that soon became the reason for now and then being divided, not by time, but by an endless, dirty road.  Something that soon became the reason the life his ancestors lived for generations was no longer the life his family would live, would live for.  Out in Oklahoma, something like this did not appear very often, and so even then it was unusual to see it.  He had no warning, no notification that it was to arrive, at his doorstep.  But it did nonetheless.  It was the first day of the harvest, he was out in the field, desperate, desperately trying to scrape what little he could from the lands that should have held so much.

He remembered it as though it were a week ago, a day ago.  A car not unlike the one now sitting fifty yards away from him had driven up the road, a banner of dust trailing in its wake.  The dust.  It was clear that this car was unusual, uncommon, almost not belonging where it was.  It seemed out of place, like a poorly done picture thrown carelessly onto a striking landscape.  He could tell.  He could tell the moment he saw it, and the moment he saw the dust.  He considered ignoring it, he scraped away at the land.  But he knew that if he weren’t there the vehicle would not have been, and approached its formidability.  Across the fields, across the barren ground, across what should have been what it wasn’t.  Across the reason the man with the coat was now stepping out of the car.  Memories of traveling on the highway were blurry and monotonous.  The memory of this day was etched in his mind forever.

“Hello, welcome to my plantation.”  Handshake.  Mutual false smile.

“Hello.”  Introduction of location.  And profession.

“My name is"“

“I know your name.”  Papers out.  Pleasantries over.  All business.

“Alright.”

“As you may or may not know, I’m here to tell you something you’d probably rather not hear.”

A grimace speaks more than words.

“Because of… recent events in this area, your land, in short, no longer belongs to you.  It belongs to the government.”

And, with those words, he was now here.  Here, in this migrant camp under a structure of sticks and cloth.  Cloth that was more than the cloth used for clothing, more than that used for bedding, used for comfort.  It was cloth and sticks that was used simply for shelter.  “…your land no longer belongs to you.”  That man in the coat had said that and, with a few words, erased the future that previously existed in the house, in Oklahoma.  A few small words.  A few small words could enrage thousands of people.  Could salvage thousands more.  Could become a world-celebrated song.  Could declare war.  Could move people out of the house they had lived in for generations and move them to an eternal road and move them as close to death as is possible and move them to a shanty where shelter is made of clothing and clothing made of nothing.  They were words that he would never forget.

The woman was walking.  In the time it took for him to travel the millions of years down the road to California, she had walked the hundreds of steps it took to get from the car to where she was stopped by a teenager.  A teenager whose status lay at the midpoint of his and the woman’s.  A teenager who had no right and every reason to be talking to the woman, to be talking to anyone.  He could not hear them.  It did not matter.  He knew what the teenager was saying.  He had heard it.  Dozens, hundreds of people had heard it. What mattered was the woman’s reaction.  What the woman said.

And, without him having to hear a word of the woman or a word of the teenager, he knew exactly what she had told him: “No,” in a word.  No.  A response of refusal, a response of rejection.  Of ignorance.  The woman told the teenager that she did not need him to tell her anything.  She had just exited a car.  She was wearing dress that no one in a thousand miles had seen for a thousand years.  She was holding a camera.  She knew the world, was the world.  “No,” she had said.  Just like the man with the coat had said he knew his name.  This land belongs to the government.  This camera belongs to the citizens of America.  The people who would see its results, the citizens of America.  Not to the Americans.  This camera, this migrant camp, this highway, this Oklahoma.  This life.  No longer did it belong to the Americans.  It belonged to the citizens of America.

The teenager walked on.  Confused, dejected, useless.  The woman walked on.  Determined, proud, ignorant.  She was as out of place here as the car belonging to the man with the coat was in the banner of dust.  She stopped.  She looked.  She carried the same face that the man with the coat had so long ago-it carried the same face.  Something, not someone.  The woman looked around.  She held her camera.  The camera was ugly, ugly even in comparison to the woman, especially in comparison to the camp.  It was like a box, gray and menacing, technology that did not exist but in the time and place from where the woman was coming.  As ugly and dry as the fields that were the reason he was now here, watching her, wondering in resentment and anger and sadness.  But she inevitably found a reason for having the ugly machine.  She found someone.  She found a woman unlike herself in every way.  In another place at another time, they may have been sisters, may have been best friends.  Not in this time, not in this place.

But the woman she found was as eye-catching as the camera was not.  Not elegantly, not charmingly, but attractive.  Attractive as one might be in person.  Not in a picture film, not in a magazine, not in description.  She was stunning because she was there.  She was stunning because in her eyes was captured the grain of truth and wonder in the shanty she sat in, breast-feeding.  In her eyes was displayed the dismissal, but recognition, of the miles she had spent traveling, the hours she had spent providing, the thoughts she had spent wondering.  In her eyes was the understanding of why she was there, why she was in that place.  Her children, her seven children, her breast-feeding baby had become, more and more so with every passing breath that she existed on, the motivation of her persistence.  Each and every child was a piece of the contents of her heart, her mind, her soul, reflected so in her eyes, if only one had the courage to look.  The woman with the camera was not with such courage.

The woman with the camera was one of authority, of confidence, and of law, but not one of bravery.  She looked at the woman and the children, she set up her flawed gray machine, she waited for the woman’s reaction.  Or, perhaps, the woman in the shanty waited for hers.  The children’s eyes, so like their mother’s, grew frightened and apprehensive.  The fear in their minds and bodies was the absence of everything their mother lived for, the life their mother led in order to erase the fear she wanted with all her heart for them not to feel.  Somewhere, sometime in their history, they had met a man in a coat.  A generic man.  A man with no name, who had told them that he knew the world and they knew only what he told them.  A man in a coat who pretended to care, but only cared to pretend.  They had seen a reasonless reason, a generic reason, for the family to lose the aspirations of the children, the pride of the mother, the ancestry of the farm.  Now they were faced with the ignorance of a woman, and the ugliness of a camera.

The baby stopped breast-feeding, as if to hide what dignity it had in its mother’s ever present love.  The children stopped moving, and stared with the highest terror at the gray thing.  At the woman holding it.  This land no longer belongs to you.  Your hope is the alleviation of fear.

The camera was ready.  The woman pressed a button.

Author's Note

Search for the "migrant mother series"
This is the inspiration for this story

Reviews

[PoisonedFlower]

I especially like the beginning! It has this intriguing quality to it. Same with the last two sentences!