Farmhands Reckoning -By Mark Manning

KU-DONG!!!nnnnnnn

Farmhand Reckoning

He’d married in haste and as the saying goes repented at leisure.

In all kinds of weather , out there ,working in the stony fields.

Bitter and twisted from within battling  the elements and his inner demons.

Lacerating himself with should have beens might have beens , rain would pelt down on the sorry sod in more ways than one. Occasionally rising from bent stoop to stand tall wiping t salty sweat from  muddied brow.Welcome  rare cool breeze  offered  a swift respite from  squirming small mind ,his selfish self obsessed little drama.

And she ....loyal as ever ,unquestioning ,faithful ,subservient ,gentle ,would dutifully make lunch for her depressive partner in life ,day after day packing his rotten sandwiches ,lugging them up the land. She’d hand him his tea in a flask, lucky to get a grunt of thanks ,lucky if he even turned around.She always made an effort, clean clothes , hair tied neatly in a bun .In her day a fine woman....many the rich farmer had come a courtin’....but for whatever reason she’d ended up with him.

 

Leaning on  spade with that expression of sulky brooding world owes him a living demeanour ,misery personified .I’d worked on the farm for sometime a regular onlooker to this domestic  tragedy .One day I says to him ‘’ya know Jim ,if I had a woman like that.. every day I’d get down on me knees and thank god’’. Words weren’t so much said as spat at me ....erupting  from deep within his frustration a torrent of bile ,venomous abuse, for a nano second I realized this is what she must be subjected to behind closed doors .’’Listen you ! ya little louser if I want your f****n’ opinion I’ll ...’’. he  did n’t get any further.I’d picked up my  spade and hit him directly in his wretched face.

The sound was a beautiful bone on metal ...KU DONG!!!Nnnnn ,hollow yet resonant in its finality a full stop to a devil .....a  reckoning .....an  awakening.... a halt to a gallop ....sweet justice.

He went down like a ton of potatoes , blood scarlet... some yellowed  teeth embedded on the metal.

Rivulets splattered on  his ‘hair shirt’ pebble dashed on sensible ,practical brown canvass trousers.His face a wonderful pastiche of stunned, he hadn’t seen stars ,I’d given him solar systems to dwell on.Crows squawk scattered...  from beyond the field I heard  wailing and crying in a moment his  head was in her lap ,she cradled and comforted her excuse for a man,he tried to eyeball me ,but I’d knocked the bollocks out of him,and he knew ....to cower ,for wasn’t it safe to brood so folk would think more of him than there actually was .I knew what  he was ...... a dog who’d had his day .I left the land ,for I was a young man and life stretched out before me,and left them to it,they’d made their bed and they could f*****g lie on it for all I cared.

Mark Manning

2010