Yellow Grass

short character sketch of a woman and a young boy

Yellow Grass

Summer always filled him with sadness. The evening sun sunk into the horizon, the sky shot through with peach and gold, dotted with black silhouettes of mockingbirds that soared above the trees. School started up again in two weeks and he dreaded its return -- the hectic two-step of classes and homework, classes and homework, the little adolescent annoyances that managed to get under his skin: dented lockers, textbooks graffitied with pornographic doodles, the undisputed reign of the jocks and cheersluts. It was exhausting just to think about. 

Here, outside, this late Saturday evening, everything was as it should be. Only the melancholy twist of his own thoughts dampened the mood of the night. With a sigh, he wiped the back of his sweat-slick neck and pushed the thoughts away. The air smelt of wildflowers, midsummer heather and Kansas primrose, the clipped voices of his father and older brother barely audible from inside the garage. The Cobra had been acting up lately and a faulty gasket was the suspected culprit. 

A pang of heartache hit him suddenly. It was easy to feel alone in Kansas, in the country. There was too much space between towns, between people. The open sky and the endless fields of wheat cultivated a sense of isolation in a man. Sean had never been close to his father, who was a strict disciplinarian that favored Jim Beam and a backslap too often for any real affection to develop between them.

His older brother, Daniel, was better, but not by much. He was a close-mouthed boy of 21, who chain-smoked and dated girls whose first names ended with i (Candi and Bambi had been pretty bad, though Lori'd been okay). Though Daniel never told him outright, Sean got the feeling that his brother had resigned himself to an unspectacular life: job at the factory, inevitable knocked-up girlfriend, heart attack at 60 from the boozin' and bacon grease. 

Sean didn't fault his brother for thinking this way -- hell, an attitude like that was safe, smart even. Why get your hopes up for a glamourous life you had no chance of leading when all you had to your name was a GED, a hopeless drawl, slightly above-average good looks and below-average charm. For Daniel, aiming low was understandable. 

But still depressing.

As for Sean, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life, but he reasoned he was still young. At 15, he still had a couple more years to figure things out. For now, he could enjoy the sunset. 

To his right, the backdoor of the neighbor's house slammed shut. Deanna Harris came storming down the porch steps barefoot, fuming, her tangled fire-red hair giving a literal spin to the word. Even from thirty feet away, Sean could see the bright purple bruise forming over one of her freckled cheekbones.

"F**k you, Keith! You try working 60 hours a week under a boss that makes Hitler look like the f*****g Pope! Come home and tell me how to cook your goddamned dinner then!" She spat on the dirt ground roughly and ran a hand through her hair, her fingers catching in the tangles. She cursed under her breath and mumbled something that sounded like "limp-dick shithead" in a sullen voice. Feeling Sean's eyes on her, Deanna looked up and flushed heavily, bright red haloing the purple on her face, unexpectedly pretty. 

"Sorry," she grimaced. "You weren't supposed to hear that."

"'S okay," he shrugged. "People fight." God knew how many times Dad let loose whenever the mood took him and shots had been spilt. 

"I'm going to leave his sorry a*s one day," she said, but the words were directed more to herself than to him, no answer required. 

But he replied anyway. 

"Hey -- you want to go for a walk or something? Get outta here?"

A smile quirked her face, instantly taking 10 years off her appearance. She nodded, almost shy, and in the dim light of evening, her blue eyes looked pale violet and starry.

~~~

The grove of trees behind their houses wasn't much to explore. Litter peppered the ground -- cigarette butts, crushed beer cans, plastic grocery bags just waiting to suffocate some small woodland creature. The grass was sparse, shaded by junk trees that had managed to survive in the inhospitable rocky soil. They wandered through the thin trunks, careful not to trip over the jutting roots, mosquitos thick and grey in the air.

Following the swarm, they came to the creek, which was low in the heat of summer. It hadn't rained in weeks, so the water was only a few inches high and a polluted, muddy brown. Deanna stopped walking, panting lightly, sweat seeping through her t-shirt and beading between the delicate symmetry of her clavicles. She still wasn't wearing any shoes. 

Sean studied her covertly underneath the shadow of a tree. She wasn't a beautiful woman -- too many hard edges -- but she had a wiry strength to her that was compelling, nonetheless. Maybe if life had been kinder, she'd been softer, more womanly, but even together, alone like this, she was quiet and subtly cagey. Defensive.

"So...?" he started off awkwardly, trying to break the ice. "Have you always lived in LaMotte?"

She looked up at him and shook her head. "Originally I was from Lethia, born and raised there." She caught sight of his nonplussed expression. "Oh, it's this little bumfuck town 500 miles west of here, no one's ever heard of. It's got a gas station and a liquor store and that's about it. When I married Keith, I thought I was done with small towns -- " She scoffed, her eyes growing hard. "Such an idiot. Just moved from one shithole to another. I hate it here." 

"Mmmm," he agreed. He didn't know much about his future, but he knew he was leaving LaMotte as soon as he had a car of his own. The place was soul-sucking, rife with old grudges and small town prejudice. It was dying on its knees. The trains had stopped running through about a decade ago, the tracks old and rusty, now nothing but a marker separating the poor part of town from the poorer. 

Sometimes Sean wondered if this was America's heartland, the place politicians lauded on the flickering five o' clock news. If it was, then the country was doomed, cause there was more land here than heart, more sky and wheat and dust than goodness. There was something rancid here, and it scared him.

For a moment, he imagined running off with Deanna. They'd ditch their families, just travel, go wherever they wanted -- Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Tijuana for late night margaritas and mariachi. To them, freedom would be real, not just a word or a dream. They could sleep in the car or under the stars, work small part-time jobs whenever they needed the money, ramble back highways like Depression-era drifters. They'd make love on long, deserted stretches of road where the blacktop crumbled in isolated grief. He'd be good to her, treat her right. She deserved it.

From the east, they heard the mournful hoot of the night owl over Cordell land, readying itself for the hunt. Deanna gazed into the creek water, hypnotized by the slow trickle. Her breathing was shallow and her eyes glistened with unshed tears, but when she spoke, her voice was steady. 

"I'm pregnant."  

And in a flash, the fantasies vanished. He couldn't have her now, not all of her, at least. 

As if reading his thoughts, she sighed wearily, the connection between them collapsing. They came back to themselves. This was reality. He was fifteen years old and she was married and old enough to be his mother. Both of them were trapped in this s****y little town, family ties strapping them down tight enough for welts: Dad and Daniel, the younger a cracked mirror image of the older, Deanna's asshat husband and now a kid she'd be saddled with for the next eighteen years.  

In the beautiful dusk, he knew in his heart they'd be no escape, not for him or Deanna or Daniel or anyone else from this town. Once the place infected you, you were stuck with it for life. LaMotte was a parasite. You could never leave. You were trapped living in some rundown shack, a few degrees north of trailer trash and weekends at Wal-Mart. If you managed to slip away, it'd be only for a little while. Family would pull you back, reel you in like a three-eyed trout from Lake Benchley. 

And always, always, the desolate yellow country was in your heart, in the very fiber of your being. It'd shaped him: harder, harsher lines forged by the sun and vicious Sunday sermons, the flat accent full of lazy contractions and dropped g's, the red neck that'd never truly fade.

"I'm sorry," he told her, and for a moment he wasn't sure if the words were for her or for them both. 

"It's -- it's not Keith's." She swallowed, a half-hearted smile flitting across her face. "We haven't slept together for months. I'm thinking of getting him some Viagra for our anniversary."

"Whose -- ?"

"Keith's brother. Robert. Keith was working late one night and -- and Rob stopped by and he was drunk and I was still so pissed at Keith for forgetting my birthday again and..." 

"Yeah."

"Yeah," she sighed. "It doesn't change anything."

   

Author's Note

the first line is a slightly modified prompt of volatilevixen's, taken from the PEN group