The Farm (The Missing Chapter, to the Novel: "Cornfield Laughter.")

The Farm
(The Missing Chapter, to the Novel: “Cornfield Laughter.”)



“Yes, brother,” said Gus O’Day to his younger brother Shannon, “a man sees too much if he lives too long: a lot of fellows in a lot of situations.”
He was chatting in a kindly tone with his brother on the porch steps of his farm, Gus’ wife, Mabel, sitting on a rocker on the open air porch. It was a cool evening, and Shannon had spent a good portion of it out in the cornfields drinking by him self.
“All this farm life gets yaw tired I’d think, up the nose with rules and regulations, and if you don’t produce, the government gives yaw money, and if you do, and you want to sell, and the government don’t want you to raise more crops and sell, you can’t sell them anyhow, you end up storing them in some bin, the government steps in, don’t know how you put up with it, but I love your cornfields brother, I love the crows, and the smell of dirt and the yellowish-green in the cornstalks, and listening to the trains go by on those metal tracks, and even when the breaks screech, and one car bumps into to another.”
“Yup!” said Gus, “we done made a bowl of soup out of ourselves on this here farm alright, now all we are, is recipes for the government, if they want stew with corn we plant corn. If they want stew with carrots, we plant carrots; if they want…oh you know what I mean.”
“Man don’t need a backbone anymore, brother (Gus asks for a swig of Shannon’s bottle of whisky, and he hands it to him, and Mabel says, ‘Slow with it, remember your heart, you’re no spring chicken, Shannon’s twenty-five years younger than you, so take it easy.”)
“She likes to bug me,” said Gus, “but as you were going to say brother?”
“Yup!” said Shannon, “man don’t need a backbone anymore, it’s us old critters that have them, I don’t know how big of a wrench it will take to loosen mine up, no need for it nowadays.”

“I reckon Shannon you’d be right lonesome out here just by yourself.”
“I don’t rightly know what you mean by that, why you saying—what you saying?”
“Your older brother Shannon, Gus, he’s picked out his headstone already, matter-of-fact, the other day, says he’s goin’ to need it real soon,” remarked Mabel.
Mabel lit the lantern, it was becoming dark, moved it over a bit by the two brothers sitting on the steps, shoulder to shoulder.
“Can’t see the steps,” said Gus, “my eyes don’t work much anymore, too many shadows in them, I move too slow, breath too hard, get tired too quick.”
“I need to get up,” said Gus to Shannon. Shannon nodded his head up and down, toward his chest, “Yes” he said, but it wasn’t that he needed to relieve himself; it was he needed to get more air into his lungs, his stomach. And he stood up, and held tight onto the railing.
“Nonsense,” said Mabel, “just sit on back down, the strain is too much fer yaw!”
“Honor, and pride and discipline,” Gus told Shannon, “that’s the recipe for a man, and God.”
“I know all that Gus, and trouble is the best teacher, it always comes back to haunt yaw!”
“You know I got to go, got to leave yaw, couldn’t’ do it without seeing yaw one more time though…” Gus told Shannon in an almost whisper.
Shannon knew what he meant, it was Gus who had raised Shannon per near, he was always patient, calm, with him and figured if he ever wanted to know about God, his brother must had been a carbon copy of him. He was a good model, and always kind of put himself in the background, he had a servant’s heart. —Gus didn’t need to tell Shannon twice, he saw him holding his chest, leaning on that rail that extended from the first step to the third, the top one. Gus asked Shannon to stand up by him. Mabel had laid her head back, Shannon stood up, Gus leaned toward him. And here was two men kissing each other on the cheeks, each hugging the other showing outright love, without shame. He said his last words to Shannon, “It will be a long time from now to then.”
Mabel lifted up the lantern to see why Shannon O’Day was crying, a tall, lean, old man had stopped breathing.



Note on this Chapter Story: “The Farm”: Here is one of the missing chapters to the Novel "Cornfield Laughter" concerning the cornfields of where Shannon O'Day does much of his drinking. But in this chapter, left out of the book purposely, didn't have time to finish it, mentally it was there, just not down in writing, is when he meets his brother Gus, for the last time. He owns a farm next to some of Shannon's friends, whom he drinks in both their fields a river creek separating them. Written 5-1-2009. The other chapters yet not written I consider missing, that I felt should have been written during the three days writing of “Cornfield Laughter,” is of Shannon O’Day’s experience in WWI, which he expresses in the book, but not to any extent (and of course in that first story I had really wanted to center it on a certain all around theme, that being, the gathering of the souls surrounding Shannon’s life, with contentment a seeking goal, and therefore, a few other things like the farm and WWI, developed in the near future.