This is my virgin post here ... I have been working on this piece for quite a while and I would love to hear some feedback ... positive only of course!

I was struck one day by seeing the remains of an old ranch complex that had to be from the late 19th or very early 20th Century. I wanted to know more about the men and women who built it and lived there. Unable to find anything, I made up my own history.

I hope you enjoy.

A Ranch in South Texas

By Eric L. Moreno

 

Part I

 

Cut from the Earth, I built my home to last. I built it to last beyond me … to last lifetimes.

 

In town, they said I was crazy for building here, for even wanting to live out here … out in the open, out in the beyond.

 

“The Land is too wild out there Billy,” they’d say, in their most helpful of voices.

 

“The Land out there is too hard for a young man and woman, especially with a baby on the way,” they’d say, trying to make me change my mind, even though they knew I wouldn’t.

 

But I believed. It was my dream to build out here … to tame this wild and hard land. Mark it in a way that after I was long gone, something would show – something would prove that I was on this Earth and would still be here long after I’m gone to tell my tale. It would be my legacy.

 

They said I was loopy for thinking that way when I should be thinking about my family, but I didn’t care. They don’t know me and I knew better.

 

I picked my plot and began to work. Work like no one ever has. It was all scrub brush, cactus, mesquites and coyote. It was dirt, not soil. But it was mine --- ours -- and it was beautiful. For my new family, we needed a home.

 

I cut each stone by hand from the creek bed. I shaped them with care … with a love that only a man working with his hands can give. As if God himself told me how, I built my home from the ground up.

 

The Land was tough and I fought it as hard as any man ever has. Working well past sundown. Working well past my breaking point. Planting, tilling, sowing, picking … day after day. No rest. None was needed. Season after season, but finally, yield it did.

 

Ella was there, never far away. Tough in her own way, she was always there with a cool drink or a soft touch. Whatever I needed at that particular time. Her round belly was a reminder of why that ground would damn well yield to me. Jody … my boy, my legacy.

 

Jody my boy, a living reminder of my legacy; with Ella by my side, everything was perfect.

 

My home … built by my own hands for my family. It was strong. It would last forever. It was a castle. You could see it from miles away. It stood tall and strong against the South Texas sun. It kept us warm in the winters and cool in those eternity-long summers. I built it, with my hands.

 

A farm and a ranch … no one said it could be done. In town, they said it was a miracle.

The land … my land, tilled and planted and tamed. You reap what you sow they say. I sowed hard work, my youth, more sweat than any man should ever give up to the South Texas sun and the blood of my father from my veins. I reaped respect.

 

A lifetime’s worth work … Hell, several lifetimes’ work. But it was all worth it.

 

I was building my legacy.

 

Part II

 

The talk me being crazy died away after that first big harvest. I had prospered where no man ever had before. All it took were five years from me. Not so long really.

 

I took on hands to help with the work and my spread grew even bigger and added livestock: cattle, horses, sheep.

 

At night, when we were alone, she would look at me. She would cup one of her small, ivory hand up to my face creased and cracked and darked by that unforgiving sun. She would look at me in my eyes permanently bloodshot from sweat. She would look at my hands that were now gnarled and scarred … bent out of shape from hours and hours and hours of holding on to that plow.

 

“I’m not young and purty like I used to be,” I would tell her. She made me feel sheepish and almost during these times alone.

 

“ You were never young or purty Billy,” she would say with a crooked little smile. “You always had those old man eyes. Always looking past the now.”

 

I never saw the now. I didn’t care … I had my dream. I had beaten the land. I had built my home. I had my family. I had it.

 

My legacy, cut from the Earth.

 

 

Part III

 

You never miss the rain till it stops coming. When it is plentiful, you curse it for it cuts into your work, spoils harvests and knocks down fences. It’s a nuisance when it is plentiful. But when it wasn’t …

 

Whispers between the workers are telling; they never say the word in English, thinking I won’t understand their talk. El aridez they would say. It was the drought. It wasn’t superstition … they knew it and deep down so did I. It was death.

 

After the third month, the workers left quietly in the middle of the night. I’m sure back to a land that where the water flowed and the creeks were not seco. After 10 years, I was back where I started, working this land by myself. My back would break again and again, day after long day.

 

The creek dried up as months turned to years and turned to dust. The only water that flowed came from my brow and off my back … and from Ella’s eyes, though I pretended not to notice the streaks.

 

Some days, Jody would ride out on his pony to be with me. He’d ride on that little sorrel I got him for his birthday from that chili vendor in town. He was always a quiet boy. He would listen to me and Ella talk, never saying a word. Just listening. The coughing was what startled me that hot, bad day. H was always so quiet. So quiet.

 

He got the fever and in the blink of an eye, I lost him. We lost him. My boy.

 

Ella was struck with grief. There was no family but us, so the doctor stayed by her side when I couldn’t – when I wouldn’t.

 

I worked late into the night and went down to that dried up creek and cried where no one could see or hear. I shook my fist at the night sky demanding that it send that rain down. It never did.

 

Not a month went by before was gone Ella too. I wasn’t even there when it happened.

 

I buried them both by the south wall where we would picnic on the Fourth of July. I laid them down together, forever.

 

“Ella Browning & Jody Browning … Mother & Son. Beloved. I love you both.” 

 

My legacy.

 

 

Part IV

 

“I’m so sorry.”

 

That’s what everyone would say. The faces of the folks from town were all blur to me. I couldn’t remember them all after a while. I knew I needed to get back out into the fields.

 

The letters came next, first white, then yellow, then pink. All of ‘em stamped “Urgent.” Mr. Exeter himself, Vice President of Mortgages & Lending over to the Savings & Loan came to talk to me. He expressed his “deepest regret” and “his deepest sympathies for my plight.”

 

Plight. That’s what I had now. Plight. I didn’t care anymore though.

 

I sold off the last of the livestock to agent from the Army. Fractions of what they were worth. My fields withered and died.

 

Pancho, Jody’s little pony … I turned him loose. I couldn’t look at him anymore. One quick swat and he was gone too.

 

With no crops left to keep the soil down, my land blew away, bit by bit. It blew into my bloodshot eyes, onto my clothes and into my home … the home I built with these hands and cut from this Earth.

 

I looked out over my land cracked and worthless and saw the graves and my knees buckled. I leaned against the wall of my home … my castle to brace myself and let go at the same time. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I told myself they were dried up too.

 

Then, for the first time, I saw cracks in the walls and I wept. The dam had burst and the water flowed onto the Earth. The ground below turned to mud and I dropped. This was My Legacy.