Debris
Every time Sarah looks across the farmyard from the kitchen, she sees the debris that litters the lengthening weeds between the house and the barn. Four broken lawnmowers, only three with handles, their driveshafts bent after hitting heavy rocks in what would have been the pasture. A dozen or more herbicide cans strewn about, emptied in the futile battle against the poisonous ragwort and jimsonweed. A stack of concrete blocks that would have become a watering trough. The trailer, now rusted and its tires flattened, which would have ferried the horses to and from the county fair every July. A lot of coulds and woulds that never came to be.
In the winter, after the first heavy snow, it would be buried and hidden from sight, all but the trailer and the grips of the mower handles. In winter she could almost forget, but now, even with the weeds grown high, she can see all of it, and remember.
Whenever she sees the debris she is reminded that it is all that remains of Jack’s last dream, the last thing he had to live for after he could no longer work the fields, after the cancer so utterly drained his strength that a few hours of tending two gentle horses was all he could bear. Having only those few hours, that narrow window, drove him to use the mowers to clear the pasture. Bobby had the tractor in the fields all day, and the planting always came first. The farm and family wouldn’t survive if Bobby wasted any time on Jack’s pasture. After each secondhand mower broke another would arrive, bought in town and carted home in the back of Jack’s pickup.
Sarah might have been just strong enough to dislodge the mowers from the soft earth and push them to the edge of the road for scrappers to take away. But the concrete blocks were much too heavy for her, and the flat tires of the trailer meant it couldn’t be budged. She could easily gather the scattered herbicide cans, but she didn’t see the point if all the rest would remain.
Bobby could haul away the debris, she knew, but she didn’t want to bother him. He already had more work than he could handle, running the farm alone, eighteen hour days, without enough money for a hired hand. She wouldn’t burden him with the extra work, nor the memory of Jack’s bleak last days. She would see the debris from the kitchen window, every day, and remember, but if she didn’t call his attention to it maybe Bobby could just go on, working all day and hauling his tired body into bed every night, without having to remember.