Burying Shannon O'Day (a short story)

Burying Shannon O’Day
(A Shannon O’Day and Otis Wilde Mather Story)


Chapter One
The Meeting


“All right,” Otis Wilde Mather says. “Then I will pay for his funeral, and his headstone, since no one else will—”
“Gentlemen and Ladies,” said the lawyer, Miles C. Hoffman, and the young one, Annabelle Henry the first one standing up and sternly saying and near tears, “Can’t you all see, Mr. Shannon O’Day was a part of our lives, we all need to make him a big gravestone, not just leaving it up to Otis, because Otis is rich and handsome and kind, and was a close friend to Shannon.
“I’ve already thought of that too,” said Poggi Ingway, a dear friend who had worked at a foundry with him, and even Maribel Adams, who had married Shannon for a season, and lost him to Annabelle, and now was married to Earnest French, making her new name Maribel French, who had traveled all the way from San Francisco to Minnesota to attend Shannon’s funeral, “I feel,” she said, “he belongs to all of us, let’s build a mausoleum, and make it look like a cornfield, because he liked to drink in those damn fields all the time.” (And she chuckled.)
“He’s a war veteran,” says judge Finley, now in his eighties “no need for this meeting to see who’s going to bury the drunk, let’s just have a funeral and a wake and say our goodbyes, the Army provides a wooden coffin, and a hundred dollars I hear.”
Said the Lawyer, “He fought with the French, not the US Military, we’d have to contact them, see what their rules are concerning this matter of payment.”
“Hum…mmm” said the judge.
“Wait, wait,” said Gus’ wife Mabel, “Youall came to my husband’s funeral and there was no fuss about folks putting in fer his headstone so we should jest take up a collection now fer Shannon see what we all can get.”
Old Josh, Zam-Zam and Jake from ‘Dickey’s Diner,’ were also on hand, along with J.R. Ritt from the bank, the owner, he knew Gus better than Shannon, and had a eye for Mabel, always had an eye for Mabel, went to High School with her, fancied her then, and now. I suppose, and I’m sure she supposed, it was a chance for both to meet again; they were standing by one another.
“But there isn’t’ any crime if Otis wants to put the bulk of the proceeds in since he’s a rich—(and he was going to say nigger, but the Lawyer, held his tongue and said) black gentleman.”
As everyone looked at everyone else, like big bass fish, with bulging eyes, nobody paid any attention to no-how to anybody, until Annabelle said, “Well, damn it, will someone speak up!”
“Then what the hell do you want from each one of us, someone take charge here—please!” said Judge Finley.
The Lawyer Miles sitting there calm and quiet, with his face paper white and stiff; and it had seemed to Annabelle, he hadn’t learned much how to speak up and fight, timid as a hermit mouse.
“I was more Gus’ friend than Shannon’s,” said the judge, in a whisper, waiting for someone to make a rule on the amount of money needed, but it was obvious, nobody knew what they needed and wanted, and Shannon’s body needed to be buried, and that was what they came there for, to settle just that, by a passel of amateurs who knew not how to go about having a board meeting, or confronting issues, in a professional way, aimed at trying to simply bury someone, somehow, more now than then.
Poggi was somewhere in the group, and stood up and looked out at the others, “Gertrude, is Gertrude here?” (one of his five wives), and she was there standing in the archway of the door that lead into the kitchen from a hallway, with her daughter, Cantina.
“Yes, Poggi, I’m here, why?” she asked.
“I suppose we’ll have to have your daughter’s signature on everything, she’s the closest thing Shannon had to anyone being legal over him. And I guess you’ve heard as much as we have here, as any one on recommendations, so perhaps you can give a few?”
“Yes: all right, suppose everyone come back out here to Gus’ farm tomorrow and bring what money they can, and my daughter and I will see how much it cost to make him into ashes, and buy him inside a urn and if you all want him to have cornfields, I’ll have the urn designer, that is, do a quick paint job on it.”
Said Judge Finley, “We’ll hold the meeting out here at Mabel’s farm tomorrow then, Gus would like that, and I hear Sally-Ann and Margaret-Rose will be in town tomorrow, Shannon’s other wives, so perhaps the piggy-bank will have more money in it for his funeral. Or his wake or those cornfields Gertrude was talking about.”
Then they all got up to leave, some laughing and talking and joking, back and forth, Annabelle enjoying Otis’ company; Judge Finley looking at Otis, as if he was the Chief Head Master of the Minnesota KKK: old judge Finley had always treated Otis as if he was a foreigner, not even paying no attention to the others, standing by him, just staring at Annabelle and Otis, who became a millionaire in the meat market business, between Minnesota and Alabama, in the past twenty-years or so with the $500-dollars Shannon had won off a racehorse, in the 1940s. And J.R. Ritt, looking at Mabel as if he wanted to restart those old flames from his high school days.
“Now are you satisfied?” said Gertrude, to Poggi. As if to say, now you can leave me alone. She had stood in the archway of the door not wanting to be recognize, who she was—she did not come burrowing through and up to the meeting, relishing the fact she had to take on the coordinating of her ex-husband’s funeral, she had been in Chicago, all this time, just doing normal business until someone said Shannon’s lights went out, she was setting alone in a small apartment, how does a woman say it, inviting her soul to keep her company. It was really simple a time for her to see her daughter, and since it was a grieving time for her, she wanted to be by her. She, herself, had already done all the grieving she was going to do over that man.


Chapter Two
Gertrude’s Testimony


To be frank, and down right honest, Gertrude, wanted to go back to Chicago that very night, she did not want to attend the meeting tomorrow, and she told Cantina that, in so many words, and it didn’t seem Cantina needed her anyhow.
She was capable, but that wasn’t it, she was frail, as if her bones and flesh became fragile and her eyes seemed sleepless, and her mind seemed as if she could not dream anymore, she told her daughter, and that she was relearning these things since she left her father (and her ex-husband),
“Your father meant well, he always was a laugh, and we drank ourselves sick and silly, and I drank with him knowing I would never be enough woman for him, but he was enough man or drunk to do me harm and damage me more mental than physical, he never laid a hand on me, just enough man to do it mentally though, and, I might add, or maybe I didn’t know him, thank god I got away from him. Ay, thank god for that, I found peace in Chicago, perhaps it’s too late, I still have some ensnared anguish, and I thought I could be brave for you.”
“There, there, mother, it’s all right, I know you were brave then and you are brave now,” said Cantina.
“The morning I left your father, when I got home, the first thing I did was to turn on the lights, and the heater, the big space heater in the living room, it was cold. I propped the door to stand open, and I grabbed the bank book. The second thing I did, was to get the money out of our account, then out of town before your father called the police on me, looking for me, I was merely running and wanted him to leave me alone, I was dying of drinking, and he would never understand that.
“I ran up the stairs got my cloths, and I turned off the space heater before I left, and I suppose maybe your father thought there might have been an intruder, but I tried to be tidy about leaving. So I leaped here and there to turn this and that off, I moved, turned away from my home and husband, I had learned the hard way, he had the right to be where he was, and to change things I had to change me and my environment, had I stayed we would have fought over this and that, to flee to run, succeeded. With your father I would have had to be some lesser and baser other, to be vulnerable to him, to have to be silent to his drinking, and to be his drinking partner.
“To gain what? For what? What did I desire, what was I hoping for—it was all scary at first, but what I really wanted was simple, my own identity. I found privacy to sleep, and read, and not be in a state of despair.”

“I understand mother,” said Cantina, “You left because you were unhappy, simple as that, and its okay.”
“Shannon wouldn’t really mind, because I can’t hurt him now,” said Gertrude, “I can’t harm him, not just me, no matter what anyone did, they couldn’t harm him. That he would really just as soon drink and sleep and die in those cornfields as he did and for what godly reason I don’t know, perhaps just to show he cant be hurt. All right, you don’t’ have to agree, what do you want me to do here now?”
“I would like you to stay with me until he is buried,” said Cantina.
“If you were not drinking with your father, after a while he became a nuisance, all drunks are a nuisance when you are sober and they are drunk. I will not miss him, least his drinking, perhaps some of the laugher in the cornfields, since we both agreed in the beginning, cuckolding each other.”
“Lock the door mother,” she said. “We’ve already had a long day, its getting late, let’s go to bed.”
“I hope Cantina; you didn’t mind what I said about your father?” expressed Gertrude.
“Oh no mother of course not, but I do value him as highly as I value you and your coming here proves you value me. Good night!”


Chapter Three
Cantina’s Dilemma

Gertrude told her daughter Cantina, in a smooth yet sour way, the following morning as they readied for the second meeting, “You are much like your father you know, a dreamer and a poet—usually women are only swayed by poets long, a short while perhaps, they prefer reality, facts, and truth, well, they can make it fit in-between as long as they can iron out the other two, but you, you see your father as a hero, the facts are that which existed some forty-years ago, there is no more reality to that, it is all squeezed out like a wet rag, but you won’t even believe me, he was a drunk, no more, then than now, or just before he passed on—I mean.”
“Don’t say anymore maw, I’ll just end up hating you both, you most of all because you started it.” Then Cantina hesitated, trying to get her composure back, “I don’t believe you,” she said, cried and thought.
“So,” said Gertrude, “there is nothing I can say.”
Gertrude held her cigarette in her hand, motionless, as it burned down towards her fingers, “Bury him and be done with it.”
“Don’t you see mother that is what I’m after?”
“Our marriage my dear was a fact, the rest of it was that poetic romance I was fool enough to be fooled into, that only a fool follows a fool, but at the bitter end, the fool, one fool woke up.”
“Good-bye!” she said harshly, adding, “you’ll have to bury him alone, or not with me anyhow!”
“All right,” Cantina told her mother, “thank you for coming anyway.”

∙

Cantina didn’t care, know anything about womanhood for the most part, the parts anyhow, Gertrude was talking about, the things like romantic love, she only knew parental love, or mortality (death), she was too young to think of such things, to place them on a table and call them facts of life, she didn’t care about her mother’s reality, let alone the truth or no truth of what was the real truth that went on between them two, it was their lives, not in particularly her’s—perhaps she wouldn’t have put it quite that way—but she knew little about such things, yet she knew she had time to learn them, in time, she only knew what she knew, and felt, that she loved the man that died, her father, and it was unconditional love, it was free for him to take, and her to give, and she gave and he took, and he gave and she took, and it was not necessarily always receiving. If it was, then it was a trade, not unconditional. And that is what she knew, and felt, that was her reality.
And she knew this second meeting, meant just that. And she knew by the time everyone was done talking at the meeting, all the ex wives, and the banker, Ritt, and Poggi, and even Otis, her father’s body, oh yes, the dead can look ugly, and smell bad, no semblance of who they really were. This, the second meeting was the devil’s ambush, to take from her what her mother couldn’t, but tried, that last reflex of devotion and make it like sour milk
“All right,” she said, “just tell me paw how do you want to be buried?” and she fell to her knees, put her hands over her eyes, then when she opened them, in his shoe, she found an envelope, she opened it, and in the envelope was a letter, his will, how he wanted to be buried.
Then that afternoon she set out to follow the instructions. It all was too simple, but simplicity was greeted as a gift, a pusher, a stressor taken off her.

That evening, while everyone waited in the yard, at Gus’ farm, Cantina, showed up, all knowing she had the instructions from Shannon himself now, written out in plain English for her daughter to follow, all watching what she was going to do, she said “Okay paw it’s your idea to go home, it is you who insist on it being this way…” she held in her arms a two gallon antique, moonshine jug, one that Shannon used for drinking moonshine, and wine and his corn whisky in and from, those they had around the 1880s thru about 1910, or so.
Next she started walking down the rows those tall cornstalks rows one after the other, one by one, slowly and contently, inside that jug was his ashes, and she started emptying them out, pouring them out as if she was fertilizing the ground with them, per his instructions, and she whispered along the way: “I hope your pleased paw…I hope your pleased, I really do, I really do, I really, really do.”


No: 412; Written 6-10 & 11, 2009

Day of the Damned Horses (WWI, 1916)

Day of the Damned Horses
((A Day in the battle for Verdun, WWI, 1916) (A Shannon O’Day story))




Chapter One
The War and the Machine Gun Nest

(It is 1964; Shannon O’Day’s daughter Cantina is twelve-years old. She is with him for the weekend. They are out at Como Park, sitting along the banks of Como Lake. He often talks about the Great War with her, the one he was in as a young lad, and she always listens, but it is often a repeat, but nonetheless she listens, and today, Saturday, he is talking to her about it, they have cool-aid and hotdogs, sitting on an Indian type blanket in the grass:)


Says Shannon to his daughter, Cantina, “I came, I saw, I concurred, in the Great War…” then paused to look deep into her eyes, to see if she was really attentive, listening, “I was a man alone, like an island in the middle of the sea, entire of itself, like a continent, or part of one, that is how I felt in the war, especially in this one day of battle I had, and I had two days that were special in that 300-day battle—oh, perhaps more, but two that haunt me, one of victory, one of tragedy, both during the Battle for Verdun, in 1916, let me tell you about the first one, I call it ‘The Day of the ‘Dead Horses.’” (She nods her head yes, up and down slowly, she’s heard it before, each time though she gets something new out of it, something he was fearful before of releasing, so she has learned to not show discontent for him bringing it up for the umpteenth time, she knows when he’d dead, gone, these will be her private stockpile photos, of his trying days in battle, ones he only shared with her, and only her.
Cantina knew ever since he had come back from his war—some forty years ago, as Shannon called it, World War One, there was a since of duty that remained in him. As if he should have died, but survived for some reason.

She knows, but she can’t put it in words, knows: He sees no hope for victory in the long run for mankind, but finds he can live a full life in the hours God has left him. She knows this has told herself this in so many words, just sitting there talking to her father, thinking but not saying, saying only those things that are pleasing to him, she knows, he doesn’t fear death or solitude, never has and he finds love is possible for him in a sense that in that will, his will, he must never hide from death, nor retreat from it, he can live a full life, closely interwoven with it, but remembers the village where he almost lost his life in France, the girl who lost her two boys, and he had to half kill her, she did the other half of the killing. And those horse, those damn dead horses, he remembers them well, and therefore, he feels in life, ever since, he stands alone.
“What are you thinking?” asks Shannon to his daughter.
“The way you might be thinking.” She says back to her father, and it actually makes him smile, what daughter would try to understand a man like him, a good and fine daughter, that is who, he confirms this to his second self. “She doesn’t judge him,” he tells himself. “How funny, everyone else does.”
And so on this day, in 1964, in the park, sitting on the Indian blanket, here is the story he tells Cantina, I shall tell it in my own words, as he tried to tell her in his:


Shannon O’Day was making his stand in a trench. He did not like this trench and when he saw it he thought it had a shape of a woman’s womb. But he had no choice this was the trench, and he selected it as far away from the German artillery shells could reach as possible. But not as far away as the sound of automatic machine guns reached with their bullets banging away night and day, halting and firing, hesitant, uncertain, and then firing again and again, to give him and his platoon of eleven men a nervous case of being shell-shocked.
There still was snow on the ground, frost for the most part, it had ruined the ground, made it muddy, chilled and hardened at night, when the sun sank, and when the horses came pulling wagons of supplies, jerking, and climbing, and staggering their way through the mud, and snow, hauling equipment, men pulling their bridles, the rains coming over their heads and shoulders, holding the horses by the mane, many had to be shot, and many got shot in the line of battle, and there they lay dead, where they feel, for the flies and the worms and the rats.
The horses sometimes were used for barricades, if the battle took place within the timeframe the carcass was still plump, and not gutted by animals, and even Shannon and his men shot over their bodies on occasions, their burnt hides, laying their hot muzzles on their dead flesh and firing at the enemy instead of within the trench, allowing at times for them to advance, knowing all that was behind them were empty trenches, in particular their one empty trench this day of battle, and so they used these dead horses, fifty shot in one day to advance from one point to another, giving Corporal O’Day an idea, one that could take out that nest of machine-gunners.
This day, this one early spring day, one of 300-days in the Battle for Verdun, in France, once the twelve men had reached the perimeter, of the enemy, within pistol distance, there were several more horses laying dead thereabouts, they had succeeded in stealing foot after foot after foot, to get that close to the enemy, and now behind those several horses they waited until night fall, when their first shooting would start, the enemy not knowing how close they really were, and how many had perished in the previous battle, which none had.
Of the twelve men who had reached the outer rim of the boarder where the enemy had their machineguns, two were wounded, Henry Sanchez and Elmer Boswell. Henry was from New Mexico a young lad of eighteen, and Elmer, was a man from Wisconsin, a son of a baker, he also was eighteen.
Henry had a leg wound, shot twice, in two places. And Elmer had an arm wound. All the men were very thirsty, and the wounds of the men were starting to stiffen, yet Corporal Shannon O’Day, was too close to victory to halt the operation, it must go forward, wounds or not. Henry had told Shannon it was very painful. And this brought on a severe annoyance, and he told the soldier, plainly, “You will have to endure the pain, or take death as your way out, or if you have an aspirin, that might help, whatever you chose, make it quick, and if you can’t fight anymore, stay put, and if you can, continue to do as you’ve been doing, but this is not debatable.”
It was no joke, reality, it was the mission first, not the man, and if nausea became deeper and deeper throughout the night for the two soldiers, they were considered no longer usable in battle and therefore, second in priority.
Shannon and his other now capable nine men were spread out likened to the Little Dipper. Using the horses for cover, they simply waited; the horses big like mounds linking the soldiers like baseball bases, from one point to another. Shannon moved on his belly from one horse to the other checking his men to make sure they kept their steel helmets on, a few had bullet holes through them, a few had hammered them out, yet some of the edges were still unsmoothed.
When the shooting started at, 3:00 a.m., and all the helmets had been clapped, you could hear a few of those bullets banging against the helmets, and the heads inside of them swaying, the sounds were death sounds: mouth-draying sounds, spiting sounds, cracking sounds, mechanical sounds, machine-like sounds, desperation sounds, and then a final sound—and throaty voices were no more!
The dryness and fear Shannon had in his mouth, and gut, were on hold, as he looked among the nest for the bodies of the enemy, he had thrown in three grenades, men were laying flat on their faces, arms, torn off, reaching—but reaching unconnected to their bodies, for more machinegun rounds.
Shannon walked among the dead, he wondered said to his second self, “What was their last word inside their head, their last thoughts, or to one another, to the comrade next to him?’
Said Shannon to Henry, as now he had taken the pain, and simply endured it, was still part of the onslaught, standing by his side, “It is better to die on your feet, than on your bellies.”
Another man said in back of them, “Why should they die and not us?”
And of course, in days to come, that voice would die, in a trench, but Shannon had no wisdom, or witty words for the older man, older than he by far, so he said not a word. But Shannon O’Day was thinking: it’s early now, and soon would be first light, and he could take his men back to the General and tell them, if they didn’t already know, the machinegun nest was silenced, and they’d all get a three to seven day pass to Paris or someplace safe, and a good breakfast, and Henry would go home, the war was over for him, and so was it for Elmer. And he’d get two replacements in a week or so.’
He looked around carefully, looked in back of him at the dead horses, in front of him at the machineguns, he looked at the mud where he had crawled, at the bodies he had killed, not one of his men died today, just two wounded, but this was a good day—he felt, he knew there would be worse.


Chapter Two
Rest and Recuperation in Borges


Shannon had went to Paris, for his rest and recuperation, then right onto Burgos, Belgium, for the rest of his seven day leave from the war, it had seemed to him that from now on, after that killing of several men in the machinegun bunker now everyone he passed or talked to, anyone, one and all, he met, or saw, recognized him as the face of the man who killed the seven Germans, that he had a specific face and name, and that each person knew he’d be in Belgium, floating down the cannel in a boat, looking at the old houses, the tower, the square. On second thought—he knew this to be a mental if not physical impossibility, a trick of the mind, a stress from the war, the battle, that war was destroying him, a certain quality in him anyhow, that people like him, had gotten, but even sharper than him, debilitating. He told himself, “When I go home, I’ll have to fix myself, learn how to deal with people again, talk to them,” he meant, not react to them, but act by them.
As he walked along the cannel, and in the square the days he was there, pacing almost unnoticing the people around him as if he was a pigeon in the air, just sailing away, the horses came back to haunt him, the arbitrary shooting, the appearance of the body parts separated from the bodies, he was blank, expressionless, person. Each moment was a new moment a bizarre moment, he was trying to pretend to the people around him he was not involved with the war, that he was someone free of the war, never heard the name, World at War, thinking instead of someone whose destination and goal in life was higher than that, higher than allowing one man one day, start a war between two countries, and pull in the rest of the world, and the rest of the world followed like blind working ants building an anthill, and all these countries miles and miles away, and the spirit of war, having legs, walked and stretched its way down every side street and road in every town and village and city in the world.
He didn’t know these scares would last decade to decade, penetrating his daily life, habits, he didn’t realize then when he got out of the war, he’d be out of the world, out of a life, perhaps his mind betrayed him, the war was fatal to him, he would increase his drinking, it was a healer, and he just couldn’t find anything better.


Chapter Three
The Crossroads Restaurant


Shannon got hungry, and went to a nearby shell of a restaurant, it was in-between two crossroads—shaped like ‘y’ and the restaurant was in-between the ‘y’; inside there was a hearth ablaze, with thick and colorful flames, and the crackling of the dry wood echoed in each ear, it was warm and cozy, he sat close to it.
The guesthouse provided an oilcloth-covered table, with an oil lamp in the middle of it. He ate alone, the guests had vanished, the room looked empty, the plate of food was all eaten, sauerkraut, with a sizzling steak, and corn from a can, and some biscuits, a cup of dark coffee. A few wood embers floated by his table, he spoke casual to the waitress, light conversation, and idly he remained looking out the window.
He spread his legs to warm his inner thighs, the kitchen light went off, he spoke inattentively, “I suppose you’ll be closing for a spell,” he said.
“Just for clean up, we’ll open back up in two hours,” said the waitress.
Shannon asked her to speak a little louder, there was a ringing in his ears, he had become a little deaf from all the gun firing, and artillery; consequently, her having to speak launder, triggered something inside of him, a immobility, a guardedness, he held his breath, looked about as if he was searching for the enemy.
“Are you okay, sir?” asked the waitress.
Shannon’s side was to the fire, something beyond just stillness had overcome him, then he pulled himself back together, his voice had remained the same, “I’ fine, fine,” he reassured her.
“You just sit on where you are mister,” said the waitress, “I’ll cleanup around you, no need to move.”
Shannon nodded his head in thanks, and his mind shifted, as if he was taking a nap with his eyes open, he remembered drinking in the cornfields with his older brother Gus, he’d fall to sleep on the ground, wake up in the mornings, have a feeling the earth itself sucked all the living protean out of his bones, it was as if the ground had arms, and was trying to pull him down into its depths, before his time, but the alcohol would make him pass out and that is where he laid, and that is where he got a full sleep nonetheless—well, not a full sleep, no drunk does, but a dead sleep, not like when he was in the trenches, he could never get a good nights sleep or full sleep, and when he did wakeup from his sporadic sleep in those mud and fly infested trenches, he never knew were he was, thought he was at home, in the cornfields, in his brother’s house, everyplace but where he really was. So that is why he had gotten a hotel room the first day he was in Burgos, and that is why he was thinking about the cornfields, he was thinking about the places he got the best sleep—or at least a full sleep, and now he had learned to appreciate a good full sleep, one of the great gifts of God—is a good night’s sleep, he murmured, and the waitress now sweeping around him, heard him, and knew—right then and there, he was not a tourist, he was a soldier of the Great War.


Chapter Four
Anyplace will do


Shannon O’Day was really not much different in battle than out of the battle in that he never did much hiding or luring about, with his behavior, perhaps unseen and unheard as if he was a space invader, and could be an animal as in their natural habitat like a coyote or a wolf, after his prey, and when he attacked he was not concealed any longer, not crouching behind those dead horses, after hours of discomfort—laying against those smelly decomposing, horses, whose shapes were no longer shapes of horses, infinitesimal insects from the horses crawling from the dead to the living, like crossing over on continuant to another. These were the thoughts going through his head as the waitress mopped the floor, and he stared into the flicker flames of the hearth. A little jealous the waitress never had to face such uncertainties that soldiers had to, but happy for her at the same time. She was pretty, he noticed as she walked by the light shinning through the window, near the corner of the room. He had finished his meal, and was now drinking a beer, with his feet propped on a stool, that was left by the hearth for someone to sit on and feed the fire with dray wood.
He didn’t need to be shot at anymore, he could sense, almost feel the whizzing by of bullets, just daydreaming where he was, he could hear them like a bees shooting and buzzing by his ears, it was all invisible to the eye, soaring sounds of invisibility; beyond the woman sat a man counting the morning’s and noon’s receipts—thinking hurriedly, as if the doors would soon be opened again for the early afternoon rush, to dinner rush. He didn’t need to say anything, he just ordered a third beer, and watched and listened and gazed at the legs of the young and pretty waitress. He hadn’t moved from his chair, not once.

The waitress looked at Shannon, trying to figure out his age, figuring him to be twenty or twenty one, not sixteen or seventeen, she was twenty-three, and she had seen many a soldier come through those doors, and sho enough he was a soldier, and she knew had she been through war, she wouldn’t have much left neither, that what she’d want is just what he was wanting, a warm corner someplace, a quiet someplace for a little while. And she left him to himself.


No: 412 (6-9-2009)..

Corn Harvesting and Hogtying (a Shannon O'Day Story)

Corn Harvesting and Hogtying
(A Shannon O’Day Story)




Chapter One
Cantina’s High School


“You are most unhappy when your life is empty,” Shannon O’Day told his daughter Cantina O’Day, picking her up from her High School in March, of 1965 (three months before school would let out for the summer season).
“You got to keep yourself busy,” he pressed this point, “you live from moment to moment, and you should never have any recollection of the previous moment, this way you never have to concentrate or dread tomorrow, it’s all one flash, and one fiesta—!”
But Cantina knew that was the way her dad lived, and for her it just wouldn’t do, nor last. But she smiled at his philosophy it was really meant to smooth her troubled mind about her going with him for the several months, while out on school vacation, and her uncle Gus was visiting down in North Carolina.
She was the kind of like her mother, Gertrude, if she didn’t look out the window to see what or who was coming down the road, or look at what she might have to bear in life, it would become for her unbearable, life postponed, and this in itself would create to a great extent, anxiety.
She knew her father wouldn’t even budge from those cornfields he loved so very much while drinking in the late springs and summers, that an atom bomb wouldn’t chase him away, or even an attack by bees in all directions, yet he was her hero, who fought in the Great War, and fought while in those foxholes they called trenches, and was decorated, while in Europe, by a French General.
She remembered what her mother told her that when Shannon reached home in 1919, there was no triumphant hooting for him, yet he wanted to believe that there were things worth dying for in life, fighting and dying for in life. For at least one thing—even if it wasn’t the real reason—was that Shannon O’Day, himself never thought or believed of naming it anything other than what it was because to him, to Shannon O’Day, it was nameless anyhow, it was that someday he’d have a daughter, and he didn’t want her to have to worry about a dotted world outside the boundaries of America the beautiful—soldiers and sailors and marines pushing their way with hands and weapons onto her sacred soil and coming down the highway standing on the corners waiting to kill Americans like hogs waiting for the slaughter—like rooting hogs, ready to enslave America.
During some of his trying times, he never once went on relief, leaving the bureaucratic Government one less recipient.
So he came to Washington High School, off Rice Street, in ST. Paul Friday afternoon to pick up his daughter, that he Shannon O’Day, knowing that he would have her for the rest of spring, the entire summer and until after harvest time, and then she’d be heading back to school (March through September, to about October 1), about seven months, through the planting season and harvesting time of his brother’s cornfields, outside of the city, where Gus and his wife took care of Cantina, but because Gus’ wife’s mother was ill down in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Gus and she were going down there to take care of her, she was 92-years old.
Shannon would do his farming along with his friend Otis Wilde Mather, although Shannon didn’t tell Gus about Otis being with him during some of the planting and harvesting time (the rest of the time Otis, would be gone attending to his businesses in Ozark, Alabama, and a Meat market, he owned on Jackson Street in St. Paul) Gus never like him, called him a ‘Sneaky and cagey nigger.”

Cantina was thirteen-years old at the time.

That was the situation when he arrived at the school that Friday afternoon, to pick up his daughter. There was apprehension in it too of course, since, for Shannon, to raise a daughter with his drinking condition, and it was Gertrude’s normal concern whenever he took her, even for a day, now for seven months, but she insisted she be with her father on the familiar farm, for Gertrude had to remain close to where she worked, her and Shannon owning a house on Albemarle Street, and working downtown by the Mississippi River at ‘Gillette’, assembly line work.
But now, even if she had changed her mind, it was really too late, the last breathe on the issue had been discharged.



Chapter Two
The Planting


(March) The morning was cold; it was the 10th of March, Shannon had not drank for ten-days, and was already seated at the kitchen table, with Otis, when Cantina came in, down from her second story bedroom, looked out the window, and joined her father, he was leaning back reading the newspaper, as Cantina, clutching her shawl, like her mother often did, said in a waking up manner,
“What are you going to do today when I head off for school?”
“I’m going to start planting,” said Shannon.
“Don’t you think it’s a little early?” she commented.
“Why it’s the tenth of the month, and I’m not waiting for no train.” He said with a chuckle.
“I mean paw, is the ground warm enough?” asked Cantina.
“Warm enough, I don’t know, the worms are still in the ground, they are warm I’d think, when they get cold they’ll show their heads, and that’s good enough for me,” and he laughed again pouring down his coffee, and had a little whisky in it he had hidden, not even told Otis about the pint he kept in the back water where one flushed the toilet.
“All right,” she said, and Shannon remarked, “Get on out of here and go onto school, like you’re suppose to do.” And she did.

It was that the ground was 45F, not the normal required 50 to 55 or 60, for best planting weather, and thus, Otis and Shannon took the direct seeding and planted in the cold soil, and they planted between six to eight inches apart, not the normal eight to twelve for corn stacks to grow among each other, he wanted to get a big harvest, and early planting. And he planted two inches deep, instead of the normal one inch, thinking he’d not let the crows have a feast, and his rows were 20 to 25 inches apart, not the normal 30 to 36 inches, and he had blocks of 8 rows, not four, and it was a wet spring, the soil was drenched, and he needed to drain some of it, but felt no need to, this would save Gus a big water bill, and didn’t. And accordingly, the planting was done, the way his drinking was done, fast and careless.
Then, exactly like Shannon, the other one, Otis, said, “We aint got a thing to do but wait now I reckon, lets git on to doin’ some serious drunkin’?”
Without hesitation, and forgetting his pledge to his wife, he simple said, “Okay, but damn, we’ll be sure not to tell Gertrude, or my daughter, I’ll sleep it off before she comes back from school. Go-on now and bring in that jug of corn whisky, I know you got it hidden someplace.”
Shannon knew Otis had some whisky hidden, and Otis knew Shannon was drinking on the side that he was not as serious to sobriety as he proclaimed to be, but didn’t say anything to Shannon he knew, he just figured it was timing before he’d bring up the subject, and the jug, and therefore, he moved lickety-split like to the loft of the barn where he hid the jug under some hay, and brought that jug in, pulled the cork, and with one hand like a pro, laying it against his cheek, and on his shoulder, he gulped down a big mouthful of that corn whisky like it was Coca-Cola, and Shannon, likewise.



Chapter Three
Watering & Harvesting

As the weeks passed, Cantina would have to remind her pa to water the fields, and he’d do so when she’d go off to school, and during the summer, early summer, she noticed the corn was not growing well. And she watched her papa watering; he did it too shallow, “Paw” she said, “you got to soak the soil thoroughly! And be careful not to damage the plants while cultivating!”

“Cultivating, what is that?” asked Shannon, but Cantina didn’t hear him, she was long gone by the time he got the last syllable out.

As the corn stocks got bigger (knee high), Cantina noticed it was starting to look like a jungle in the cornfields, “Paw,” she said (a little inquisitively), “don’t you remember when you were drinking, there was room for you to put your bottle down, lay back, spread your feet out, while drinking in the cornfields, now if you were drinking today, how would you do it, the cornfields look like the Amazon?”
“Hum…mm, what is your suggestion my dear?” he asked.
“Well, by planting early, you avoided the warm problem somewhat, but now the corn is not growing fast enough you planted it too deep, if you can harvest early, like in August, and not September or October, you will be ahead. You need to use more insecticide.”
“No, I haven’t used any yet, not well for the bones,” said Shannon.
“Oh my gosh,” she murmured, “You should every several days, and when it gets real hot—like it’s starting to get—we’re going to have real big problems.”
It was soon after this that the corn started to silk, and the weather got blazingly hot, and worms were starting to show up, and there was leaf rust (disease on the corn), and there was tumor like growth on the leaves.
During all this, Otis and Shannon were drinking during the early afternoons, sleeping the late afternoons away, as Cantina went to visit her friends and mother. By the time she arrived back, Shannon had a 4:00 p.m., there was usually dinner on the table for her, and Shannon would be looking, or at least acting, all sobered up.

At the dinner table this one evening, she asked, as often she did, “How’s the cornfields?”
“Fine,” he replied.
“Have you done any weeding yet?”
“Weeding,” he repeated, “am I suppose to do weeding too?”
“Oh paw, frequent weeding, that is cultivation, you got to do that before you get a problem, you cultivate just deep enough to cut the weeds off below the surface of the soil. You got to be careful so you don’t damage the plants.”
“Well dear, your old paw knows a lot, but not everything about this farming life.”
“Yaw I know paw, I think Gus knew also, he wrote me, he asked if his field is a disaster yet or not.”
“You’re kidding me, my own brother said that?”
“And I know you’ve been drinking and I won’t tell mom or Gus, because she will take me away from you.”
“I suppose she might, if she knew, but I thought I was being pretty clandestine, like that Charlie Chan fellow, you know, that detective from Hong Kong.”
“Yes, I seen the movie paw, that’s pretty old fashion thought, it’s Perry Mason, nowadays.”
“Yaw, I watch him too, but the best of them all is that private eye called, Sherlock somebody…!”
“Why we are talking like this, when it is a serious matter, you got to take care of the farm Paw, you promised Gus.”
“But I’m doing the best I can, really I am.”
She looked at her paw, and she just couldn’t help but smile, he really felt he was, even if he wasn’t, “I know you are paw, I just wanted to remind you of your promise, sometimes you forget.”

Cantina went out to look at the jungle of corn, it was all of that and worse, worms were starting to mature and eating the corn, and much of it was diseased, and you couldn’t see five feet beyond the first row of corn, and the ground was mushy, and it was late July. The ears were full and milky.
“Pop,” she said as she ran into the kitchen, “I think we can save half, or near half the harvest if we harvest now, sorry about the rest, but it’s bad.”

Gus was getting abut five bushels of corn per acre, using about 9000-gallons of water per acre. And planted 400-acres, thus, getting, 2000 bushels of corn; Shannon got 750-bushels, used about 1000-gallons of water, per acre, and none in August or September, normally high water volume months, but somehow, everyone thought under the circumstances, he did a fair job. And everyone felt, he was drinking, and many of the neighbors said he was for sure they saw him and Otis drunk and laughing in the cornfields as if they were trying to hogtie each other, but since no one got killed in the process, Gertrude and Gus, didn’t say a word concerning the matter, to save Cantina’s respect for her father, they wanted her to see him as she always saw him, her hero, because other than drinking, he had good values, so they had just crossed their fingers, and thanked the Good Lord everything turned out rosy, somewhat.


6-7-2009. . No: 411