Passing on the Farm, page 1
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Praise for Passing on the Farm
Passing on the Farm
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
A word about the author…
Thank you for purchasing
Tim longs to get the world on two wheels. He envisions a fit public breathing fresh air and having nonpolluting fun. What’s not to like about this guy? And when he could have talked on and on about himself, he asked about me, so I told him I’m divorced, that Aiden and I live in Denver, but she’s with her father in Boulder while I’m here, and that she will start college in the fall where he teaches. I mentioned my dad’s death, and my mother’s before that, and how I’m here to clear out their house with my brother so he and his family can move in. Whew! I probably told him far too much on the first meeting. But he didn’t seem to mind.
Turns out he’s seen Davie lunching at Aces Tavern across from the bike shop. I asked, “You know my brother?”
“Not really. He’s usually with his friends, mostly cops. I sold the bicycle cops their wheels, as a matter of fact.”
“I bet I know one of the cops, a sheriff’s deputy who has been Davie’s best friend since high school,” I said. “But I had no idea Haydon has bicycle cops.”
“The police department added them recently.”
“In Denver, we women call them bakery cops.”
Tim gave me a quizzical look.
“We like their buns,” I said, deadpan.
Tim mock-groaned in appreciation of my wit.
Praise for Passing on the Farm
“A poignant slice of life tale about letting go of some things and opening the door to others. A heart-warming read!”
~ Amy Rivers, author of the A Legacy of Silence series and 2021 Indie Author of the Year
“Passing on the Farm is an intricately written tale of both the love and heartbreak that families experience. Popp’s writing creates a strong sense of setting and emotion while weaving a beautiful story about recovering from heartache and grief. Popp’s characters are dynamic and realistic as they find new love, discover new truths, and heal from the past. Passing on the Farm is a must read for all who love romance intertwined with the complexity of family stories.”
~ Kathleen Donnelly, author of the award-winning National Forest K-9 series
“Rita Popp's Passing on the Farm is a sweet hometown tale of family and second chances. Second chances of love, reconnection, and finding one's self and reaffirming who you are. I enjoyed visiting this Iowa town and getting to know Rachel, Davie, and Tim. I can't wait to read the rest of the Jelly Beans and Spring Things series, and you will too, once you take a much needed detour to Haydon, Iowa.”
~ Francelia Belton, Sisters in Crime-Colorado Past President (2019-2021) and multi-genre short story author
Passing on the Farm
by
Rita A. Popp
Jelly Beans and Spring Things
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Passing on the Farm
COPYRIGHT © 2023 by Rita A. Popp
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com
Cover Art by Kim Mendoza
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
PO Box 708
Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708
Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com
Publishing History
First Edition, 2023
Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-4896-4
Jelly Beans and Spring Things
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
In memory of my parents, Albert D. Rohse and Marcella Miller Rohse, lifelong Iowans
Chapter 1
Journal of Rachel Kilkenny. Personal and Private.
For my eyes only!
Saturday, May 14
2:45 p.m.
I’m typing on my laptop at my parents’ kitchen table in a brand-new file I created for this trip to the farm. As always, I aim to be a completely honest journaler, to put down my thoughts and memories without censoring them. Like Anne Frank writing to her imaginary Kitty, I have a make-believe reader, a new friend named Posterity. I don’t expect her to know anything about me and my life other than what I write, but I invite her to read between the lines.
If anybody other than Posterity ever opens this file, take note of the words at the top and decide whether to read on or not. It’s the standard warning I’ve put on my journal entries since I was a kid, except when, as a married woman, I used to add Bell after Kilkenny. Someday, I expect my daughter, Aiden, will have to decide what to do with all my writing (are you reading this, Aiden?). I never throw any of it away. I’ve got journals from way back, in spiral notebooks, composition booklets, and blank books with pretty covers, all boxed up in a closet in Denver, from before I bought this laptop after the divorce. I seem to have a lot to say these days, and on a computer, I can write faster than with a pen, and even if my fingers shake with emotion, the words are legible.
So for Posterity, I’m writing about this Iowa farm Davie and I have inherited fifty-fifty. It’s off the beaten path. From Haydon, where we went to school, you have to travel three miles over a two-lane highway and another half mile of blacktopped road to our place. As you drive up the graveled lane, you see the faded-red barn and some sheds on the left and the house on the right with its white wooden siding and white window trim, a typical century-old farmhouse. My parents never put on aluminum siding or replaced the window frames with metal ones. The paint is peeling, and the windowsills are rotting in places. The house needs work but is still sturdy enough to live in.
Davie and I will clean out the house before he and Kelly and the kids move in. It won’t be an easy task. My little brother and I have strong connections to this place where we grew up but not entirely together. He’s twelve years younger than me, with I don’t know how many of Mother’s miscarriages in between us. When Davie came along, I became his second mother while ours spent hours lying in bed nursing her headaches. No more Saturdays for me hanging out with friends. No more choir and 4-H Club. I did most of the housework, helped Dad some with the farm work, and I watched over Davie. To stay sane, I wrote in my journals.
Listen to me complain! But back then, I did all that labor willingly. I told myself that learning how to care for Davie would come in handy when I had my own children. At first, he seemed like a big doll, even though I couldn’t put him on a shelf whenever I liked. And eventually, he grew old enough to work with Dad, my ticket to slipping away to start my own life.
But I always come back. I drive here from Denver in two days. I’ve only flown after Mother passed away two years ago—a few weeks after Jack and I split up—and when Dad died in February.
Today, I got here about one o’clock and phoned Davie. He said he’d come right over, but he didn’t make it until two p.m. and then only stayed half an hour. But I’m getting ahead of myself. When I heard his truck rumble up the gravel driveway, I ran out to the front porch. When I laid eyes on him, someplace inside me, as shaky as a rickety bridge, felt shored up. The thing is, I don’t worry about him when he’s right in front of me—real and solid—my grown-up baby brother.
He boomed, “Hey Rache, how’s it going!” He always says it like a statement, not a question. Davie is five-foot-nine, only two inches taller than me, but he’s got long arms and a powerful hug. He’d never make a good social hugger, could never manage a polite air kiss. As he smacked me loudly on my cheek, I smelled spearmint. Not from gum, I assumed, but from the jelly beans he loves. I brought some as a gift, but I’ll wait until I can give them to his kids. I caught no whiff of alcohol on his breath, always a relief. When he was younger, he drank like a soldier on leave, but not so much as a family man.
Davie dresses like your typical Iowa farmer. Today, he wore his usual white-at-the-knees blue jeans, work boots, and a faded-green Haydon High School T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to show off his biceps. He only lacked his feed cap, but he must have left it in his truck. He had hat hair, a brown mass flattened against his skull. Even now, in the spring, his face is tanned, except for his forehead.
Davie looked tired and stressed. From running the farm alone, I suppose. He’s used to being Dad’s hired man. Well, he knows I’m here for a week, so we’ll talk about managing the place together. Davie promised to start going through Dad’s clothes before I showed up like I went through Mother’s. But he admitted he hadn’t even been inside the house since the funeral. He said, “Sorry, Sis. I’ve been kind of busy.”
“Watching the corn grow,” I joked. We laughed, and I let it slide. Now that I’m here, we’ll get the job done, but I’ll have to keep on him about it. He followed me into the house, his feet dragging. I asked if he wanted the kitchen table and chairs, the recliner and couch. He said he would ask Kelly. “Our stuff an
I didn’t need to make us lunch. I had a burger on the road, and he ate a sandwich in the field, so I just broke out the colas I brought—two twelve-packs, classic for him, diet for me. We went to the backyard and sat across from each other at the picnic table. Last summer, when I visited, I painted the table a deep red, covering up a coat of white that I applied what, fifteen years ago? I didn’t bother to sand the boards either time. Davie picked away at the bumps and pits on the surface as we talked. When I stopped him, he reached into a pocket and brought out a sandwich bag filled with jelly beans. I chose one and tasted blueberries. He popped a black bean into his mouth and made an “mm mm” sound. The black licorice ones are his favorite, but he always buys a mix of colors and flavors. We sipped our sodas, and I got a rush of nostalgia from the familiar mingled sweet taste of candy and cola.
We’re orphans now, but we didn’t acknowledge that fact. We ran through the normal catching-up conversation in short order: Kelly and the kids are fine. Aiden is fine too. “You doing okay on your own?” he asked, his usual question ever since Jack cheated on me and moved out.
“Sure,” I said. “How about you?”
“Sure, Sis.” Then he switched to a typical farm subject: the economy, a topic rich in subtopics: the high cost of diesel fuel, the unpredictable overseas markets, and how the government “ain’t doing enough” to help farmers.
Now that I’ve inherited the farm with Davie, I should share his worries instead of only half listening as I tend to do. He and I are so different, separated by age, gender, education levels, and miles and miles of road. I can’t imagine my brother living in a city. He thinks city life is easy, not demanding like farming. When he visited me once with the family, he treated Denver like a theme park with entertaining attractions. Back then, Jack and I had a nice house and a decent-sized yard. Davie has never been to the high-rise apartment where Aiden and I live. He would think, but wouldn’t be tactless enough to say, that there isn’t enough space to swing a cat. He wouldn’t appreciate my skinny balcony with a view I love of the downtown spread out below.
Chapter 2
Saturday
11:33 p.m.
Tonight, I’m typing in my old upstairs room, sitting against the single bed’s headboard with a pillow behind my back. When I was fourteen, I painted the room lavender, at the time my favorite color, now a washed-out gray. Where the walls meet the ceiling, I stenciled a border of purple flowers and green leaves. The chenille bedspread I dyed purple still covers the bed, and the forest-green shag rug I bought second-hand at a charity shop flanks it. A large framed print of yellow and pink roses that cost me a dollar hangs on one wall.
What a conventional, old-fashioned room! I never went for posters of boy bands and movie stars, photos of friends in crazy poses, or shocking colors. Not like Aiden, who recently painted her room in our apartment red and orange, eye-jarring but an improvement over her gloomy black phase.
From where I sit, if I would lean a little to the left, I could see myself in the vanity mirror. But I don’t do that. Whenever I do look at my image, I can hardly believe I’m forty-one. My face has a few lines, my hair—dark brown like Davie’s—a few strands of gray. I bike to work most days and on the weekends if the weather is good, so I’m reasonably fit. I should lose ten pounds, but I’m not unhappy with my body enough to diet. Jack used to call me a sexy lady, and sometimes when I see a really good-looking guy, I try to shrug off how my marriage failed and let myself be attracted.
The bedroom windows let in familiar night sounds—birds calling to each other and, in the distance, a baying dog. He’s somebody’s coon hound, tied up and itching to be on track. But the season doesn’t start until the fall, so he’s got a lot of nights ahead of him waiting to do his job.
I’ve been avoiding what I mean to write about, my sister-in-law Kelly’s visit, because it shocked me so much. Davie left about two-thirty. At four o’clock, Kelly drove up in her USPS truck, not to bring any mail—we canceled the service after Dad passed away—but “just to say hi.” She wore her mail-woman uniform: white shirt, gray shorts, pith helmet. I admit her style irritates me: bleached hair, too much eye makeup. She’s plump from having two kids but still bouncy like in her glory days as a high school gymnast. I don’t like her much but always try to hide it.
We faced each other on the porch. I blinked and smiled first. She smiled back and said, “You look beat, Rachel. Long drive, huh?”
I stopped smiling. She never says anything nice to me if she can help it. But I like to keep the peace, so I invited her in for coffee. Saying she could only stay for a minute and wouldn’t mind a drink of water, she went straight to the kitchen sink like she lives here already. She took a glass down from the cupboard and filled it from the tap. Bold and brassy, as my mother would have said.
Kelly said she and Davie are crazy-busy, him on the farm, her with the house and her mail route. The kids—Kendra, a second grader, and Dougie, a preschooler—are such smarties, their teachers say but ready for the summer break two weeks from now.
I waited for her to get to the point of her visit. She’s always up to something, always trying to turn things to her advantage. And this time proved no exception.
She dropped by, she said, because she had something important to say. “I want you to sell your share of the farm to Davie. We can handle monthly payments, but don’t expect a down payment.”
Selling to them makes sense, she said, with me living so far away. Davie can come into his own finally with the whole place to farm. “You owe it to him, Rachel. We took care of your Dad to the end. You don’t know all we had to do for him, like he was a baby. Come to lunch on Sunday. You can tell Davie it’s your idea.”
I was so shocked I didn’t say much. I must have given her the impression I’ll consider what she is asking. What a nerve to come here behind Davie’s back! I almost said that when she announced, “I got to get back to my route. People call the post mistress if I’m more than fifteen minutes late with their junk mail.”
She thumped the water glass on the counter—didn’t put it in the dishwasher or even set it in the sink—and aimed a parting shot at me: “God, you’ve got a lot of stuff to sort through. Good luck with that.” She readjusted that silly safari hat and was gone.
It’s no surprise she didn’t offer to help with the house. No matter what she says to the contrary, she and Davie didn’t lend much of a hand when Dad fell ill. I arranged for his home health care from Denver and kept in touch day-to-day with his nurse. But after the funeral and meal at the church hall, when we were getting into our cars to drive back to the house, Kelly said she wanted my folks’ dinner china and good silverware. Mother inherited those from her parents. I said to Kelly we’d leave decisions like that until later, and Davie didn’t disagree.
After Mother’s passing, Dad told me to take her jewelry box home to Denver. I showed Kelly what was in it so she wouldn’t think I was walking off with a fortune in gems. I let her take a few strings of beads and pairs of earrings for herself and for Kendra eventually. I kept other costume jewelry plus Mother’s gold wedding band and the pearl earrings she wore at her wedding. After Dad’s death, Davie took Dad’s ring—the match to Mother’s—and Dad’s watch and the cufflinks he rarely wore. But everything else, the property and all that’s on it, is Davie’s and mine equally.
Kelly has no right to act as if Davie is more entitled. When he married her, Dad and Mother gave Davie the five acres where his double-wide sits at the edge of one of our fields a mile from here. What a generous gift compared to when Jack and I tied the knot. The folks presented us with a hundred-dollar bill in a wedding card, for which I was grateful.
I only have a few snapshots from my wedding because we couldn’t afford a photographer. There aren’t very many photos of my family, come to think of it. Most show us opening Christmas presents or blowing out birthday candles. Even if you are not a happy family, somebody takes those kinds of shots. I wish there were some of Davie and me fishing or picking wildflowers from the woods for Mother when headaches plagued her daily. Her headaches seemed to get worse every year since Davie was a baby. If I’d been a hell-raiser or druggie during high school, I could have done anything I wanted unobserved. Dad spent his time in the fields or in town at Aces Tavern while Mother rested. But I wasn’t a rebel, so I made myself available when Davie needed help with his grammar lessons or grade-school math. We’d work at the kitchen table, and I’d reward him with a jelly bean for each correct answer. Sometimes it must have been spring, like now, but what I picture is a winter day, the light gone and nobody in the house but Davie and me with our books. I remember his plump little fist gripping a pencil. My hand over his as he learned cursive. Showing him my calculator, telling him what the symbols meant.
