The Stump in Valley Falls
By Nicole Marie Curtis
April 15, 2024
April 15, 2024
“I guess you know this pond,” Jed said. Hank stood a few paces away.
“I know it well.” Hank shifted his weight onto his heels.
The pond was smaller than it had been. It wasn’t as deep or wide. He thumbed his overalls and squatted on his haunches looking at the water.
“Took my first kid fishing here. She probably doesn’t remember. She was maybe three or four — caught something. I unhooked it and held it in the palm of my hand.” Jed grunted in response.
Hank remembered the play of light on his daughter’s face. Her wide brown eyes, like deep wells, staring into the fish. It made him happy to astonish his child. A pleasure long gone as she hadn’t spoken to him in years.
“It’s as though it has changed, but it hasn’t.” Jed said nothing in response, but he pushed his baseball cap up off his forehead and scratched for a moment.
Hank came to Valley Falls, a small town about thirty minutes outside of Topeka, to see his ninety-four-year-old grandmother who only just surrendered her right to drive. Part of him expected to find the place deserted, though he heard someone bought the farm after his great Grandma Mary’s death. When he arrived at the property there was a new house on its edge. He sat in the car and rehearsed what he would say to the owners, feeling stupid for being there He picked at a blister on his palm and almost decided to leave when he spotted Jed come out his front door.
When they met on the lawn, Hank explained his purpose. This used to be his great grandmother’s farm, and if it wasn’t too much trouble, could he walk the land? Jed’s face was grim but familiar. He nodded and offered to show him around.
“Maybe you’d like a beer?”
“I sure could use one.”
“Well, come on in.”
Hank followed him inside. The family cuckoo clock rang on the wall and a faded crocheted blanket hung over the couch. Life in Kansas. It was not his grandma’s house, but he knew this place. When they came to the kitchen, Jed held out a can.
“So, where you from?” Jed popped the top, took a swig.
“Indiana. I’m here seeing my grandma. Ruth Wagner?” Hank asked.
“I’ve seen her at Mass. She’s an old bird. Blind, is she?”
“Very nearly. We had to pry the car keys out of her hand.” Jed chuckled at Hank. They both took a long drink. Jed led the way out onto his land. Hank was struck by the clarity outside. The air tasted filtered.
“Any chance the old house still stands?”
“Only for a little while longer. It’s being razed two weeks from today. Rotting from the inside out,” Jed said.
Hank’s stomach dropped at the idea of it. “I’d like to look, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.”
They walked and drank. Jed described the crops. As he spoke, Hank tried to decide how he felt about the old house being wiped off the land. Maybe he was feeling relieved, but it was the kind of relief a person experienced after vomiting. They walked past a grove of silver maple trees.
“The switch grove.” Hank said. He did not mean to say it out loud. “Your grandma beat you?” Jed asked.
“Sure.”
“I had a fair share of spankings myself. Only way to keep a kid in line.” Jed said.
Hank saw the house in the distance and caught his breath. It stooped forward on its foundation. He could walk across the land and right into 1975. Hank was embarrassed now. This was so personal. He focused on his boots and buttoned his flannel over his overalls. Jed flicked his wrist to check his watch and adjusted his cap, pulling it low over his eyes.
“Listen, I gotta pick up my boy. You’re welcome to stay if you like. Maybe you want supper?”
“No, that’s okay. I don’t want to bother. I’ll stand here for a few and be out of your hair.” Nothing sounded worse than more small talk.
“No problem. No problem at all.” Jed held out his hand, and Hank grasped it.
Built in 1887, it was 125 years old. The tenacity of the building! It just kept standing. He guessed it had not been painted since the last coat he laid over thirty-five years ago. It was peeling in large gray chips. Grandma Mary handed him the paint can, a brush, and pointed to the barn “Ladder’s in there,” her voice low and harsh. It was a sweltering, humid summer.
Rounding the house once, he counted two windows broken but not boarded. He peeked inside. Too dark to see much, but he knew he was looking in on the kitchen. Hank gripped the knob and tried to force it open. It was locked or stuck. Probably wasn’t a good idea to go inside.
He couldn’t give up on the thought. He went around to the back and pushed hard against the kitchen door. It gave way and the whole structure groaned. Hank jumped back as though it would topple down on him. After a quiet moment, he kicked the door open, and he took out his cell phone. The screen of his phone lit the kitchen.
Things did not spring to life. He was half-expecting to find his great grandmother leaning over the sink, snapping beans. Something scurried away from his thick footsteps. Hank searched the floor for weak spots, then looked up to the roof. He didn’t think it would cave.
When he entered, everything pushed forward. As if it was one of those trick houses that gave him sickening vertigo. Few remnants of what was; old sheets flung over the breakfast table. He lifted them and sat down to finish his warm beer. He drummed his fingers on the table, impatient, wondering what he was doing.
He was back to when he fished the pond with his daughter, Rachel. They did not catch much, but she was so excited about the teeny-weeny fish she insisted on showing the women inside. They carried it back to the house walking in step together. She walked the whole way, some 28-acres without asking to be held. She was independent.
Inside she set herself on great Grandma’s knee and garbled something about a fishy. It was unusual. He did not remember a time when he sat on his grandmother’s knee. Yet, there was his child throwing herself at a woman mean to the bone. Grandma Mary barked about the smell of the fish and ordered Hank to toss or freeze it. He remembered the blanket that lay on the back of her chair. It was one of those salmon pink zigzag crocheted blankets, pink alternating with harsh blue.
Four generations were in the living room that day, his great-grandmother, his grandmother, his mother, and his now ex-wife. They were stifling. When he was grumpy, he evenly distributed the reasons for his unhappiness among them. Women were always the answer to any miserable question.
He got up from the kitchen table and wandered into the living room. Empty except for her ratty old chair. It was rocking. He shook his head to clear the image.
He came to see this place, to remind himself that this farm could have been his. When Mary died in 1991, the farm went up for sale. 128-acres, the farm implements, and the house would have cost him $230,000. It could have been his land. It was his. Sure, some other family worked it now. A new house stood on its edge, but Hank owned it. He was irritated knowing he shared it with Jed for the last twenty-three years, unaware. It remained Great Grandma’s farm, and by extension, it was his. Hadn’t he suffered for it?
The gray outside thrust darkness on the house, and he was tired of lighting the way with his cell phone. He did not bother with the rest of the rooms. In the kitchen, he replaced the sheet over the table. There was one last thing he wanted to see. He left the kitchen and jammed the door shut behind him.
The barn wasn’t locked. He pushed on the right door with all his weight. To his surprise, the tractor remained rusted out. The whole place smelled of old oil and grease. Hank was giddy. It was here. The tractor stayed. Red paint peeled away to reveal deep orange rust.
He climbed onto the seat, put his hands on the wheel.
This machine was an old friend. That it was just sitting in the barn for so many years, waiting to be found, made him think about all the other things lurking in the background of his life. Unchanged, unbending, even as he forgot all about them.
Now he was 13 years old. It was the middle of July in 1975. Grandma Mary woke him at 5:30. He ate his Cream of Wheat half asleep. She said, “I’ve got something for you to do today. Follow me.”
Hank grabbed the straw cowboy hat his father forgot to take when he left. It was over two months now, but he did not miss him and thought he never would.
She led him through the kitchen door and into the backfield. Grandma pointed at a large stump.
“I want that gone.” He looked at her. Her lips puckered; eyes squinted. He wanted to ask how but chewed his tongue instead.
“It’s got to be gone by sundown.” She wiped her hands on her apron and walked away.
He stood looking at the stump for some time. Circled it, kicked it, and knocked his fist against it. He never had a job like this. Initially, the plan was to dig it up, but after hours of digging he had blisters on his palms. The thick roots of the stump were exposed, and they went on forever, deep into the earth’s core. Frustration made him want to cry. Every time he turned around, she stared at him through the window or watched him from the back door. He burned. She knew the best way to go about it. She would not tell her great- grandson.
By 1:00 in the afternoon, he had hacked away at the stump for over an hour. It was still there, hardly diminished. Heat scorched his head through his hat. He lay down in the grass and wiped his forehead. If it had to be out by sundown, it had to be out, or it was a trip to the switch grove. His backside was worn and sore from too many visits already. He decided to return to the barn for another tool.
He trudged over and opened the double barn doors. The 1946 Farmall tractor stared back at him. Hank climbed the ladder to the top shelf and pulled down box after box, rummaging around for a heavy chain.
Finally, he spotted it on the floor underneath the workbench. Heart pounding, he pushed the barn doors wide open. He slung the chain over his shoulder, and climbed onto the scalding tractor seat, starting its engine for the first time. Its grumble made him sit a little taller. When he rolled out of the barn and passed the house, he looked toward the kitchen hoping Grandma was watching him.
She wasn’t there.
He made a long loop around the stump, enjoying the power of the tractor. Parking it in position, he gathered the chain. Hank looped the chain around the large stump twice. He walked back to the tractor and hooked the chain to its u-shaped hitch — a moment of doubt. The engine could blow out. Ruin the engine or fail to remove the stump, either way he would be punished. He checked his rigging and said a small prayer, asking God to help pull the stump.
He pulled the heavy lever into gear, pushing his foot against the gas pedal. The tractor lurched forward, and the stump fought the force. A loud cracking noise struck as he pushed his foot down harder. He kept rolling forward until he realized the tractor was dragging something behind it. He put the machine into park. When he turned, he saw the giant stump wrenched from the ground. Its long roots sticking straight up in the air. He hollered over the thunder of the motor.
“Hot damn! Son of a bitch!”
Clapping his hands like an idiot, he jumped down and turned the tractor off. Hank ran to the stump to inspect it. He was astonished; it worked. Circling the stump he saw just how wide and deep it went. As if he could have dug the thing out, as if he really could have hacked it to nothing. He wanted to run inside and grab his grandmother by the wrist. He checked his glee when he saw her standing cross-armed at the back kitchen door. Hank waved with both arms.
“I did it.” She was unmoved and turned to go back inside.
“But…now what?” he said. She clucked her tongue against her teeth. Hank tucked his tail.
“Drag it back to the barn. You can chop it up tomorrow.”
He hopped back onto the seat and pretended he was towing the enormous prize down Main Street for the whole town to see. He waved with pride to the pretty girls on the sidewalk, their hair in long golden braids. People threw him taffy and two teenage boys standing next to a Dodge Challenger gave him a thumbs up.
At the barn, he unhitched the chain and unwrapped the stump all alone. He shoved open the doors and rode the tractor in with ease. As he finished, he rubbed his hands together with satisfaction. He did it. Ha! Grandma thought he wouldn’t be able to wrap his pea brain around this task.
He still felt the same sense of accomplishment, but now, he was old. He remembered passing this story on to his daughter and telling it with relish. She was interested in his stories, then.
Sometimes he could see what those summers were worth. At the right hour, after the right number of beers, he felt those months gave him his best traits. He was a problem solver and manual labor came naturally to him. Hank was a good stoic. Those things were born during those seventies’ summers. Occasionally, he forgave her for beating him. She meant to make him a better man, better than the men she knew.
The older he grew, the darker the times. Times when he’d had too much to drink, and he was lonely, and there was no one to blame but himself, so he blamed her instead. He recalled the curse of being a Wagner with no control over raging emotions, coarse and mean, hot and high.
Connecting with his children was a miserable thing. He gave in to being mean and drunk. It wasn’t his fault, but the cycle of addiction consumed his life. He was not special. This happened to every Wagner before him, and it was happening to his grown children now.
Here he was in Valley Falls, a stranger in his own land, but he could not remember leaving. He’d stood there since he was thirteen, living in all the moments that he loathed and loved in the strangest way.
Everyone grew distant from him, and for a long time, he believed that was what he wanted. Why had he come here now? He could not help the tears.
Hank thought he came to see the land. Perhaps he came to see the house and know his great grandma in a new way. It might be possible to see something different the way you do as you grow older, granting pardons to the villains of your childhood. This way he could put it all to rest. But even as the house and tractor crumbled away, Mary remained, and her memory did not soften.
Hank believed they still had time for pardons.
The evening light was pale pink through the clouds. When he turned to the house for a last look, she was standing outside the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She squinted into the night. He walked to the car and passed the pond.
Night was falling quickly, and that puddle of a pond transformed into a black abyss. He stood at its edge and looked into the murky water. Hank tried to skip a pebble across the surface, but once the rock left his hand it was sucked under, no ripple or splash marked its sinking. She was watching; watching and waiting for him to do something right.
“I know it well.” Hank shifted his weight onto his heels.
The pond was smaller than it had been. It wasn’t as deep or wide. He thumbed his overalls and squatted on his haunches looking at the water.
“Took my first kid fishing here. She probably doesn’t remember. She was maybe three or four — caught something. I unhooked it and held it in the palm of my hand.” Jed grunted in response.
Hank remembered the play of light on his daughter’s face. Her wide brown eyes, like deep wells, staring into the fish. It made him happy to astonish his child. A pleasure long gone as she hadn’t spoken to him in years.
“It’s as though it has changed, but it hasn’t.” Jed said nothing in response, but he pushed his baseball cap up off his forehead and scratched for a moment.
Hank came to Valley Falls, a small town about thirty minutes outside of Topeka, to see his ninety-four-year-old grandmother who only just surrendered her right to drive. Part of him expected to find the place deserted, though he heard someone bought the farm after his great Grandma Mary’s death. When he arrived at the property there was a new house on its edge. He sat in the car and rehearsed what he would say to the owners, feeling stupid for being there He picked at a blister on his palm and almost decided to leave when he spotted Jed come out his front door.
When they met on the lawn, Hank explained his purpose. This used to be his great grandmother’s farm, and if it wasn’t too much trouble, could he walk the land? Jed’s face was grim but familiar. He nodded and offered to show him around.
“Maybe you’d like a beer?”
“I sure could use one.”
“Well, come on in.”
Hank followed him inside. The family cuckoo clock rang on the wall and a faded crocheted blanket hung over the couch. Life in Kansas. It was not his grandma’s house, but he knew this place. When they came to the kitchen, Jed held out a can.
“So, where you from?” Jed popped the top, took a swig.
“Indiana. I’m here seeing my grandma. Ruth Wagner?” Hank asked.
“I’ve seen her at Mass. She’s an old bird. Blind, is she?”
“Very nearly. We had to pry the car keys out of her hand.” Jed chuckled at Hank. They both took a long drink. Jed led the way out onto his land. Hank was struck by the clarity outside. The air tasted filtered.
“Any chance the old house still stands?”
“Only for a little while longer. It’s being razed two weeks from today. Rotting from the inside out,” Jed said.
Hank’s stomach dropped at the idea of it. “I’d like to look, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.”
They walked and drank. Jed described the crops. As he spoke, Hank tried to decide how he felt about the old house being wiped off the land. Maybe he was feeling relieved, but it was the kind of relief a person experienced after vomiting. They walked past a grove of silver maple trees.
“The switch grove.” Hank said. He did not mean to say it out loud. “Your grandma beat you?” Jed asked.
“Sure.”
“I had a fair share of spankings myself. Only way to keep a kid in line.” Jed said.
Hank saw the house in the distance and caught his breath. It stooped forward on its foundation. He could walk across the land and right into 1975. Hank was embarrassed now. This was so personal. He focused on his boots and buttoned his flannel over his overalls. Jed flicked his wrist to check his watch and adjusted his cap, pulling it low over his eyes.
“Listen, I gotta pick up my boy. You’re welcome to stay if you like. Maybe you want supper?”
“No, that’s okay. I don’t want to bother. I’ll stand here for a few and be out of your hair.” Nothing sounded worse than more small talk.
“No problem. No problem at all.” Jed held out his hand, and Hank grasped it.
Built in 1887, it was 125 years old. The tenacity of the building! It just kept standing. He guessed it had not been painted since the last coat he laid over thirty-five years ago. It was peeling in large gray chips. Grandma Mary handed him the paint can, a brush, and pointed to the barn “Ladder’s in there,” her voice low and harsh. It was a sweltering, humid summer.
Rounding the house once, he counted two windows broken but not boarded. He peeked inside. Too dark to see much, but he knew he was looking in on the kitchen. Hank gripped the knob and tried to force it open. It was locked or stuck. Probably wasn’t a good idea to go inside.
He couldn’t give up on the thought. He went around to the back and pushed hard against the kitchen door. It gave way and the whole structure groaned. Hank jumped back as though it would topple down on him. After a quiet moment, he kicked the door open, and he took out his cell phone. The screen of his phone lit the kitchen.
Things did not spring to life. He was half-expecting to find his great grandmother leaning over the sink, snapping beans. Something scurried away from his thick footsteps. Hank searched the floor for weak spots, then looked up to the roof. He didn’t think it would cave.
When he entered, everything pushed forward. As if it was one of those trick houses that gave him sickening vertigo. Few remnants of what was; old sheets flung over the breakfast table. He lifted them and sat down to finish his warm beer. He drummed his fingers on the table, impatient, wondering what he was doing.
He was back to when he fished the pond with his daughter, Rachel. They did not catch much, but she was so excited about the teeny-weeny fish she insisted on showing the women inside. They carried it back to the house walking in step together. She walked the whole way, some 28-acres without asking to be held. She was independent.
Inside she set herself on great Grandma’s knee and garbled something about a fishy. It was unusual. He did not remember a time when he sat on his grandmother’s knee. Yet, there was his child throwing herself at a woman mean to the bone. Grandma Mary barked about the smell of the fish and ordered Hank to toss or freeze it. He remembered the blanket that lay on the back of her chair. It was one of those salmon pink zigzag crocheted blankets, pink alternating with harsh blue.
Four generations were in the living room that day, his great-grandmother, his grandmother, his mother, and his now ex-wife. They were stifling. When he was grumpy, he evenly distributed the reasons for his unhappiness among them. Women were always the answer to any miserable question.
He got up from the kitchen table and wandered into the living room. Empty except for her ratty old chair. It was rocking. He shook his head to clear the image.
He came to see this place, to remind himself that this farm could have been his. When Mary died in 1991, the farm went up for sale. 128-acres, the farm implements, and the house would have cost him $230,000. It could have been his land. It was his. Sure, some other family worked it now. A new house stood on its edge, but Hank owned it. He was irritated knowing he shared it with Jed for the last twenty-three years, unaware. It remained Great Grandma’s farm, and by extension, it was his. Hadn’t he suffered for it?
The gray outside thrust darkness on the house, and he was tired of lighting the way with his cell phone. He did not bother with the rest of the rooms. In the kitchen, he replaced the sheet over the table. There was one last thing he wanted to see. He left the kitchen and jammed the door shut behind him.
The barn wasn’t locked. He pushed on the right door with all his weight. To his surprise, the tractor remained rusted out. The whole place smelled of old oil and grease. Hank was giddy. It was here. The tractor stayed. Red paint peeled away to reveal deep orange rust.
He climbed onto the seat, put his hands on the wheel.
This machine was an old friend. That it was just sitting in the barn for so many years, waiting to be found, made him think about all the other things lurking in the background of his life. Unchanged, unbending, even as he forgot all about them.
Now he was 13 years old. It was the middle of July in 1975. Grandma Mary woke him at 5:30. He ate his Cream of Wheat half asleep. She said, “I’ve got something for you to do today. Follow me.”
Hank grabbed the straw cowboy hat his father forgot to take when he left. It was over two months now, but he did not miss him and thought he never would.
She led him through the kitchen door and into the backfield. Grandma pointed at a large stump.
“I want that gone.” He looked at her. Her lips puckered; eyes squinted. He wanted to ask how but chewed his tongue instead.
“It’s got to be gone by sundown.” She wiped her hands on her apron and walked away.
He stood looking at the stump for some time. Circled it, kicked it, and knocked his fist against it. He never had a job like this. Initially, the plan was to dig it up, but after hours of digging he had blisters on his palms. The thick roots of the stump were exposed, and they went on forever, deep into the earth’s core. Frustration made him want to cry. Every time he turned around, she stared at him through the window or watched him from the back door. He burned. She knew the best way to go about it. She would not tell her great- grandson.
By 1:00 in the afternoon, he had hacked away at the stump for over an hour. It was still there, hardly diminished. Heat scorched his head through his hat. He lay down in the grass and wiped his forehead. If it had to be out by sundown, it had to be out, or it was a trip to the switch grove. His backside was worn and sore from too many visits already. He decided to return to the barn for another tool.
He trudged over and opened the double barn doors. The 1946 Farmall tractor stared back at him. Hank climbed the ladder to the top shelf and pulled down box after box, rummaging around for a heavy chain.
Finally, he spotted it on the floor underneath the workbench. Heart pounding, he pushed the barn doors wide open. He slung the chain over his shoulder, and climbed onto the scalding tractor seat, starting its engine for the first time. Its grumble made him sit a little taller. When he rolled out of the barn and passed the house, he looked toward the kitchen hoping Grandma was watching him.
She wasn’t there.
He made a long loop around the stump, enjoying the power of the tractor. Parking it in position, he gathered the chain. Hank looped the chain around the large stump twice. He walked back to the tractor and hooked the chain to its u-shaped hitch — a moment of doubt. The engine could blow out. Ruin the engine or fail to remove the stump, either way he would be punished. He checked his rigging and said a small prayer, asking God to help pull the stump.
He pulled the heavy lever into gear, pushing his foot against the gas pedal. The tractor lurched forward, and the stump fought the force. A loud cracking noise struck as he pushed his foot down harder. He kept rolling forward until he realized the tractor was dragging something behind it. He put the machine into park. When he turned, he saw the giant stump wrenched from the ground. Its long roots sticking straight up in the air. He hollered over the thunder of the motor.
“Hot damn! Son of a bitch!”
Clapping his hands like an idiot, he jumped down and turned the tractor off. Hank ran to the stump to inspect it. He was astonished; it worked. Circling the stump he saw just how wide and deep it went. As if he could have dug the thing out, as if he really could have hacked it to nothing. He wanted to run inside and grab his grandmother by the wrist. He checked his glee when he saw her standing cross-armed at the back kitchen door. Hank waved with both arms.
“I did it.” She was unmoved and turned to go back inside.
“But…now what?” he said. She clucked her tongue against her teeth. Hank tucked his tail.
“Drag it back to the barn. You can chop it up tomorrow.”
He hopped back onto the seat and pretended he was towing the enormous prize down Main Street for the whole town to see. He waved with pride to the pretty girls on the sidewalk, their hair in long golden braids. People threw him taffy and two teenage boys standing next to a Dodge Challenger gave him a thumbs up.
At the barn, he unhitched the chain and unwrapped the stump all alone. He shoved open the doors and rode the tractor in with ease. As he finished, he rubbed his hands together with satisfaction. He did it. Ha! Grandma thought he wouldn’t be able to wrap his pea brain around this task.
He still felt the same sense of accomplishment, but now, he was old. He remembered passing this story on to his daughter and telling it with relish. She was interested in his stories, then.
Sometimes he could see what those summers were worth. At the right hour, after the right number of beers, he felt those months gave him his best traits. He was a problem solver and manual labor came naturally to him. Hank was a good stoic. Those things were born during those seventies’ summers. Occasionally, he forgave her for beating him. She meant to make him a better man, better than the men she knew.
The older he grew, the darker the times. Times when he’d had too much to drink, and he was lonely, and there was no one to blame but himself, so he blamed her instead. He recalled the curse of being a Wagner with no control over raging emotions, coarse and mean, hot and high.
Connecting with his children was a miserable thing. He gave in to being mean and drunk. It wasn’t his fault, but the cycle of addiction consumed his life. He was not special. This happened to every Wagner before him, and it was happening to his grown children now.
Here he was in Valley Falls, a stranger in his own land, but he could not remember leaving. He’d stood there since he was thirteen, living in all the moments that he loathed and loved in the strangest way.
Everyone grew distant from him, and for a long time, he believed that was what he wanted. Why had he come here now? He could not help the tears.
Hank thought he came to see the land. Perhaps he came to see the house and know his great grandma in a new way. It might be possible to see something different the way you do as you grow older, granting pardons to the villains of your childhood. This way he could put it all to rest. But even as the house and tractor crumbled away, Mary remained, and her memory did not soften.
Hank believed they still had time for pardons.
The evening light was pale pink through the clouds. When he turned to the house for a last look, she was standing outside the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She squinted into the night. He walked to the car and passed the pond.
Night was falling quickly, and that puddle of a pond transformed into a black abyss. He stood at its edge and looked into the murky water. Hank tried to skip a pebble across the surface, but once the rock left his hand it was sucked under, no ripple or splash marked its sinking. She was watching; watching and waiting for him to do something right.
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Nicole Marie Curtis writes fiction, poetry, and a variety of material for live performance. Over the last decade, her creative work has appeared in: Impressions, Turk’s Head Review & Turk’s Head Review Best Of, NAILED Magazine, Santanero Zine, Hoosier Lit, Trampset, and onstage at STAGESTheatre, California State University, Fullerton, and Fullerton College. Her debut poetry collection, Sunny Face arrives in the world on July 4, 2024 for purchase via Amazon.
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Author's Note:
When I wrote the first draft of “The Stump in Valley Falls” eleven years ago, I wrote it with the intention of call and response. Hank’s visit to the farm is as much a meditation on his great grandmother as it is on his daughter, Rachel. His memory of fishing with Rachel parallels a moment she recalls in her own story — a piece called “The Nature of Roots,” which was published by Hoosier Lit in 2017. “The Stump in Valley Falls” is heavy with meaning for me because so much of it is based in fact. The bulk of the details came from my father’s summers working on his great grandmother’s farm in Kansas. Artistically, the story feels like a tremendous achievement because over all these years, I refined but remained committed to the narrative structure of the story.
Education spoke to me because so much of what's done as far as manual labor goes — especially when you’re a child — requires a significant amount of ingenuity on the part of the young laborer. In my family culture, the expectation of work was that you just knew how to do it. Beyond the necessity of learning how to do tactile, physical labor when the stakes are so high and abusive, I was also drawn to the idea that as we age, we have the opportunity to embrace who we really might be beyond the confines of the family gaze.
My favorite line in this story is its newest line — a line I added before this submission, “Hank believed they still had time for pardons.”
Education spoke to me because so much of what's done as far as manual labor goes — especially when you’re a child — requires a significant amount of ingenuity on the part of the young laborer. In my family culture, the expectation of work was that you just knew how to do it. Beyond the necessity of learning how to do tactile, physical labor when the stakes are so high and abusive, I was also drawn to the idea that as we age, we have the opportunity to embrace who we really might be beyond the confines of the family gaze.
My favorite line in this story is its newest line — a line I added before this submission, “Hank believed they still had time for pardons.”