The Old Place
by
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He ambled through the house, reciting the past... Watermelon at the picnic table as the summer evening trickled into night, Mart canning green beans, big slab of bacon all the difference... Brushing past cobwebs hanging in the hall. Creaking cautious steps. Whispering... That was Tanya's room. She had lots of dolls. Mart kept a big chest at the foot of our bed... Turning away... Macky slept on the porch and Charlene fixed Mart's hair while she sat in a kitchen chair, wind whispering through the screen. Me and Raymond, milling around the barn. And this house. North wind found a way through the windows and walls, even with plastic over the windows in winter. This linoleum's wore out, ain't it? And look at that sink, Mart couldn't have stood that. No sir... Rumpled ridge in the floor. A hole in the wall... Twenty-five years, but that sure ain't long... Voice cracking. Eyes way off... And Mart had her chickens, put cooking oil under their wings to kill the blue bugs and she’d twist a chicken's head off like churning an old tractor crank, the kids running around it, flopping death feathers and blood, throw the head at each other... Strained little light chuckle... Plucking and gutting, blood fresh meat and man it was good. Kids drug a dead armadillo home. Flowers in the narrow bed beside the house, mint, too, so minty it almost stung. Green pure garden, red tomatoes bigger than a fist. Dozing on the sofa and a deep-freeze full of beef. A Coke in the afternoon. Cal's eyes bulged heavy. Cassie pretended she didn't notice and tried to imagine Marti inside, doing her chores, dusting, arranging things. She wanted to say something, put everything right, but couldn't fathom the words. Cal looked into the master bedroom again and left abruptly for the yard, which was separated by a folding net wire fence from a pen with several dilapidated sheds. Cal gazed at it. "White leghorns, that's what Mart liked," he muttered. Scooter trotted the toy cow along the dead limb while Cal sat beside him, mumbling at his hands. Thought there might be some cows around, but there wasn’t. The boy would like to see real cows, I bet. There was a long silence. "I figure we would've still been out here, if things hadn't worked out the way they did." Cal looked up at Cassie. "Mart might still be around. You never know." "Couldn't you’ve retired here?" "Oh, it was time to retire elsewheres." Cal grimaced, nodding yes. Cassie didn't believe him. "Raymond was sick. He was real sick. And Mart, well, she figured it was best, too. Other old boy, he had other plans. We brought him in." He stopped and stared at the ground before continuing. "So that's how it went and it's gone now." Cassie nodded yes and wanted to ask more questions, but felt it was out of place. "I figured me and Scotty would just stay in Wichita Falls, but he got a wild hair and we took off. I didn't want to leave, but Scott said he had to because of his job." "It's hard to leave home, ain't it?" "Yeah, but we moved a lot even around there. We lived out at his old man's wrecking yard in a trailer house a couple of times, but I didn't like being out there." "How come Scotty didn't stay in the wrecking yard business?" "His brother's in it. I don't think Scott figured they was enough business for two, but he never said, like I'm too dumb to figure it out." She chuckled, then quit when she heard the choppy sound, fearing it was disrespectful. The vacant feeling of the old sheds, falling in house, overgrown yard, reminded her of the wrecking yard, its twisted metal and mangled iron. She imaged the dead slept in the battered old cars, trapped by the wreckage that claimed them. That's all she could ever picture there, but in the abandoned ranch she sensed a life and knew deep inside that Cal had lived here with a life he didn't have now. And it was different. Chickens running around, the woman feeding them. Cal at the barn. She squinted as she gazed at the front of the rotting old house, a piece of rusty crumpled tin laying beside a teetering fence next to it. Cassie felt the privilege of being out there, feeling Cal's feelings. It was different, and she savored it. "I always wanted Scooter to do something more, not at the wrecking yard or in the oil patch, but like where people wear suits and live in big brick houses and stuff." She looked down at Cal. "Or maybe he could be out on a farm like this someday, just living in the country." "He better be rich. I don't see how no younger folks could ever afford to get into farming or ranching. It's got nearly impossible as far as I can tell, to start from scratch anyways." "Maybe he could work on one, though." "Maybe so." "We ain't never lived in a home that was probably like this place was home." They glanced at each other. "I wish you could've stayed here." Cal looked away as Cassie put her hand on his shoulder and patted him. "Me, too," he said. "Me, too." Scooter put the cow in his pocket and ran in circles in the yard.
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About the Book
"Maybe the standards we come up with sometimes got more to do with what we’re afraid of instead of what we claim to believe." That’s Cal Stewart’s conclusion in The Old Place, a novel about the elderly former rancher overcoming bitterness and prejudice befriending social outcasts in a small, dying Texas oil town. Grieving for his dead wife, Cal is alone and bereft of a ranch he was forced to leave when a nosy, pestering little boy draws him into the lives of his socially outcast neighbors. Cal also reluctantly comes to the aid of an African-American family. His reputation is tainted by talk of him socializing with thugs and being romantically involved with an African-American waitress. Meanwhile, the estranged son of his former ranch partner returns to Leeray and there are rumors of drugs and a gang in town. Cal is ashamed of his associations and yearns for his days on the Old Place. Soon, he abandons his self-pity and old dispositions and faces the townspeople after a tragedy costs more than he could have imaged.
About the Author
Dan Boyd has been a professional writer for fifteen years, most recently in corporate communications and public relations for a financial services company. Previously, he worked as a newspaper and wire service journalist who covered public affairs, business and sports in western Texas and Oklahoma. Set in Texas, The Old Place is his first novel and is influenced by his faith, an appreciation of rural sentiments, the history of the old Oil Belt west of Fort Worth and a respect for the liberty of individuals. Boyd grew up on a ranch in west-central Texas. His father was a ranch cowboy and his grandfather a rancher. He worked in construction and the oil fields as a young man before graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a journalism degree. He currently lives in Oklahoma.