Pa had a draft horse named Henry. A sharecropper, Henry was Pa’s only possession of value, and he loved that horse.
“I swear,” Ma would tease, “you love Henry more than me.”
Pa would grin and say, “Not so, Essie. I love you the same amount.”
When God took Ma, Pa struggled to tend both crops and kids. One day the landowner came and said he wasn’t running a charity. There were plenty of good orphanages, and Pa needed to farm or get gone.
Pa took Henry to town and traded him for a rusty old truck.
On the way home he cried as hard as when Ma died.
The next day we loaded our few belongings into that old truck
and left the only home I’d ever known.
If you enjoyed this flash piece check out Delmar Hickey, my serialized novella set around Easter 1991 in a factory town on the shores of Lake a Michigan.
Darkly funny, rough-edged, and painfully human, Delmar Hickey is a story about grief, family, bad decisions, and the terrifying possibility that love might ask more from you than you can give.
