Jenford

Hendrik Sadi

Description

After visting a local farmer, Ranen Sarensen reflects on the suicide the farmer had attempted as a final yearning for a lost life.
When the son of a nearby neighbor brings a plate of food to a local farmer during the Christmas holiday season in the late 70's, he is shocked to believe that the farmer might have wanted to end his life by freezing to death.

While the farmer's son fires up the old woodstove in the room he is in and brings in wood, he asks about an old black and white photograph of a short, stout woman he has seen pinned on the wall. The farmer tells him the history of his family and the farming community that was established when his grandfather came back from the Civil War.

And he goes back home imagining how it might have been and remembers his own early teenage years on Mt. Lake in northwestern Connecticut as a way of life he and the farmer have lost.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 11 janvier 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780595604418
• Langue: English

Extrait

JENFORD
 
 
A Short History of Upland
 
A Novel
 
 
 
Hendrik E. Sadi
 
 
Author of Kickapoo , Han Marlowe , SeeSaw and Ernholder
 
 
 
iUniverse, Inc.
New York Lincoln Shanghai
 
 
Jenford
A Short History of Upland
 
Copyright © 2008 by Hendrik E. Sadi
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case ofbrief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
iUniverse
2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100
Lincoln, NE 68512
www.iuniverse.com
1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously.
 
ISBN: 978-0-595-48351-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-595-71865-8 (cloth)
ISBN: 978-0-595-60441-8 (ebk)
CONTENTS
THE EARLY YEARS  
THE LATER YEARS  
 
 
 
 
 
 
For Margaret
 
 
 
 
The time was after both Kelsey Jenford and Terence Jenford had passed away, lying in their coffins in the funeral home, all dressed and combed so nicely that my mother had observed to me that she had never seen them so well dressed and clean. I couldn’t help but see then those two short stature brothers, wearing bib overalls and work shirts they would button all the way up to their throat, walking their workhorse down the dirt road on Mt. Lake towards the hay mower standing in one of the fields needing to be cut.
No, the time was actually much longer after their passing, when I had come up to Mt. Lake to visit my mother during the winter; at that time, close to the holidays, when she was still living in that house her mother had started as a two room summer place in the 30’s before she had added the other rooms and bathrooms and two fireplaces, right there in the middle of an old apple orchard, set back from the dirt road that passed it and the old sagging stonewall in front.
I had gone down then on the old dirt road towards the last surviving Jenford brother with a dinner plate of food she had prepared, stepping in and out of the deep snow that had fallen the night before; and seemed to be threatening to fall again I thought, inching my way down in those thick soled, high heeled Li’l Abner shoes that were so popular at that time in the 70’s.
The road rose up to a small incline past our house and came down steeper where a stone house stood on the left and leveled out passing it and another house set up on the hillside inside a clump of trees standing above the brook and a long, narrow field I had seen them cute the hay in, then turned up another incline and came down to their cozy small hollow where they had a barn, a couple of sheds, the house and a work place with a blacksmith shop inside, where Will Jenford had created some masterpieces of door hinges, fire pokers, etc; right there opposite the house where his two brothers had lived for so many years without running water or bathroom, I quietly recalled, carrying the plate of food down another incline and across a small wood bridge spanning the brook cutting through it before I came to his place on the left side of the house. I stopped in the road then when I saw someone I didn’t recognize right away bent over a pickup truck that had been parked in front of it.
But I soon realized who it was and felt embarrassed then wearing those designer shoes that day on the mountain, on a late Sunday afternoon, and grateful that the snow was covering them when I went on and came closer, checking my voice and said.
“Excuse me … but are you Will Jr.?”
He rose up from his leaning position over the truck, where I had heard him cursing whatever he had been trying to fix in the motor, and looked me over for such a long time that I felt tensed and embarrassed before he returned the question.
“Yeah … that’s right … that’s me … who you?”
He hadn’t remembered, so I told him.
“Ranen … Ranen Sarensen … you don’t remember me?”
But he said nothing then, but looked me over again for a long time, registering his brown eyes on the plate of food I was holding before I saw the grin turn to a slow smile on his face. And he quickly then said.
“Damn! … I wouldn’t have known you any whares?”
“No, it’s been some time,” I reminded him of.
“Yeah … like some twenty years at least … Damn! … I wouldn’t have known you any whares?” he had to say again.
“Yeah … me too,” I told him, and then felt that tense, embarrassed feeling come over me again, looking at how big and farm-like he had turned out to be. And I guess he must have felt some of it too when I suddenly let him know the purpose of my visit, and asked him.
“Is your father in? … My mother sent him this,” I told him, and held the plate up for him to see.
“Yeah sure … he’s inside,” he said quietly, then rose his voice, “at’s ifhe hasn’t froze yet.”
“What?” I asked back, not yet understanding.
“See that,” he said, turning and pointing to a huge pile of cut wood lying to one side of the house like a mountain. “You’d think he’d go out there and bring some in and keep that stove of his warm … Most normal people would … But not him . He’d rather sit there and freeze to death I guess . He’s in there . Go see for yourself!” he told me quickly, snapping his voice in the direction of the front door on the side of the house before he bent over his truck again.
I went to the door of the small green house, and as I was about to enter, I couldn’t help but notice the carved eagle sitting above the frame; bringing to my mind a vague notion of old patriotism as I went into the dark house, smelling a dry, stale odor, calling his name out loud.
“Mr. Jenford … Mr. Jenford … you in there?”
For the minute I stood there, waiting for him to answer me, I couldn’t help but notice the many pairs of old work boots littered about the dusty floor in that first room I had come into, and turning, I could see the table in another room, and the cans of food, open and unopened, strewn about its cluttered surface. It was the messiest place I had ever seen, I thought when I heard his voice calling me into the main room, where I saw him sitting in an old rocking chair, next to the stove that he had let go cold. And suddenly it dawned on me why. And it shook me something terrible when I thought about what he must have planned to do to himself, just sitting there with that room getting colder and colder. But I approached him with the plate of food and forced a cheerful smile and told him.
“Mr. Jenford, my mother wanted you to have this.”
I gave him the plate. And he took it and placed it on an old table next to him, and turned to me with the saddest look I had ever seen on his face when he said.
“Your mom … Jenny … I’ve been worried about her, living up here by herself now in the winter … How’s you mom Randy?” he called me.
“She’s fine … She sent me with the plate of food … She’s been worried about you Mr. Jenford … Is everything all right?”
“Oh sure … just getting old … at’s all … just getting old,” he repeated in a resigned tone of voice, I heard; which brought on what I had been thinking about before when I noticed the hospital cane leaning up against the wall, close enough for him to reach for it should he want to. And that accident I had been told about he had had came to me again so vividly, with the motorist not even stopping to find out what he had hit, down in Cannon, Connecticut, where he had gone to get some hardware for a job he was doing for somebody.
“Well,” I said, “we all get to be that one day,” when his son came in with an arm full of wood and shot a glance at us talking. Then he walked closer to his father and said so I would know.
“I’m stacking this right next to you and more … Now you don’t have an excuse to let that stove get cold,” and dropped the wood on the floor, stacked it neatly, and went out to get some more.
The shock of what he must have known his father had tried to do to himself, living in that old house by himself with no central heat or running water, shook me again, knowing how far away his forty some year old son lived with his wife in another state. So somebody must have called or written to him enough times for him to force himself to come down and see what was going on, I thought when I turned about in the room and registered my eyes on a few old black and white photographs I saw pinned on the wall in front of us. I went closer, and leaned in and asked him about that short, stout looking woman, dressed in black, I saw, staring back at me.
“Who is that? … Is that your mother Mr. Jenford?”
He turned then in his seat. And I saw those sad dark brown eyes light up for a moment as he indicated it with his right hand.
“No … that can’t be my mother … That must be Kelsey’s old wife … She’s gone too you know?” he said matter of fact, and returned the sad look to his face when his son came back in and dropped another armful of wood on the floor, telling him on his way back out for some more.
“Hell … you’ll be roasting soon … Soon’s I light that damn fire!”
“Tell me something Mr. Jenford?” I began, and I saw him turn and look at me with that same sad expression on his face. I couldn’t help but remember then from those early years when I had known him that of all the brothers he was