John took another deep swig and stared out over the bare expanse of his bleak inheritance.
For a second he thought, how had it come to this?
But he knew the answer, had learned it painfully. Simple ignorance.
Ignorance of the fragility of the land, of the water table, ignorance of the mercurial nature of the climate that once produced a vista of tall grasses and gently flowing water.
The pure ignorance of farming a foreign land as if it were a verdant English pasture.
He sighed, not for the first time today, you can't get mad at ignorance John tried to tell himself.
John stared down at the golden liquid, raised the scotch once more and looked out at nature's relentless spoiling of his plowed fields.
Neither these paddocks nor the rest of his land showed any benefit from the efforts of five generations of the Hudson's farming.
He slumped back into the cool canvas of his stockman’s chair and, glass still in hand, resumed his morose review of the past. The aged pages of his grandfather's journal lay flat on the weathered arm of the chair, its thumbed corners fluttering occasionally in the rare breeze.
The first John Hudson had sat, right about here, writing his memoirs nearly 200 years ago.
His fine hand had described this vista,
"It's lightly wooded, a mainly open space with lush tall grasses, the acreage is creased softly through its centre by a watercourse inhabited of the most beauteous wildlife."
Quite the paradise for a squatter to lay claim to, and for all that, John could bear no grudge or criticism of his ancestor.
Old John had written of the hard labour spent fencing off the land, backbreaking months clearing the scrub for crops and finally documented the bounty of harvests and the flourishing of his herd. He was a romantic scribe as befitted the age and fashion of those times.
From the sylvan prose John could clearly hear the copperplate boast in his patriarch’s achievements and could feel Old John's pride in selecting these superior lands. It was clear there was deep satisfaction from the rewards the land had bought the family.. There was also the clear presumption that the same land, well managed, would continue to provide wealth and plenty for future Hudson generations.
Granddad had no way of knowing what John inherited. The vast rural estate Old John selected had not always looked so lush, the soil held no structure for endless re-cropping, the land would not sustain the endless thirst and cut of cloven hoofed herds.
The ignorance was generational, as a child John could recall the joy of his father when a bountiful bore was tapped to irrigate the drying land.
John had learned the hard truths of farming this abused land, knowledge gained from the fatal errors of his family. The bore so beneficial for his father had in time lowered the water table, which in turn dried the river and parched the land.
These broad acres he looked out over while supping his last scotch were now void of fecundity, leeched of nutrient and most always cracked and sun-baked, a desolate landscape of heartbreak and regret.
John often got mad at the unfairness of his lot, had gone mad perhaps with the injustice of it all. Every prior generation had enjoyed abundance, ingenuity and prosperity. John was the only incumbent responsible for managing the demise of this pastoral empire. A banker's loan of more millions than can ever be repaid, a threatening foreclosure, eight consecutive years so unbelievably dry that income was something dreamed of on spreadsheets.
This first crop's success was all John could focus on at every turn of the wheel, at every fill of the tank, at every close of day.
And he sat here now, sheltered by the porch's rusting tin roof, shotgun at his side, watching torrential rain cut away the furrows and wash the seeds away in a thousand flooding streams. A whole planting lost, a month of costs, a harvest gone, the loan defaulted.
He could see no possible solution.
No recovery.
No escape now from penury and the shame of failing to meet the challenge his forebears had left for him.
He could see that his hand alone had allowed the loss of the Hudson dynasty.
He pushed away Old John's journal and his hand fell to touch the cold hard metal of the trigger guard.
A cool soft stroke cradled itself around the back of his neck and slid down gently onto his shoulder.
"I hate the cliché," Margaret cooed in his ear, "but it really does never rain unless it pours does it?" She never wore shoes around the farmhouse and he was often surprised by her arrival.
His hand left the gun and moved up to hold hers.
"Have you been out in this rain?" She asked, kissing a salty drop from his cheek…..
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The theme for the Feb 22nd meet was either or all .... Rain, Rein, Reign or Bull. I chose rain. I used to like rain.
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