Brown

Though John Brown had not yet reached fifty years of age, his face was weathered with the shapes of ridges and valleys that it took mother nature eons to carve out in stone. The only smooth plane was around his mouth, for he seldom, if ever, smiled. Life had never been easy for the Brown Family, but that didn’t bother him much; he was never promised an easy life. On the day he was born, his daddy came to look at him in the hospital nursery, then returned to finish out his shift in the lead mine.

The mine had dried up over a decade ago, taking the last bit of hope for this barren wasteland with it. All that was left now was poisoned earth and John Brown. His ancestors had sacrificed everything, sometimes their lives, to earn this small plot of land, and John would not be the one to abandon it. Come hell or high water, this is where he would stay. He had prepared for high water, but it was hell coming first that took him by surprise.

​

The man from the city showed up on a Tuesday, wearing a suit and greased hair. John didn’t notice his intrusion at first over the noise of his chainsaw, only that his dog had lifted her head and pulled back her lips in a snarl. The man jumped back, nearly tripping over his feet as John swung around, the live chainsaw still in hand to face him.

“IS THAT AN EAGLE?” shouted the man over the roar of the chainsaw.

John silenced the beast, but did not set it down and stared at the man, without speaking.

The man tugged on his shirt collar and tried again. “That piece you’re working on. Is it an eagle?”

“No.” The carving was of a short-tailed hawk. Unlike other raptors, it didn’t care to eat small mammals or reptiles, only other birds, snatching them out of the air mid-flight before they even saw the danger.

The man shuffled his feet back and forth, waiting for John to elaborate. When he didn’t, he stuck out his hand, a glossy business card clutched in between his two fingers.

“I’m Bill Johnson. I’m with the Federal Highway Administration. You might have heard that we are looking to extend the interstate through here.” His hand hung limply in the air, and John did not reach to take the card from him. Bill pulled back his hand to his point. “It could be great for your business, lots more traffic coming through.”

“Business has been fine.” He turned his head and spat, the dry earth greedily sucking down the moisture. His wood sculptures sold well at a little tourist trap in town; he needed little to survive and wanted even less.

“Well, you should think about it,” said the man, placing his card down on the workbench nearby. “Change is coming whether we like it or not.”

John watched as the man got in his car and drove off, a cloud of dust trailing him like a receding wave, signaling an incoming tsunami. The sound of the chainsaw drowned out any thoughts he had about the matter.

​

Over the long, hot months of an endless summer, Bill Johnson made several more visits to the home of John Brown. Each visit increased in the intensity of his requests, which threatened to boil over into genuine anger.

Sometime in July, his facade of politeness cracked. “This project is the total sum of my life’s work. Once it is built, I can retire and be done with all this bureaucracy. Man to man, you have to understand that, don’t you?”

John had been patching a loose shingle on the roof of his home, the scent of hot tar burning his nose. He stopped at this question and turned to Bill. “What matter to me is your life’s work when the cost is my peace?”

At that, Bill seemed flustered. He had gotten more than a single word response, finally, but it wasn’t the words he wanted to hear.

“One way or another, this highway is going to be built whether you like it or not.”

John shrugged his shoulders. He had already spoken his piece, and he had nothing else to say on the matter. A highway would have to be built over his dead body.

​

He returned again in August, his suit seemingly more rumpled with each new appearance.

“I didn’t want it to come to this, but I will be returning with the sheriff to serve you papers. We’re filing for eminent domain, and we will forcibly remove you if you interfere.” Bill Johnson’s face was red as he spoke, and sweat from the dry heat had begun to stain his collar.

John looked up at the sky and felt a sudden breeze pick up in the East. “Looks like rain.”

The next day, clouds had begun to gather in the sky, dark and foreboding. Over in a sparse cluster of trees, he heard the sound of a hawk screech. His family hadn’t survived as long as they had, out here on this barren land alone without an instinct for survival.

John didn’t understand any of the legal jargon that man Bill Johnson had been telling him. It wasn’t right that the government could take a man’s land from him when it was rightfully his, paid for with blood and sweat. Instead of calling a lawyer to take up his cause, John took out his rusted wheelbarrow and steered it down to the bank of the dry creekbed along with his spade.

His shirt clung tightly to his chest, soaked through with sweat as he worked. Filling the bed with the sandy earth. When the metal began to groan under the weight and threaten to collapse, he would push it back towards the house, where he moved it into burlap sacks.

Again and again, John made the trip down to the creek and back to the house. He had a tidy heap of sand filled bags for occasions like this, but he could tell his usual provisions would not be enough this time. His faithful dog trailed his heels as he worked. Daisy was a mix of some kind, with coarse brown fur and a black spotted tongue. She had shown up one day begging for scraps, and John couldn’t find it in his heart to turn her away. She was a creature of few words, only making a sound when absolutely necessary, which suited him just fine for a companion. It was backbreaking work, and even through the thick callouses of his hands, John could feel new blisters forming, but he didn’t dare to slow his pace. He had been tasked with the mission of protecting this home from whatever came, and he was faithful to the cause.

When the sun hung at its peak in the sky, John saw a cloud of dust kicking up down the road. He shielded his eyes with his hand as he watched Bill Johnson’s car and a truck marked "Sheriff" wind their way to his home. The sky rumbled in the distance in discontent. He stabbed his shovel into the hard earth and waited for them to arrive. He was ready.

“Mr. Brown,” said Bill. He stood a little taller, no doubt bolstered by the backing of the law enforcement officer by his side. “I’m sorry it had to come to this, but the march of progress continues.”

John did not look up when he spoke, his eyes trained on a column of ants, moving frantically in a huddled mass to the entrance of their home. “Do you know that ants can sense a change in the weather. They feel the shift of the pressure in the air and prepare.”

“Yes, yes, that’s all very interesting. But we would like to finish the task that we have come to do.”

The wind had picked up now, and fat, wet drops of rain began to fall from the sky.

“Finally, an end to this blasted drought,” said Bill, turning his head to the sky. A radio crackled to life in the sheriff’s vehicle, and he hurried to answer its call. The rain began to come down faster, the bright daylight blocked out by charcoal clouds.

“Just sign these papers and be done with it, Mr. Brown, before they get wet.”

“I wouldn’t be so worried about the papers as I would be about yourself.” The rumbling in the distance was drawing nearer, now a rolling sound without end. John looked over at the previously dry creek bed and saw the water overtaking the sandy banks.

“You best be on your way, Mr. Johnson.”

John gestured to his dog and headed towards his house, surrounded by bags of sand. He lifted the pup over the barrier and moved the final bags in place.

“I am not moving an inch until you sign these damn papers!”

He didn’t seem to hear the shouts of panic from the sheriff or see the great wave of water coming up behind him, faster than his legs could run. If he had made a sound at all, it was drowned out by the thunder of the flood coming behind him. John thought he saw his mouth open in surprise in the split second before the water took him away, but it could have been his imagination.

​

When the desert had finally opened its pores to soak up the water, the only sign left of Bill Johnson was a soggy handful of papers, tangled in trees. The Brown family home still stood, only slightly worse for wear. John had seen this land take what it was owed before. He picked up his tools and got to work.