Easy X Farm

“Time is of the essence. . . ” – Samuel Spade

Easy X Farm

Arnold, age 15

“I’m not learning here what I want to. These walls my prison, and my warden chosen, by me, my indoctrination and my security.  But these intermediate tasks, moving water and goods, fixing this dirty house and maintaining the surrounding areas, and getting along with these people, sometimes it’s sickening. I could leave if I had to, if I wanted, if I was provoked.

“I’ve never known any different, same as my sister does. I can never tell what my parents know, if they even know each other. They lie all the time.

“We do what we have to do to survive, no dreams beyond that. No one comes to visit or bother, and we don’t care to leave the grounds.

“Dad says we’re different, though he won’t divulge too much as to why or how. He holds a disdain in his heart, one he believes mutual to the city people. I’ve never seen them.”

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Maggie, mother of Baby Arnold, to father Earl

“But Earl, if we don’t accept these things, we will lose our friends. How would you feel if your loved ones, in apparent crisis, refused your help? Don’t you ever think of other people?”

“But that’s just it. I’ve thought long and hard and nothing will change if I don’t do anything about it. We don’t need that kind of help, and we should hold out for when we’re really in trouble. We are a family, and we must be proud if we want to stay this way.”

It was unseasonably cold the morning they decided to leave, before the sun rose. They were dressed, Earl in a dark suit and Maggie in a spotted blouse with matching long skirt that flowed as they hurried, and the small children wrapped in blankets, one in each of their arms. They didn’t tell anyone they were leaving.  How could they? They didn’t even know themselves until it was already happening, though they’d dreamt about it plenty. They’d always had enough money, but were always hoping the world would come around. And that might have happened if they weren’t the first, last, the only, of their kind. They would be happy somewhere.

Earl had a distant cousin, Amos, who agreed to give earl a plot of his land to tend and live with his family. “Two conditions,” Amos defined. “One: not a word to anyone that you, me, or we know that I’m helping you this way. I hate to see my blood treated this way is all. Left for dead, don’t matter why. It’s your choice but that don’t mean anything to me. Two: You give me all your money. I will help you, but with you being lost to our world you don’t need your money like I do. And if things happen that you want to leave, we’ll work it our so that may be. You have my word.”

Their liberation was immediate, and things naturally fell into place. Earl and Maggie hadn’t a care in the world beside their little ones, though Earl knew in his heart that this was meant to be and the four of them would be taken care of. Now, in their new home, he saw they had a chance to flourish, and future civilizations would see their happiness, a kind to cherish and embrace. To let go of such tethers, and to remember such a cruel, foolish world of building towers that, at the time, were thought to last forever, in light of all aesthetic.

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Maggie churned butter on the cool shady front porch as Lilith played with her dusty dolls some few paces away. Earl was hunting and Arnold tending the vegetables. The young ones didn’t remember a time that their little home did not exist, but their parents had enjoyed every minute of building it from scratch, using just what they need and making it so perfect. It was unlike any house that ever could have existed, with such beautiful design passed onto them from their own maker. Honest, humble, neither dirty nor clean. Alive.

The sun had gone down. Maggie and Earl prepared dinner as the children cleaned up. “What will you tell them the day they want to leave? Are you going to tell them they cant?” Maggie held a rolling pin covered in flour, as she was, in crossed arms. She did not blink or sway.

“I will tell them the truth. That if they want to survive they must be strong. That they will face strangers that meet them with harsh disgust. That the comforts of some are the evils of others. But not necessarily of many, or all. And that we may only become something better if we accept our current flaws. They have a beautiful opportunity, one that we together dreamed about, and now it is their beautiful world, one they may know and realize completely if they choose.”

They loved their children not as if they were their own, but as if they were their selves. Their very own bodies to promote, exploit and manipulate. Yet what Earl didn’t realize is what’s good for a few in the eyes of one isn’t necessarily in those of an other.

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