Tumult
(Part of the end) And so, Shannon O’Day knew that on the first morning of October 1953, she knew that Kent Peterson would be where he always was in the early hours of the morning, on that porch waiting for her to come by. the front door to paint, and Shannon couldn’t take it anymore, the time had just come when they couldn’t breathe the same air in the same pen, in the same county and in the same state, on the same day, and what he said pushed him over the forbidden line, the red line. And so, lacking her patience, and perseverance, to subdue her pride, to resist their scolding, her persistence, she resorted to that right to defend it, as she did in the war, the Great War, in which she won a medal for killing her enemy, with his rifle, bayoneted, as Kent Peterson was to him now. But the war, of course, was over.
It started in the fall of 1953, or a year earlier. Oh, maybe not, maybe it started in the summer of 1951, or even earlier, but it turned into a riot between the two of them, when they ordered him to paint his house and barn, paint for a fortnight. It all stemmed from arrogance, bigotry, and pride, and then destruction. It all started when they began to breathe the same Midwestern air day after day, because he, Shannon, was not a contentious man, not like Kent, but he was defending his boudoir rights, in the only way he knew how. So maybe Kent made his own destiny, destiny when he finally impinged on Shannon’s, if we can say that’s what he did, provoking Shannon. This all happened after Shannon’s wife left him, and Shannon had rented a farm next door to Kent Peterson, who was wealthy enough to have several black workers on his 400 acres of land. The problem was that Gus, his brother had left town, he wasn’t around to help him out of this problem, he was visiting Mabel’s parents in Fayetteville, North Carolina, celebrating their anniversary for a month, their 35th anniversary .
(The beginning) It was Shannon’s only horse. Without having much money, and trying to do what his brother did, he created a self-sufficient, independent farm, without asking anyone for favors, paying himself. He, the horse (named: Dan), had strayed in the fall, in the scrawny cornfields next to his farm, and there he was at Kent Peterson’s house, and Shannon couldn’t feed him, so she left him there. ; and he lived all winter without it, he let Old Man Peterson feed him, knowingly feeding him. So Peterson fed the horse, knowing it was Shannon’s, the rest of the fall and through the winter, a long, hard, cold winter, and when spring came, Shannon went to find her barren horse, her worthless horse, her twenty dollar horse, but now he was fat and healthy.
(The deal) According to the calculations of Mr. Kent Peterson, and the Dakota Country Sheriff, Sheriff Terry Fauna, who had asked a few other farmers how much the horse was now worth, and they all agreed that it was valued at $140 dollars, not the $20 Shannon had paid, now that he was fed, exercised, and groomed. Therefore, this was Shannon’s price for acquiring the horse from him, according to the law.
Yes, indeed, all this trouble for a twenty dollar horse, which would now cost him $140 dollars because he wanted to cheat Mr. Peterson, by feeding him, for a short fall and a long winter, because he couldn’t afford to. . he.
“Alright!” Shannon had told Kent Peterson, this sheriff, “I’ll work a fortnight to get my horse back, peacefully, if that’s what everyone wants, and if that’s what it takes, I guess I’ll just have to.” , I went through the Great War, I can do this standing on my hands, I can take them both the same way.”
And he, Shannon, felt sad and helpless. He wished his brother Gus would come back from the south, he could make things right, but he didn’t.
If Gus had come back, he thought, he would have solved this horse problem, he knows the sheriff and Mr. Peterson, but he was too impatient. And so he agreed to work for Mr. Peterson for a fortnight, to get the horse back from him, so he wouldn’t lose both the goat and the rope.
Shannon worked for Kent, on his farm, he painted his house, a two-story building, then his barn, all 440 square feet. He had a fortnight to work (nine days he spent at home), and as he worked the house-to-barn shift from dawn to dusk, he watched the young men and women of the city driving around drinking in their cars, and left to paint the barn to look at them, and the couples and the elderly, the children. The barn faced the road, all the cars were moving in two directions. She could even hear their radios on, playing loud music. She followed each car with her gaze, also at night, a lantern outside the barn lit as it was now.
(The Barn) On the tenth day, now working nights in the barn, he heard the freight trains go by, which happened almost anytime during the night, let alone the other passenger trains. So just by spending evenings in a 440 square foot area, with just a little movement, he would hear maybe three or six trains before dusk.
As the day and night ended, he would pass the old man, Kent, on his way home, a two-mile walk to his farm, as he sat in his dim rocking chair on his porch in the cool of the dark night, an electric light lit by his screen door behind him to his right, which led into the kitchen, where the bugs would gather peacefully, without worry, without needing to escape the deadly hand of fate, and Kent wanted to talk to Shannon for a while. , but he never stopped long enough for the old man to say a syllable, he just kept walking, just like those bugs behind him, so he treated the old man like he wasn’t there. .
(Trains) When he got back to his farm, he took a jug of whiskey from under his kitchen cabinet, walked a mile to the railroad tracks, sat on the edge of an embankment, waited and watched the trains coming. and pass, those coming from Chicago, to St. Paul, some stopping first at Stillwater Township, about twelve miles distant. The train itself, he liked to listen to the four whistles of a crossing, the headlights, the noise of the engine, to see the shadows of the engineer, the conductor and the fireman, and to observe the deceleration of the carriages, the people on the train. dining car late. Black waiters going back and forth with food for the rich: then the train’s taillights went out as quickly as they had appeared in the blink of an eye.
Between the long days of work for Peterson and his hours of drinking after dark, he became a man with no meat, no sleep, no food, almost mindless, empty, a shell of a man, all on that twenty-dollar horse, which was now worth seven. time that amount because he wanted to cheat Mr. Peterson, by feeding him, for a short fall and a long winter, because he couldn’t afford to. But Mr. Peterson had tricked him and fed him knowing full well that if he did, he’d get a fortnight’s worth of work from Shannon.
(frozen anger) It was like Shannon wanted to get angry, or angrier every day he worked, and the anger grew, but he didn’t want to cause trouble, he knew he owed Mr. Peterson and he was determined to pay him back. , even if she had to drain every ounce of blood from him. And he knew inside her cup of anger, if she spilled over, Kent’s life was at risk, and therefore she must not get to that stage.
fifteenth day
When he woke up, it was tomorrow morning, the fifteenth.
(Rest of ending) It was 5:00 am, when Shannon arrived at Kent Peterson’s farm, a two-mile walk from his own, he was disturbed, so old Peterson noticed and, being indifferent, didn’t he cared a lot. he said quietly, eating a cookie, eating it constantly, standing on his porch, Shannon didn’t even notice him on his porch as he passed, until he said,
“Looks like you had a great night drinking,” not thinking that he didn’t have time to plow and dig, and prepare his land for planting, on his farm, that maybe that was on his mind too, nor did he have dinner, or breakfast, and his usual coffee, since the old man used to simply spend the afternoons sleeping.
(Shannon had taken from his military kit, the dull and rusty bayonet he had used in the army in the Great War, to scrape the old paint off the far wall of the barn and finished this last fifteenth day of his penance, and brought to home his horse; the bayonet almost as long as his forearm.)
“Now what?” asked Shannon?
“You, you look like a zombie,” he commented.
“I’m exhausted old man, shut the fuck up and let me work my last day.”
Then he approached the hedgerows and patches of woods to take an escape, hidden and undetected. But the old man followed him, he was right behind him,
“You owe me one more day’s work, Shannon, for feeding that house of yours for the last fortnight,” she kept munching on that cookie.
Inflexible was the old man, silent was Shannon, as he did his duty, and he thought: ‘Maybe if I worked today, and tomorrow, tomorrow wouldn’t be the last day either. Maybe there would never be a last day, period!
He reached under his coat, his fingers around the hilt of the bayonet, pulled it out slowly, his fingers already clenching and unclenching the hilt, ‘I’ll never satisfy him,’ he told himself, whispering. aloud a second time, without thinking, and between the scream and the bayonet and her stabbing impact for her to tell Kent, and for Kent to have reasoned with her: ‘I’m not killing you for the fortnight’s work, that’s fine. , I already reasoned it out, and not because you’re rich and have no limits, and you sleep all afternoon in that hammock of yours, but because of that extra day you added.”
It was said that the Shannon O’Day case never made it to court (some years after the Mr. Kent Peterson incident) someone paid the judge to throw it out, and a check arrived in the mail from the south, for $10,000 -dollars, delivered personally to the judge. And an eyewitness showed up at the DA’s office, said there was another man hiding in the woods, who fell in love with old Peterson, an old laborer, and grabbed Shannon’s bayonet and killed him. When Shannon was asked whether or not he had killed Peterson in the investigation, he replied: “No wonder I don’t know, I hadn’t slept or eaten for days, and when I woke up, I had a nightmare that I did it, and the police told me. I was dragging you to jail.”
Then the judge said, “We don’t put people in penitentiaries for nightmares, in this country of ours; ineffective evidence, case dismissed.”
Written May 5-25 and 26, 2009
No.: 406xx