Page 20 of The Rest is History

What if Buddy Carter had just accepted his son? And me?

What if the Notre Dame offer hadn’t been taken away?

What if Dad hadn’t lost his health insurance? Would he still have been alive?

Sawyer will be here soon, and everything will be fine. We’ll have dinner, the three of us, and Reece can stay in Iowa and find work or he can go back to Arizona. Whatever he decides, I’ll wish him well and thank him for visiting with us.

Everything will be fine when Sawyer comes home.

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Chapter 9

Sawyer Reed

When I think about our house in Monagan I hear the delighted laughter of a mother, happy that her husband was finally back home, and we could eat well again. I remember the soft gurgling sounds of twin babies in their cribs, and I feel the warmth of the sun on my face, the taste of fresh maple syrup on my tongue. I remember the fullness in my belly from too many pieces of corn bread after days and weeks of not eating well, and the pigs on the transport trucks getting ready for the slaughterhouse.

My high school teacher, Mrs. Ansley said to call them processing plants. It’s a more humane name. I didn’t care either way by then – tenth grade – because hogs on a truck meant pork on the plate, and food without a mother and a father was hard to come by. For every trailer full of pigs I got on and off the truck, I received free pork for me and the girls for a week from the manager of the processing plant. I could have it as long as I didn’t let the owner catch me. Rich folk were different, and we oughta stay away from them if we could. I made sure to stay away from rich folk. Didn’t like them much anyway. Too prim and proper for my liking. Talked too fancy. Looked through us like we didn’t exist. Watched us carefully in case we stole their food. I didn’t like them.

I also remember the nights my father never came home. Not because his absence bothered me – I hated him for always leaving us for such long periods at a time with no food – but because my mother’s quiet cries through the paper-thin wall that separated her bedroom from mine woke me and kept me up until the light of morning shone through the dirty window that hadn’t seen a curtain since two Christmases ago.

If everyone in Monagan was poor, then we were the poorest of them all, and we got that way when my father left for good, and it just got worse when my mother died.

Everyone has a story, my mother always said. It’s easy to judge someone when you’ve had only a glimpse into their lives.

The mother at the convenience store parking lot screaming at her toddler, for example. She’s a bad mother. Maybe. Maybe she’s just exhausted, trying to keep their lives together with no help from anyone; maybe her husband left her alone with three kids and they almost starved every night. Maybe she cries in the bathroom every morning, and then goes out and tries to figure out what to make for breakfast.

The shy boy at school who never talks. Maybe he’s just weird. Maybe when he was little his daddy told him he wished he was never born. “Too slow to learn anything, this Sawyer. Don’t know what to do with him. Wish he wasn’t ever born”.

The boy who accidentally eats three pieces of cake the first time he gets invited to a birthday party? “He’s so greedy, Jesus Christ”. Maybe. Maybe he hasn’t eaten cake in three years because his daddy left them and their mother cries for him every night and forgets her kids’ birthdays. Maybe when he finally gets a chance to eat cake he forgets his manners. Maybe he doesn’t even know if he ever had manners to begin with.

Monagan wasn’t for everyone. Some could stay and live off the land and earn a pittance from local businesses – anything from farm hands to computer workers inside those offices in Linksfield, thirteen miles southeast of Monagan – and still be happy. Like Mom. She got a job at the farmer’s market just outside Monagan when she realized Dad wasn’t coming back, and never did she once not smile at the customers. I know because I went with her every Saturday with the twins. I took care of them while she worked. She always told me to look on the bright side. Everyone has a story. Everyone deserves a chance.

For others, the rural farm town of Monagan was a dream crusher. No big city lights. No chain stores. No movie theater. Not even a McDonald’s unless you could get yourself to at least Linksfield. And good luck with that in the dead of winter.

In the summer, it was the best of prairie living. In the winter, the chances of the whole town getting buried under the snow and no one in the city finding out until April were pretty high.

I remember the day my mother died. Diabetes type one. TYPE ONE, don’t forget.

I found her in bed after school. The girls were already on the bed, jumping around trying to tell her something or other that happened at school. The paramedics took thirty-five minutes to get to our house.

Who can ever forget that first strangled moment when you realize the truth? A question at first. Mama?

And then, more urgently. Mama?

Pippin and Faye quieted down, looking at me curiously.

“Go put your books away,” I told them quietly, but I was screaming inside. Mama? Mama? Mama?

Monagan doesn’t have its own dedicated police station or coroner's office. The officer who came to tell me why my mother died came from the neighboring town.

“Diabetes type one; did you know she was diabetic?”

“No, sir.”

“She never been to the doctor?”

“Only to have the girls, sir. She ain’t never tol’ me ’bout bein’ sick.”

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