Page 1 of Take Me Home

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DARCY

Icouldn’t believe I was actually back there.

Looking out over the pond from the guest bedroom balcony, my mind traveled back to all the summers I’d spent working at my uncle’s farm.

That morning, I’d plowed through the day’s chores, working from the list pinned on the kitchen bulletin board in my uncle’s neat-yet-deteriorating scrawl. The dogs seemed confused by me. The mix of ferals-turned-domestic, wandering strays, and irresistible pound rescues were still snoozing on the porch when I headed out to feed them. They’d grown accustomed to Uncle Bill’s slow starts and were thrown off by my up-and-at-‘em attitude. I just hoped the half-feral ones would keep the actual wild dogs and coyotes at bay.

Sleeping at the farm always gave me the creeps. I hated being all alone out there. No cops, no neighbors to hear you scream. I’m not a gun girl, but people came up the holler to do all sorts of unsavory things to where it might help to have a gun.

Not all the activities people used the property for were terribly unsavory. Some of it was just teenage hellion stuff, like riding four-wheelers up on the ridge or sneaking Bud Lights after a day at the pool or a summer job. Occasionally, I’d found evidence of more sinister doings. A random shoe. A dropped-off deer carcass or ten courtesy of the state highway patrol (whydidthey drop those there?). Meth-making remnants, or at least that’s what I imagined all those weird jugs and fire pits were for. Shit, maybe it was just people hunting or camping and my imagination was just too active. I’d never really done too much illegal stuff. My idea of trouble growing up was more like kissing boys in cars, trying (and failing) to smoke pot, and underage drinking.

I was 29 that summer. After falling victim to the most recent round of layoffs at my job, it didn’t make sense for me to keep paying big city rent when I could go home, lick my wounds, and help Uncle Bill instead. If I was honest with myself, working as a copywriter for an online bedding retailer wasn’t exactly the most fulfilling or challenging work. I’d been phoning it in for a while. I’d gotten comfortable and didn’t push myself to want more.

Add that to my recent broken engagement and I really had no business staying in Raleigh. Opportunity knocked and I didn’t have much choice but to go home and make it happen.

I took a cooling sip of my lemonade, the little pulpy bits sticking in my teeth. That centuries-old, freezer-burned can of Minute Maid from the back of the freezer came out surprisingly well. The sharp tang of the drink sharpened my mind like a splash of cold water to the face. I needed to focus on what needed to happen in the next week, not figure out my whole life’s journey after this sudden bottoming out of my life. Baby steps, not the big picture.

When I was in town, I’d reach out to my cousin Eli to see who he could get to work for me. I hadn’t been around for so long that I didn’t really have contacts of people who wouldn’t be working a regular-ass job over the summer. Uncle Bill had been no help at all.

“You’re working with ‘em. You should pick ‘em,” he’d said on the phone earlier that week. It was getting toward the end of May, and there was no way I could manage the whole place by myself. The peaches weren’t due for harvesting for over a month, but the grass growth alone was becoming unmanageable.

I chose to treat myself to dinner out for surviving my first day flying solo at the farm. Also because I had to do a much-needed supply run so I wouldn’t be stuck without food again the next day. I had my heart set on that barbecue place that everybody raved about whenever I came home. Would it really be as good as what I enjoyed in North Carolina, or was it just a case of everyone being excited that there was an option other than Applebee’s?

That was one of the things I found endearing about West Virginia. One of the very, very many things. I’d settled in Raleigh, thinking that was my definition of “making it” and not really questioning the decision. Looking more critically, I never stopped longing for home. I held it on a pedestal. I craved it. I missed the smells, the food, the people, and even just how the air felt. I could swear sometimes that I heard the late summer cicadas harmonizing, or felt the wet humidity that preceded the every-other-day 3 p.m. summer storm. If I closed my eyes, I could smell the lush green scent of walking into some overgrown brush. The taste and supreme texture of a hot dog with sauce and slaw. The acidic bite of a fried green tomato. The sweet yeasty smell of a gas station pepperoni roll. The boisterous laughter of my family when we were all crowded into one hot room.

Even though I felt the pull for home in my bones, I wasn’t sure I had a place in West Virginia. Most of my family was there, sure. I absolutely adored them, the big honkin’ raucous crowd of cousins and aunts and uncles. My parents had given up a few years back, selling my childhood home and taking off for their “Under the Tuscan Sun” moment. I had just started seeing Rob at the time, but they didn’t have a ton of faith in us settling down and churning out kids anytime soon. Thus, they took off for sunnier skies.

Who could blame them? West Virginia had a long history of letting its people down. And anyway, I had left, too. The message was loud and clear growing up: if you wanted to do well, you had to leave. I always wished it wasn’t true, but bought into the lore anyway. After over a decade of “big city” living, I found that maybe the lore was just a fairy tale.

My internal battle raged hard. Should I stay home and try to make it better? Fight for the things that would benefit everybody in the state and not just the people in power? Or should I be good, and do what I’m told to be successful: leave? It was enough to make anyone’s head spin.

So I took the easy path. I studied hard and got into a good school somewhere else. Transferred to another school. Got a job there. Just kinda stayed without questioning whether I should be home because I was doing what I’d always been told to do. I had it good enough in Raleigh: some straggling friends from college, a few work friends, and for a while, a doting partner.

My growling stomach brought me back from my reverie. I rolled past a shopping plaza full of businesses. Or well, that was once full of businesses. A Shoney’s, a Value City Furniture, some junk store in an old grocery store’s shell, and a Mexican restaurant. The barbecue place was going to be a no-go. The line was out the damn door that night, and I was way too hungry to mess around with long line small talk.

Continuing on the same road, I finally scored a recently built sports bar. Bar food and a beer would have to do.

I slid onto a barstool, grateful that it wasn’t shorts season yet so I wouldn’t get marks on the backs of my legs or leave a sweat streak. It was definitely that plasticky kind of barstool. I had the slight fantasy that I’d make a friend at the bar, like in the movies.

A little plastic placard announced “WE HAVE NFL SUNDAY TICKET,” despite football season having ended three months prior. That one guy I briefly dated would have really cared about that. What was his name? Adam? Paul? Something vaguely biblical? That seemed like ages ago, in my pre-Rob Tinder days. I like sports just fine, but Biblical Name Guy wanted to spend every Sunday dedicated to the altar of passing the pigskin. He was nice enough, nothing outwardly offensive. Just ultimately not it for me.

I put a lot of energy into not thinking about the current shambles of my life. The wind could take me where it would. I could be a chill, go-with-the-flow kinda gal, right? I could tolerate a summer where I had no clue what the fuck I was doing, yeah? I could have my little independent woman moment, maybe dye my hair or something. Get another tattoo. Maybe, as all the platitudes suggested, the right person would come along right when I stopped looking. I sure hoped that was true because I was real tired of trying to make it work with guys who didn’t deserve it.

The bartender approached, with his a little outdated, a little-too-gelled hair, resting his hands on either side of my seat on his side of the bar.

“Know what you want, sweetheart?” He tossed a beer mat on the bar and filled a glass with water for me.

I opted for a hot ham and cheese sandwich, and at his insistence, skipped the side salad in favor of fries. I added a local craft beer and called it even. As I waited for my beer, I pulled out my phone to text Eli.

Hey, sorry to bug you. Do you have any ideas for who to hire for the farm? If people want lodging, the trailers are open

His response came in seconds. Thankfully, he was somewhere with signal.

Eli

You don’t want randos from the Home Depot parking lot? I can ask around. Big strapping men or will anyone do?

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