Texas Tea

for the Inanimate Objects Writing Contest – a TiF Disruption

Every birthday, before presents, I had to water the fields with a penknife. Red soil marred by redder blood. Drip, drip. A reminder, Pa would say. From my pint-sized height, his ten-gallon hat blocked out the sun. He was taller than God. More imposing, too. A reminder of what we give the land. What it gives back to us. I obediently listened to his annual sermons. I was a child – even worse, an only child – even worse, an only daughter. It was the least I could do.

So, while Ma was inside baking angel food cake with strawberries and wrapping whatever frilly Sunday school dress she had decided to buy me, I was out back. Wringing a bloody finger over 300 acres of hard-packed earth.

I’m grown now. 29 tiny slashes across my fingertips. They’ll become 30 tomorrow. And the family farm still pumps away, courtesy of our eight low-production stripper wells. “Texas tea,” Pa proclaims as he steers the F-150 up the long drive. He watches the wells piston in the distance. “Sweeter than honey, and twice as golden.” It’s not golden, of course. It’s black. And it tastes like death. Every field kid gets dared to steal a lick…once was quite enough for me.

In the truck’s cab, I bounce Peter on my lap. Wheels-over-pavement seem to soothe his horrible preschool sleeping habits, which means from sunset to sunrise I generally drive in circles around my apartment compound and drink coffee as black as our backyard oil. But Pa doesn’t need to know that. I’m a flawless mother. A perfect solo parent. Trying to make up for leaving this lonely plot of land behind.

“Been a long time, sweet pea,” Pa muses, one hand on the wheel.

“Only six months, old timer.” I remind him. Austin is sparkly and distracting and full of fun. Endless places to spend and drink and dine and enjoy my friends and try to forget I have a whole kid attached to me. It’s a busy city, too busy for me to trek it all the way out here. “You could come visit.”

Pa shrugs his shoulders. Defensive. “Downtown ain’t for me.”

The truck bumps over a molar-rattling pothole and Peter’s big eyes blink open. He starts to cry. I wince. So much for my sleep schedule.

#

Pa hauls my suitcase from the truck bed, ignoring my half-baked protests. “No, no, let me remind you of what a real gentleman does.” He takes it inside as I slowly walk towards the fields, my ears drowning in the overwhelming drone of cicadas. The house is still standing, the sprawling front porch sagging. It needs paint. Ma’s job. Mine now, I suppose. Hauling anything lighter than twenty pounds – including a paint can – is women’s work.

I re-adjust Peter in my arms. Breathe in the faint strawberry scent of his shampoo. Echoes of angel food cake. I miss Ma.

Peter doesn’t seem to care. He’s staring, wide-eyed, at our pumpjacks. They teeter-totter against the rusty red of the South Texas sky. The “horse heads” bob up and down, up and down. Drinking up the oil. Their walking beams and counterweights creak faintly. A line of rhythmic, metal behemoths.

“Rawr!” Peter exclaims. He’s got his tiny teeth bared, his fingers curled into claws. He growls at the pumpjacks. I squint. The steel horse heads do look like big monsters, in the half-light. Peter smiles. Maybe the rocking reminds him of the car.

I tickle my son as he giggles. “Rawr! Monsters! They’re gonna come eat you up.”

“Not ‘fore dinner, they’re not.”

I spin, caught off guard. Pa is on the porch. I notice his faded Ariat cowboy boots have a rip in the seam. It’s sloppy. Not like him. Nor is the paint job, come to think of it.

I force a smile. “Dinner?”

#

Peter falls asleep two bites into his vanilla ice cream. I accept the small miracle, tuck him into the couch, and hit the porch. Pa is already in his oak rocking chair from 1870-whenever. A hand-carved “O” stretches across the back. O for Oakley, O for oil, O for old man and his old obsessions. I can spot the cherry of Pa’s cigarette against the blue-black sky. The creak of wood against wood. He’ll probably be buried in that rocking chair. I take a breath and slump down on the front steps. Legs splayed out like I’m a kid again.

Pa taps his wind-up watch. “Three hours, birthday girl.”

I force another smile. Habitual. “You better have sanitized the knife this time.”

We sit in silence, a yawning cavern of space between us. The wooden steps under me are cold. The other rocking chair – the empty one – is still. Two loners without our better halves. Ma to cancer, my partner Ryan to general dumbassery. No matter, I’d take one Peter if it meant putting up with a million Ryans. Pa feels the same. So I’ll let him slit my finger tomorrow. Because a man who doesn’t begrudge the tragedy of having a daughter, who still wills his legacy to someone who the board rooms and rig crews can’t or won’t respect, whose oil-drunk sermons only happen one day a year and that day is tomorrow – he’s allowed some superstition, is he not?

“Oakley line gained a good one.”

I look up. Blink. “What?”

“Peter. Good kid. Strong blood.”

My throat closes. “Pa –”

He waves me off. Grins the easy, lopsided grin that I’ve already started to notice on Peter. “Bad choice a’ words. Only meant he’s a fighter.”

I snort. Sure. “You’re the fighter, Pa.” The big guns are breathing down his neck, pressuring him to contract out. Or sell on the cheap, move to the retirement home. This part of the Eagle Ford shale – a slice of oil-rich land through the heart of South Texas – is hot. But not hot enough for Pa’s honor, which keeps an iron grip on our family tract.

On the eight steel guardians bobbing up and down and up and down and up.

Pa itches his foot through the tear in his boot. “I’mma ask somethin’ of ya, Lou.”

I wait, like an obedient child.

“It may not be enough no more,” Pa sighs. “Not you, not me.”

He fiddles with the arms of his flannel. Buttons and unbuttons the wrist cuffs. Taps the frayed seam of his boot. All the while, his cigarette dangles.

“I’d like to add Peter’s blood. Just a drop.”

Solidify the line. We’re on a tract of land whose deed – “to the Oakley family” – Pa has framed in the dining room. If we hold out, turn the profit that’s meant to be here, deep in the shale, then…but the math won’t add up in my brain. Too many zeroes at the end of a big, shiny, dollar sign. This is known. Has been known since I was young. We water the fields, we give our reminders to the land. A few drops in service of a legacy. In service of little baby Peter, future tycoon.

I stiffen. “It wasn’t a bad choice of words, then. Before.”

Pa’s cigarette glows on a deep inhale. “No.” He stands. Stubs the smoke in the ashtray on the porch railing. An ashtray I made in second grade art class. He keeps everything of mine. Every trophy, every terrible drawing, every Christmas card. Has started doing it with Peter too, his daycare scribbles and locks of baby hair and voicemails where I had him babble into the phone for grandpa. Pa’s love is measured in boxes of keepsakes. Measured in my comfortable apartment and the crash-proof car seat he bought and the college fund already in Peter’s name. Again, he’s allowed some superstition.

Pa pauses at the screen door. His eyes are kind. His shoulders soft. “Sleep on it,” he tells me. “Your decision. It’s just always – always made us feel like family.”

#

At dawn, I drink burned coffee on the porch. Peter was quiet all night and I don’t know what to do with the real sleep I got. It’s disorienting. Pa shambles out in the same ratty flannel, his hair mussed. Rubs his fingers across the back of his rocking chair. “Ready?” His voice is still scratchy with sleep. “You decided yet?”

Peter lets out a wail from inside. I slug my coffee. Guess my boy has settled the still-unmade choice for me. “I’ll grab him.”

#

Peter toddles as fast as I’ll let him on the terracotta dirt. Chasing an errant bug. Pa and I stomp each step a few paces back, tamping down hard. Letting the snakes know we’re coming. Peter looks back and mimics me, stomping happily. Good boy.

I keep half an eye out for scorpions, but they don’t much like our land. Never have. The pumpjacks stretch above us, shadows long. Backcountry skyscrapers.

Peter sits down in the dirt with an oof. Starts playing with the scrub grass. I watch the morning sun flick across my fingers. The white crisscross of scars flash in the light. They’re delicate. Pretty.

I steel myself. “Okay, old timer, give me the –”

But as I turn, a series of images fracture together in my periphery. Peter, focused on the scratchy grass. My father, running at us. The penknife, blade out. Pointed downward. Primed for a strike.

I can’t stop myself from screaming. Peter, on cue, jerks up and lets out a wail. Blood rushes to my head. I was wrong, this isn’t superstition, it’s sacrifice –

But then the penknife is passing Peter. And heading for me. And in Pa’s eyes is every injustice ever left unsaid, every deep guilty thought that it’s his fault I’m this instead of a strapping son ready to carry on the family name, and even though I can’t voice it either, I can sense his resentment and his anger and his wish that I was more, different, better –

I duck and twist. Pa is not a strong man, or a young one, and I pull, missing his hand but ripping his flannel, the one he was fiddling with last night.

The penknife drops to the ground. Pa clutches his shoulder. And I shudder out a gasp.

Gashes, deep and red and barely scabbed over, run up and down Pa’s arm. Disappear into his undershirt. Sodden, rust-stained bandages hang loose around his bicep. And I know…there’s already been far too much blood given to this land.

Pa sees that I see. He backs away. Hands up, in some pretense of surrender. He kicks off the Ariats, those beautiful boots. He’s not wearing socks. His toes are bloody stumps of wrapped bandages. Peter is still crying.

Pa’s gaze is tight with anguish. “It stopped working. Wells ran dry. I tried – I gave everything. As much blood as I could.”

I choke. “But – this is strong land. A good shale.” A shale we’ll become millionaires from, my greedy brain reminds me. “If we just hold out –”

Pa shakes his head. “It knows, Lou. It knows you’re not comin’ back to take care of it. Knows –” He stops. But I can guess the rest. Knows I’m not a real oil man, just a spoiled city girl with stars in her eyes and a hungry mouth to feed and no respect for family.

The penknife glints in the sun. My fingers twitch.

Pa drops his hands. “Do it,” he says, voice steady.

What else can I do? What else could I allow him?

“Will it work?” I manage, my voice cracking.

In response, Pa shuffles so we’re at Peter’s back. Facing away from the pumpjacks. He sighs, fixes his eyes on the distant farmhouse.

I crouch. Grip the penknife. I’m a field kid. I’ve shot coyotes. Helped our neighbors with the pig slaughter. I close my eyes. I stab.

The dirt drinks up red. A sanguine sheen spreads in the dust.

I stare down at Pa. My shadow over his. All I need is a ten-gallon hat and I’d be God to him. But he’s bleeding out and I’m holding the reason why. So perhaps I am.

I turn. Check on my son. Peter is blissfully unaware of the carnage, his back still to me. He has stopped crying. He blinks up at the sky. “Rawr.”

I follow his chubby finger. Our eight pumpjacks are no longer see-sawing, but paused. The horse heads hang down. A problem with the counterweights?

Then the heads lift, in unison.

It’s broad daylight.

This can’t be happening.

But the horse heads turn towards me. A low creak thrums through each pumpjack chassis. Their heads tilt.

They’re alive. Mastodons of steel.

My veins turn to ice.

They don’t speak. But like a flesh-and-blood animal, the nearest pumpjack tosses its head. Large divots on each side wink in the sunlight. Eyes.

I clutch the knife in one hand and Peter in the other. Quick as I can stand it, I slash across his soft palm. Let the blood fall, a desperate bid to placate. Peter, for once, doesn’t wail. His eyes are saucers, consumed by the monsters.

The nearest pumpjack stretches its neck towards us. Bending down.

A primal compulsion vibrates through me, and I lift a hand. Closer, closer.

My fingertips meet warm metal. The sheer size, the buzz between us, holds me there. Petting a dinosaur.

Those metal divots darken. I sense the question in them. The threat.

“We’ll stay,” I whisper.

The pumpjack actually sighs. Something like satisfaction.

It retreats. I pull my hand back with a hiss. An raw curl of steel has caught my fingertip. Drip, drip. My blood joins the landscape. Three for three.

I force myself to check Pa’s body. The color has bleached from his face, no blood left in him. Even the bandages are clean, their stains absorbed by the thirsty dirt. The land has swallowed our evidence.

#

I manage to get Peter back to the house before I vomit up my coffee. The jet-black stream tastes like honey. Like Texas sweet tea.

#

That night, Peter is restless. So I boot up Pa’s F-150. I drive circles around the fields.

The monsters watch. Their gazes, their rhythms, their presence glued to the truck like magnets. Peter loves it. He lets out a soft “rawr” before drifting into dreamland.

I do not sleep again.