A Story a Week

by Ewan Lawrie

  ***

  Fort Dodge had been okay, for a while. Ma left less red on her handkerchiefs then. Pa had had an honest-to-goodness job. Used to come home all covered in white powdery dust. Gypsum from the plaster mills. Ma got sicker when he came home with bloodstains in the gypsum and a wild look in his eye.

  'Git in the truck,' was all he said.

  They'd stopped in a tiny burg called Contention. Two bars, a Lutheran church and a general store stood with a half-dozen clapboard houses on one mean street. The Sheriff had run them out.

  'Keep goin' five miles. They's a empty place over by Bruin's. Ain't much, and you'll be squattin', but I don't reckon even the bank want the buildin'. Don't come back less'n you got money in your pocket or somethin' to sell.'

  Pa gunned the engine and a cloud of dirt-dust covered the Sheriff. Lou laughed but George reckoned the man had done them a favour and deserved better than a face-ful of Iowa dirt. When they got to the property, his Ma had cried. It was a one-room shack with tarpaper windows and a ramshackle outhouse.