Homefield

Robert Richter is a semi-retired dryland wheat farmer in southwestern Nebraska, where he lives with his wife on the remnants of a family homestead. They have two grown children. His essays and stories have appeared in Bloomsbury Review, Prairie Schooner, and other magazines and anthologies. Richter is the author of three previous books: Something in Vallarta, (fiction),
Windfall Journal, (poetry and prose about farming on the American high plain), and Plainscape, (a regional history). He is also an ex-expatriate and a frequent traveller to Mexico, to where he also conducts guided tours. In 2000, Richter won the Master Writer Award for his non-fiction from The Nebraska Arts Council.

I found myself dealing real estate in Mazatlan when I received the news about Uncle Karl, and I realized that for a long time this was what I'd been waiting for: a reason to return. It was the final chance of returning, too, because now even the family ties to the place were all but gone-all gone but mine. How tight or complex those ties were, I still didn't know, but they were there and I was headed for the High Plains. Again.

I knew that standing at the mouth of the family grave would inspire memories, images and incidents like requiem hymns, and I would have to sing them. I knew that I would walk the edge of open fields, feeling the wind carry a chorus of familiar voices-the sideline lyrics at ballgames with someone telling his version of the story again, or one of Buckwheat's gusty, blustery solos long gone over a cold beer and a view of the river valley, or even my own voice in journal notes of family refrain written down and left behind so long ago. Fragments of that harmony had always been in the wind no matter where I tried to lose them, the haunting ballad of living on the land never reaching a last verse. I knew it never would be settled history until I stood in that prairie wind and went through all the verses again. So I was going back.

I packed and caught the last bus north that night, and even that act brought on the first memories. It had never taken me long to get moving because I always traveled light. My baggage had never been physical, my destination never in doubt. I was going back again for some kind of rest and reassurance, just like the previous trip fifteen years before, and that's where it all begins for me-April 1975, standing thumb out at the side of the Interstate in an alien wind, headed in-country.

With his words a sudden crash of beating wings roared from the silent grass at our feet, jolting us both to our stance with unconscious cries of fear and surprise as we clutched our weapons. A hen pheasant bolted into the air not ten feet above us in a furious flutter, leaning to take the wind. In reflexive instinct of defense and protection we each fired once. Fifteen feet above the ground the pheasant arced and spread her wings for its escaping glide, but suddenly, she crumpled limply and plummeted. We turned wide eyes on one another, realizing what had happened-an incredible shot. We sprang after the bird, leaping bunch grass and fallen limbs, hooting victory cries with our rifles raised over our heads, and found her in the grass. She was still, but seemed untouched. I picked the bird up, feeling it warm and light, feather-soft and limp.

A single bb had smashed into it, severing nerves, the only possible hit that could have killed it. Buckwheat took the bird from my hands and carried it into the trees to an open, sandy area beneath a cottonwood on the river bank. There, he placed it on a river-washed rock and began to dance around it, grunting an Indian rhythm, raising his air rifle over his head, and I joined the ceremony, circling the dead bird, shouting a garrulous chant, both of us farther back along the river than even the old trappers.

"Firewood." We gathered it quickly and cleared a sandy circle, built a rock circle for the fire. We teepeed kindling and started it, lighting the cover of a Lone Ranger comic book Buckwheat carried in his pack. When the fire was burning well, Buckwheat said, "Now we have to clean it." I produced the hunting knife as we each looked at the other.

"Dad just skins them, I remember," Buckwheat said, and he took the knife and ran the point up the bird's soft belly as I held it. Warm innards oozed through our fingers, and we glanced into each other's eyes, recognizing an inexplicable mortality. We bent intently to the grim task before us, pulling the guts from the body cavity, then Buckwheat grabbed the edge of the skin and ripped it away from the bird's breast and thighs, cut off the wings and head in a quick frenzy to be finished. In a new silence, I sharpened a green stick and plunged it through the bird as a spit. We mounted it above the coals of our fire then and turned it slowly as we fed the flames.

When we placed it on a table of river rocks and cut off the legs, the outside was charred and the inner meat was still raw and sinewy. We watched each other chew and swallow. The breast was mostly done and tasted of campfire smoke and wildness, but it was edible and gave us confidence and courage.

Up through the new leaves we watched a vee of geese, high above in the blue, winging north. Above the geese, great, white barges of clouds sailed silently south. The river ran beside us, full and furious, the music of its motion carrying mud and driftwood and uprooted trees and parts of old farm buildings with it to the east.

We built our vision together until we had traveled the whole continent, by canoe and pick-up camper, working our way around the world, farther even than the river ran-boyhood dreams that rang in our imaginations and carried as a buzz into our bodies until there was no more being still.

We smothered the campfire, shouldered our packs and rifles, and took to the river's edge, westward, letting the rushing undersides of leaves, the dapple of light through the limbs and shadows of empty, tangled country-all were absorbed by the unconscious senses as two boys scrambled through the trees and undergrowth, moving upstream as silently as beavermen. Only the lure of the unexplored, just ahead, pulled us on, capturing us completely. We stayed as close to the bank as possible, circling willow clumps and bogs, log jams of driftwood left high and dry in young trees, moving up river.

Coming silently and slowly around a willow thicket, we spotted a herd of deer-a buck, two does and their fawns, drinking at a sandy backwater pool a hundred yards ahead and upwind. We dropped to our bellies in new grass without being seen and watched the deer drink. Between us and the deer another grassy bank offered better, closer cover, and we crawled nearer, our sounds covered by the gurgle of current that swept out around the deer's pool and swung swiftly against the bank we inched over. Within us both, the feeling grew that we could get off a shot at the buck. Even deep in our game we knew the most miraculous shot wouldn't bring down the smallest fawn, but we crawled toward our target, the medulla pumping the most ancient of messages through the body, the senses sharp and tantalized, to get off a shot that would sting the flank of a four-point buck.

We moved together, signaling with our eyes and hands, each knowing the other's mind, each helping the other to unsling his rifle, inching out on the edge of the bank. We lay a moment facing each other, cocked our guns, and then rose simultaneously to aim and fire into the startled herd.

But we never saw our shots hit their target. The sudden shift of our bodies to kneeling positions collapsed the cutbank we were on, and we avalanched into the rushing icy waters of the river. In the current and panic and fear, we were swept back around the willows, clawing the muddy water for air and orientation. Our heads bobbed up for breath, and then suddenly we were sucked beneath the limbs of an uprooted elm.

The rushing water pulled us down. Buckwheat slipped completely under, then grasped the last limbs and pulled himself toward the sky. He broke surface, sucking mouthfuls of air, glancing frantically for me. I hung in the limbs where the currents dived under the tree, my pack tangled in the branches, holding me face down in the onrushing water. I slapped madly at the water, fighting to raise my head above the muddy waves, choking for retches of precious air.

The current pulled at Buckwheat's grip, his open jacket and pack acting as drag. One arm, then the other, he slipped free from both and let them sink and go with the flow. Then he dragged himself through the limbs toward me in an adrenaline panic for speed, tearing his jeans on broken limbs, gashing his forearm, but not noticing. Hanging out on a limb above me, Buckwheat grabbed the back of my collar and wrenched my head above the slapping waters. I was choking and crying, heaving muddy water and bile in guttural convulsions as my friend called over and over, "I've got you. I've got you. Get some air. We're all right," the sound of it slowly calming.

Robert Richter has been a past recipient of the Master Writer Award for non-fiction from the Nebraska Arts Council. If the prose in HOMEFIELD is any indication of his ability as wordsmith, he certainly deserved that award. Richter's sonata is a harmonic blend of disparate voices telling a story that is more truth than fiction. The characters are richly layered, powerful, and authentic.

Cal Parsons is a country boy turned radical protestor, on again off again college student, and political refugee. A self-described draft dodger and road tramp, he returns to his rural Nebraska roots. His anti-establishment, anti-war rage has died out. Cal takes comfort in the simple familiarity of open fields, the west wind, and azure sky He finds shelter on the farm where his aging Uncle Karl and Aunt Martha labor endlessly at tasks city folks could not imagine. And, sadly, he finally finds love in the person of an old friend's wife.

Karl, in his 70's, can quietly and capably outwork any 20-year old. He has grown his hair and beard long in stoic protest of injustices everywhere. Karl's battered hands are his history, the time tellers of his life, and his mind a living instruction manual for all things mechanical. Martha has been his short, round helpmate through life, staunch advocate of family and life traditions. She cooks, takes pride in their home, raises a huge garden, cans fruits and vegetables, and keeps Karl's life on an even keel.

Buckwheat Van Anders has been Cal's friend and blood brother since boyhood. Even as a crippled veteran of Vietnam, Buckwheat's voice is powerful and he has more going for him than most. All Cal's old friends since childhood lend their voices to the HOMEFIELD sonata, but Buckwheat's profanely honest philosophy was a stand out.

The truths told in HOMEFIELD brought smiles and laughter, but also made my stomach hurt and my heart ache. Dying farm towns. An endlessly floundering agricultural economy. Horror and wounds that never really heal despite the passages of time. Loving and making love. Hunkering down and riding out rough times.. Death and sorrow. It's all within the pages of this book, detailed in Mr. Richter's skillful prose.