Talkin' About the Future of Iowa Farming

"Life is a Preparation for Death."  Principle of Zoroastrianism

Barely awake, that's how Nathan remembered his little sister, his face muscles almost formed the shadow of his former joyful smile but the moment passed in a quick flicker of time.

In her summer shortie pj's, Janie would shuffle down the steep narrow staircase, through the dining room and into the kitchen.  The tiny girl couldn't control the squinching-up of her nose due to shock and disgust as the stink of cow and pig manure from the livestock lot was sucked into her nostrils with each inhaling breath.

Dad was always ready with Janie's first good morning greeting, "You think the cow shit smells bad girl?  Ha!  Don't you even like the smell of money?    If you are that sensitive, you better get off the farm, ha-ha-aha-ah-ha-ha!"  He never got tired of this little sermon; he called it, his joke; and found his joke, hysterical.

Nathan shook himself out of his memory and looked around the sky for anything interesting to shoot at. 

"God is great, god is good, god, we thank you . . . , " his singsong raised up into the crisp air.

Nathan eyed a huge black bird which was circling its freshly shot-dead dinner about two miles distant to the north.  The vulture paid no attention to the man who imagined a Sacred Animal cared to pay attention to noise coming out of a human's mouth.

He surveyed the flat, vacuous land.  "I remember thinking when the sun met the western horizon, I could walk over and hop on for a ride," he half-heartedly chuckled to himself.

Nathan started giving Janie some cautionary advice, "Don't head to the west for the sunset. Ever." The ‘ever' growled out of his mouth with a cutting cruelty.

"Heading over those fields there would be unwise, little sis." Nathan was talking to Janie with almost a chuckling humor in his voice.  Almost.

". . . unless I drew you a map where I buried all the landmines between here and the horizon, to clear up there to the north and beyond .  . . even then," he shrugged, never noticing the cruelty that had returned to his remarks,  " . . . even then . . . hard to tell if you could  get out  in less than a million bloody pieces."

Nathan kicked at something shiny stuck in the ground at his feet.  He dislodged a lacey, rusted cigarette roller and thought for a moment about the time his family raised marijuana as a cash crop. 

Which naturally led to a flood of curses erupting like blisters from his lips.

Each curse aimed like a needle in a voodoo doll to a particular body part of a particular banker.  Nathan had spent time carefully nursing his rage into well scripted punishments.

Punishments for involvement with the ages old bankers' scam.

Firstly, for the gaining of trust.

Secondly, for the taking of every thing you have ever accumulated with your own blood and sweat.

Concurrently, taking all your belongings  and all your dreams when you are the most vulnerable.

And contemporaneously, what with the cavalier attitude towards using  presidential executive orders to order foreclosures,  no farm was left excluded from being vacuumed up and under the AMD corporate umbrella.

"Waste not, want not," he screamed as he shot off a few rounds of his AK-47.

In quick motion he thrust his gun to the ground trying to toss off his memories.  As the gun hit a ragged corner of concrete foundation he jumped like a nervous criminal for fear he would get a few bullets in his head.

He bent over to pick up his gun and grabbed up a raggedy old plastic fly swatter stuck there in pile of blown up trash.

"Hey, girl!  Get the fly swatter now. I'll give you a penny a fly. I bet you can make a whole buck in one hour if you aren't too lazy."   His dad was talking to Janie again.

Nathan swirled slowly around so as not to fall down. He looked through his red-veined eyeballs trying to see where they were standing.

He stood absolutely still and concentrated on his hearing.  The vultures were swooping up and down in graceful dives with intestines or bloody muscle in their mouths. He couldn't hear that part, but he could hear the way their wings were moving.

The hogs over there were getting real hungry too.  A loud rhythmic pounding noise became distinguishable to him.  The wooden fences were being pushed and pushed and pushed by a mob of pigs hungry to the point of rage.

He felt his brain expand from the meth that had accumulated in his body over the years.  Well, once you start cooking and producing, you might as well start using, what with following quality assurance and all.  That's what Nathan had figured.

He was going to let his body slump to the ground and just brain feed on the colored patterns that some of his better hallucinations provided.

But the flash he got was of horror.  Janie's little head, no longer round, but flat and bloody, squashed under the huge tractor tire.  And just then his dad jumped down out of the tractor seat, "Well, what the fuck was she standing there for? Dumb little female fuck. I wanted all boys anyway.  C'mon, get to the phone, boy.  Call 911. I'm going to take another look at little Janie's life insurance policy."

Nathan vomited uncontrollably until the nausea subsided and he looked around, remembering he was alone now. He had shot his father dead with his dad's own pheasant hunting shotgun that day.

"I should have done it years before, so Janie would still be here."  He glanced over at his dad's grave to make sure the old monster was still buried.

Nathan again became aware of the swooping vultures and raging pig mob.  Those corporate hustlers over there were dead as doornails after Nathan's visit a couple of hours ago.  Once the vultures and the pigs finished up, not a trace would be left of any bit of anything from a human body.

"Just like the old Mongolian tradition.  An honorable tradition.

"No doubt those boys are up in Purgatory thankin' me about now.

"Oh, yeah. Thanking me.

"I gave them the quick way out of this Hell."