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It looked as if it was about to fall apart as I got closer to it. From far away, before I began pedaling my bike up the steep hill, it had seemed like a simple farm house. The roof seemed firmly attached to the walls, and the walls firmly attached to the ground. But when I got closer, I could see the weakness of this quaint farmhouse. The painted finish on the white wooden siding was chipped in many places, and the planks supporting the small veranda over the front porch looked as if somebody had swung a very small hammer through them in a few places, creating a few small holes here and there. I also noticed something very odd: every last one of the curtains over the windows, a worn and paled flowery print, was drawn tightly shut. As I got off of my bike, letting it fall to the ground, I rummaged thought my messenger pack, looking for the correct telegram. Once I had found it, I pulled it out and looked back up at the house. Now it literally looked as if it was Swiss cheese. The deck was speckled with holes, a clear sign this house was severely infested with termites.
The front steps were creaking uneasily as my shoes walked up to the front door, underneath the shade of the veranda. I paused for a moment in the cool, having been riding for quite a while in the blazing summer sun to reach this house on the very outskirts of town. After catching my breath, I raised the fist clutching the telegram, and rapped my knuckles three times on the door. I knocked lightly, worried the door might fall over if I knocked too hard. If I had the right house, (which I was starting to doubt; the house seemed in such disrepair I couldn’t see how somebody would be living here) it wouldn’t be a very good first impression on my first day as a telegram boy if I destroyed their front door.
After about half a minute, nobody had answered. I frowned slightly, knocking again, only the tiniest bit harder (I didn’t dare use all my strength). I heard an old woman from inside shout out with a soft and tender voice, like that of a grandmother. “Now, wait just a moment, I’m coming.”
So this is the right house, I thought.
An old woman opened up the door, the rusty hinges creaking as she opened it. She grinned broadly, showing all of her front teeth, which were slightly yellowed. Her wrinkled leather face was unusually pale; I seriously doubted she had seen sunlight in a while. She wore a massive straw hat with flowers on it, and her dress was a pale and dull floral print, a print I recognized as the same material the curtains over all the windows was made of. She gave off the odd impression of wearing a mask, though why I thought this was very odd to me.
“Oh, dear, you look exhausted, come in! I have some cookies you might enjoy! Maybe a cold glass of milk?” She opened the door up a bit wider, giving off the aura of a loving grandmother greeting her favorite grandson.
I blinked, slightly confused. “Erm…” I consulted the telegram, and then looked back up at the smiling face. “…Mrs. Harris…I just need to deliver this telegram…I’ve still got quite a few left…”
“Oh, that simply won’t do.” Practically dragged inside, I nearly tripped over my own feet and stumbled as I entered a small living room.
“A young boy like you needs nourishment after working so hard,” said the old woman. She hustled off suddenly into a room, and I heard her opening and shutting cupboards. “Have yourself a seat, now! Don’t stand there like you’re in such a hurry!”
“But, ma’am, I am in a hurry…” Despite my protests, it was obvious I was not going to get to leave this old woman’s sight until I had been given my ‘nourishment’, and according the sounds in the kitchen of ‘Oh, where did I put them?’ this nourishment had gone missing. I shrugged, sitting down in a moldy old armchair. I sank almost six inches into the old cushion, re-adjusted my position, and looked around the living room I had found myself in, slipping the telegram back into my messenger pack.
The wallpaper was torn at places, a pale pink (as I has guessed it would be) floral print. There was a chipped blue china vase on the mantle of the fireplace, and there were a few slightly wilting flowers inside the vase of many bright colors I could not all name specifically. A picture on the wall showed two young people: a young woman with long hair and an old man holding her around the shoulders. They were smiling in front of a beautiful little farm house with white siding…
My thought were cut to an abrupt end when the woman, Mrs. Harris, re-entered, looking quite forlorn.
“I could have sworn I made some oatmeal cookies this morning.” She looked up at me sitting in the chair and gave another broad smile. “No matter. I brought you a glass of milk.” She smiled, holding out a glass of fresh milk. After accepting the milk from her (and examining it very closely when she wasn’t looking) I took a small sip. It tasted quite well, so I continued to drink it at leisure. The old woman watched me as I drank, smiling contently. This made me slightly uncomfortable, but I said nothing, being quite thirsty.
After I had finished my milk, I handed her the empty glass. She smiled, walking back into the kitchen and setting the glass in the sink (I heard the clink of glass on porcelain). She re-entered and sat in a rocking chair opposite me, but at the exact time she sat down, I stood up, rushing through my next words.
“Ma’am, I really do need to finish delivering these telegrams…I’ve got to be home by sunset, and if I don’t leave soon, I won’t finish in time.” I gave her a slightly apologetic look and a shrug, and then began backing out towards the door.
But I wasn’t fast enough. No sooner had I reached the door and begun to turn around and leave had she sprung up and taken the boy’s hand, pulling me back inside the house and pushing me back in the chair. “But you came all this way up here! You must rest, if only for a moment longer.”
I sighed, giving up. “It would be rude of me to reject your hospitality, ma’am,” I said, and settled myself back in the chair, sinking into the cushion yet again.
The old woman shook her head, sounding almost disappointed. “Now, dear, you don’t need to keep up with all this ‘ma’am’ business. You can call me Daisy. That was what all my friends called me when I was your age.” She was smiling, clearly remembering those days of long ago.
Not sure how to respond to this without being thought of as rude, I gave a half smile. “Erm…well, I guess I’ll call you Daisy…if that is what you would prefer, ma’am.”
“Well, I certainly prefer it over ‘ma’am’.” She laughed, her laugh filled with sugar and cream and other sweet things you would expect from your loving grandmother’s laugh. She looked back at me. “So it’s settled. You’ll call me Daisy, and I’ll call you by your name.” She blinked, and then suddenly raised her hand and gave herself a small smack in the forehead. “Dear me! And I’ve been blabbing about myself, and didn’t even ask you your own name. Do tell me, dear boy. What do your friends call you?”
I blinked. Well, my friends called me J.B., but I would feel odd having this woman calling me by my nickname. “…Jackson. Jackson Barker.”
“Well, Jackson Barker, I think I’ll have my telegram, now that you’ve had some refreshment.”
Finally, I thought, and I pulled the telegram back out of my sack. I stood up, holding the slightly yellowed envelope up for her. “It’s addressed from Mississippi. I can read it for you if-”
The old woman smiled at me oddly, like I had just told a sly joke. “Now, I may be old, but I have enough brains left in me to read.” She took the telegram from me, and sat back down on the chair, opening the envelope and commencing to read the telegram, rocking her chair slightly as she read. After a moment of watching her read, I tried to back out of the house again, eager to continue my deliveries; but she held a hand up, signaling me to stop. I sighed, settling myself back in the chair, not as annoyed by the sinking cushion the third time.
I waited as the old woman read the telegram, examining the tears in the wallpaper and the scratches in the end table next to my chair. I had just become interested in a hole in the cushion from which the old stuffing was peeking out from when the old woman barked out suddenly.
“Can I keep reading it yet?”
I blinked, looking up at her. She was staring at the exact same spot of the telegram, and I thought it looked like she was examining a particular word. “Ma-I mean, Daisy, I didn’t tell you to stop reading.”
She sighed, slightly irritated. “I know you didn’t. The telegram did.”
What? I got up, walking over to Mrs. Harris and looking over her shoulder. I followed her eyesight and saw that she was staring intently at the word ‘stop’ after the first sentence. I let out a soft laugh.
“Mrs. Harris, it didn’t tell you to stop. It just says stop at the end of each line so that the man who is receiving a telegram knows when a sentence is over. It doesn’t mean to actually stop.” I had never seen somebody actually interpret a telegram that way.
She looked up at me, obviously confused. “Well, if it doesn’t mean to stop reading, why would it say such a thing? That’s quite ridiculous.”
Blinking, I shrugged. “I guess that’s just always how it’s been.”
“Well, that’s no reason to do something, Jackson!” She stood up suddenly, causing me to jump back a step. “Young man, just because it’s always been a certain way doesn’t mean a single thing. Just because those Puritans in England had always been persecuted didn’t mean they couldn’t do something about it. They came here and started their own country.”
I blinked, a little shocked. She was taking this a little too literally, in my opinion. “I…guess, I never thought of it that way.”
“Well, that’s because people your age never seem to think properly, do they?” She walked over to the picture I had seen earlier, the one of the happy couple. “You see that man? His name was Johan Harris, and he was my lovely husband. His whole family moved out west, to Missouri. But he stayed right here in this house. He said he wasn’t going to leave Georgia for anything. If he hadn’t have stayed, I would have never met him.”
She was looking at the picture happily, as if remembering a very happy dream from very long ago. “Because he did what he wanted to do and not just what was customary, he was able to run this farm. And he ran it very well, I must say.”
Behind the couple in the picture, I could see the little farmhouse, neat and tidy. I could see crops surrounding the house, the corn grown high up to the second story. But all I had seen surrounding the house when I had arrived was dying grass. There was no telling how long ago there had even been a stalk of corn grown on this farm.
I turned to the old woman, who was still looking at the picture. “Daisy, where is…” But I cut myself off before I could finish.
She turned to look at me, a curious frown on her face. “What is it, Jackson?”
I turned away, proceeding to walk out the door. “Nothing, Mrs. Harris. I really have to get going.” How stupid of me…where did I think Mr. Harris was? Six feet under.
I heard the old woman sigh, but I walked out of the house, not even turning back to say a proper goodbye.
“Daisy, you keep reading it after the stop,” I said automatically after about a minute of watching her stare at the telegram.
She gave a sigh. “Drat, I keep forgetting. What would I do without you, Jackson?”
I shrugged, and then spoke under my breath. “I suppose you would stare at the first sentence for the rest of your life.”
I adjusted my position, sinking about an inch deeper into the chair. I suppressed a sigh, instead proceeding to finish drinking the glass of milk I had set on the end table.
After I had set the empty glass back on the table, she looked back up at me. “Wonderful news, Jackson. My baby brother, the one who’s been sending me all these telegrams for the past few weeks, is going on a vacation. See? He says, ‘I’ll miss you very much while I’m gone, but I promise I’ll be back soon, so don’t worry about me.’” She gave a soft laugh. “Why would I worry about him going on vacation?”
I shifted my position, sinking again, my eyes glued to my hands folded in my lap. I didn’t respond. I would read all of the telegrams before I sent them out, so I knew exactly why she would worry about him.
“He says, though,” she said, consulting the letter, “that ‘he’s not sure where he’s going quite yet.’ How silly of him. He was always so careless with my planning.” She laughed again, causing me to shift once again and sink yet another few centimeters into the old cushion.
“Why are you being so quiet today, Jackson? Is something bothering you?” She looked at me oddly, once again giving off the aura of a loving grandmother.
I stood up, looking her in the eyes, smiling weakly. “Nothing at all, Daisy.” I walked over to the door, picking up my messenger sack propped up next to the door against the scratched wall. “I’ll get going now.”
The old woman’s smile weakened slightly, and she said, “Very well, Jackson. I’ll see you next time you have a telegram for me.”
I nodded, saying a quick ‘goodbye’ before I leapt out the door and jumped over the front steps, getting onto my bike and beginning to pedal down the hill.
I rode up the hill on my bike with difficulty that day. My heart was heavy with shame. I had guessed it was coming; a month with no telegram from Mrs. Harris’ brother could only mean one thing. He had written once a week for a whole two months, and with each letter something seemed to be snatched away from the old woman. Something the teenage boy could not describe.
She still hadn’t understood them after two months of her brother’s telegrams. I could only hope something hadn’t happened to her in the month no telegrams had been delivered.
Suddenly, my bike ran into something I wasn’t expecting, and I crashed, falling in a large pile of dirt. I coughed, inhaling a mouthful of dirt. I looked around for where my bike had fallen, and saw it lying in a deep hole next to the pile of dirt. There was a shovel lying next to the hole, and it was obvious this had been recently dug.
I got up, slightly dizzy, and, feeling a little sick at what I had to do next, I began walking up the stairs, my shoes creaking on the termite infested wood. I was about to step onto the front porch when my foot went right through the wood. I gave a gasp of pain as my leg was trapped in the hole up to my knee. The termites had finally caused some real damage.
After about a minute of wriggling and pulling, I was able to wrench my foot out of the wood. No sooner had I straightened up was the door opened.
“Oh, Michael! Johan and I were just talking about you! Come in!” She was smiling broadly, and the front of her faded dress was covered in dirt.
The boy blinked. “Daisy, my name’s not Michael. It’s Jackson, the telegram boy…remember?”
She laughed, taking me by the hand and dragging me into the house. “Michael, Michael, just because you went and got yourself covered in dirt doesn’t mean you can disguise yourself from me!” She laughed a much stronger laugh than I had ever heard her utter, and abruptly stopped, doubled over and coughing. I rushed right next to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and straightening her up. “Daisy, are you all right?”
She nodded, still coughing, and then sat down in her rocking chair. I was amazed it didn’t snap in half; it looked like the termites had done just as good a job on it as the porch. I sat down in the old armchair, used to the sinking feeling I got, and waited until she had calmed down.
Once she had finished coughing, she looked back up at me, her eyes clouded. “Pa? Why are you all covered in dirt?”
I blinked. First her brother, now her father… She wasn’t in a right mind, I thought. I should leave, and deliver this telegram later. She couldn’t handle it now…
“What’s in your sack, Pa?”
Moments before I had been able to stand up and leave, I froze, sighing. “I have a telegram for you.”
She smiled brightly. “Oh, can I read it, Pa? I’ve been learning how to read.”
My hand shaking, I reached into the messenger pack, pulled out the envelope, and held it out to her.
She took it, not taking he eyes of me. “Who’s it from, Pa?”
I couldn’t bear it any more. I couldn’t see her face, not when she read it, not when she realized…
I stood up abruptly. “I have to go, Daisy.”
As fast as I could, I rushed to the door, stepping over the hole in the porch and jumping over the front steps.
“Pa, what’s wrong?” Mrs. Harris had rushed to the front door, and stood there, the unopened envelope in her hand.
I jumped into the hole, not caring any more who had dug it. I pulled out my bike, climbed back out, and mounted my bike, flying away as fast as I could like a bird.
The old woman simply stood in the doorway, confused. “Pa…?” She blinked, her eyes cloudy once again. Her hand weakly dropped the letter, and it floated like a delicate feather right through the new hole in the deck. She stepped over the hole, walking down the steps, not taking her eyes away from straight in front of her. She walked to the massive hole in the ground, picked up the shovel, and began to dig with an erratic rhythm.
The hole grew wider as she continued to work. The sun set, the sun rose, and she kept digging. When it was nearly wide enough for her purpose, another coughing fit overcame her, and her balance on the edge of her grave was weak. The hole was filled, and the work was done.
In no time at all, the termites had devoured the telegram from the U.S. government declaring the death of Michael in the midst of battle.
The boy never delivered another telegram to the house on the hilltop.
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