deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: We kept an imposter on the farm. Sometimes it was one of us, some
deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: We kept an imposter on the farm. Sometimes it was one of us, sometimes one of the horses. More often, it simply lay in the sun with the chickens. I had an idea for this story but I didn’t bother writing it. This is the imposter writing this. These are the imposter’s fingers made to resemble the author’s fingers manipulating the pen. The story starts out with a young boy poking his head into the farmhouse, calling for his father. Pa promised to take him into town, he says. The boy has a sweetheart in town, or has been saving up to buy something with his pocket money - this is a big deal for him, he doesn’t get to go into town that often. He’s been looking forward to it all week. The mother just shakes her head. Where’s he been? Pa left half an hour ago. He’s missed his chance. She sure can’t take him. She’s busy with the canning. Is this something people do on farms, spend afternoons over a boiling stove packing the harvest away in jars? I don’t know. This is what it means being the imposter. The imposter takes on the shape of things, but not their history. I could give myself the mother’s calloused hands, her hips, her exasperated sigh, the lock of hair worked loose hanging impudently in her face, but I would not know how to can, or if I should even be in the kitchen, canning. I could be her, but not be her, if that makes any sense. Anyway, she tells the boy that if he needs to go to town that bad, he can maybe get the imposter to mimic Pa and drive him. She turns back to her work. If he’s able to convince the imposter, that is. The boy knows it’s not likely to work, but shuffles off anyway looking for the imposter. This is difficult. The imposter could be anything. One of the farmhands, hard at work; or one of the horses in the stables; or the little sister (does he have a little sister? I don’t know, but I could be one); or a cow or pig or anything; but the boy knows where the imposter is. It’s where it always is: Among the chickens, basking in the sun. The boy approaches the chickens. They all scuttle off, except for one red hen who sits there languidly in the sunshine, heedless of him. The boy approaches, squats on his heels, speaks entreatingly. He needs to go to town - because of the sweetheart or the purchase or whatever. Won’t the imposter please turn into Pa and drive him there? Won’t even take that long. And hey, it can take a human form, push the pedals of the car and make the engine growl and steer it along by the twist of a wheel, won’t that be fun!The chicken sits there in the sunshine and ignores him. The boy stands up mad. He was expecting this. The imposter apparently does damn near nothing around the farm. All day long, it remains the chicken. Doesn’t even lay eggs or nothing. Just sits around all day basking in the sun. He stomps around and kicks up dust. He inveighs. Be something useful, be a horse at least, if you’re not going to give yourself two hands to work with. You could be anything! Anything at all! And all you want to be is this!The boy manages to work himself into tears. He is sniffling, rubbing at his nose, anger sinking into despondency. He really does not know why his Pa just left without him. He looks at the little red chicken, speaks pleadingly. Is this really all you want? he says. It could be anyone at all - Pa, Ma, the horses that could carry him on their backs like he was nothing, the burly farmhands, anyone at all. And out of all that, you choose to be a hen. The boy sprawls himself out on the ground, his nose still running, looking straight into the chicken’s beady eyes. So that’s what you decided on, is it? Out of all of us, this is what you liked the best? The chicken sits there in the sunshine silently, satisfied in doing nothing more than that. The boy gives up. He walks off, scuffing the ground. He has the sick sensation in his stomach, for no real reason at all, that maybe his Pa isn’t someone worth being. Nor his Ma, nor anyone on the whole farm save for the hen. He passes by the farmhands, hard at work, the horses in their stables, his Ma still busy in the kitchen, thinks of his Pa driving the truck into town and all the people in town he’d say hey to, and the boy wonders if any of them are as happy as a little red hen sitting there doing nothing, bathing in the sun. Soon enough he hears the truck pulling up and he hurries over to meet his Pa, half resentful for being left behind and half wanting to see his father’s surety and his stride and be reassured by them. But as he comes up, he sees his Pa stepping out of the truck, and from the passenger’s side a young boy leaping to the ground, carrying his purchase beneath his arm, still vibrant with excitement. The boy is him. The boy has his face his freckles his fingers his hands his knees his gap-toothed smile, and the boy who is not a boy and never was, not really, feels his knees go weak and turns away, starts running before anyone notices he’s there. There is something empty in his chest, losing form, losing substance, running all the way back to where the chickens lie all day in the sun and roost, and his skin unfolds and he is turning inside-out of himself and cringing, shrinking, growing smaller, smaller, smaller, until there is no more room to think or feel, nothing at all but a tiny bird brain that doesn’t understand anything at all, except for the vast blue sky above and the warmth of that lovely patch of sun. —So you see why the idea for this story was abandoned - the story could have been about a boy sitting neglected on a farm, or about childhood, and the inherent dissatisfaction of a child growing up into the world, but in the end it loses all shape and form and becomes about nothing but the imposter. And why does it matter if the imposter is sad or anxious or whatever else? The imposter is a nothing, is a simulacrum. The real boy is loved and happy. (Or at least we can see him smiling still, from a distance.)This is my story now, or at least the shape of one. I wear its skin. It was up to me to write it. I take the shape of things, but not their history. I am the imposter writing with the author’s pen. -- source link
#fiction