Moss covered the inside of the well in thick emerald clumps. It ran up and spilled over the edge, where the morning dew that also kissed the summer grass that surrounded in the yard gleamed in the early morning sunlight. A moth the color of dusty ash rested on one side, and down far below the rain water that had collected over time swam into cracks that separated the old stone bricks that made up the well.

Michael stood in silence about five yards away. His hair, at one time reddish-brown, now with a good share of grey flecked through, rustled in the breeze that blew lightly through the yard. His face displayed the look of a man lost in his own thoughts, a look of quiet concentration, and he did not hear her the first time she called.

"Michael."

He stood still, gazing at the well with its shell of damp moss. It had not been used for at least twenty years since the house had been converted to the local reservoir along with the rest of the rural areas of Long Island's North Fork for modern convenience.

"Michael, honey, your breakfast. It's getting cold."

He looked up, as if at first unsure of where the voice was coming from or who it belonged to. Then he turned, his face reflecting the golden glaze of the early morning summer sun. As he turned the frown on his face disappeared and he smiled widely at her. His bright blue eyes twinkled as he turned, and she was relieved to see him smile.

"Thanks Shannon," he said.

He went to the steps that led to the porch where she stood, reaching out as he approached her and gently rubbed her back as they walked into the house, the ancient white screen door clapping several times behind them.

Michael kicked off his well worn brown leather boots onto the pantry floor and then followed Shannon into the kitchen, where the smell of eggs, bacon, and freshly toasted bread filled the room. Nine-year-old Thomas sat at the table eating a helping of scrambled eggs that was far too much for him to finish. His sister, two years his senior, sat next to him picking at a more reasonably portioned plate, though she would not finish it nonetheless. "I hope you saved me some eggs Thomas," said Michael.

The boy looked up and smiled. It was a grin that can only be found on the faces of young boys and it made Michael smile himself. "Well you can always have some of Meagan's," said Thomas. "She never finishes hers anyway".

His sister gave him a sour look. She scooped up a chunk of scrambled eggs, crammed it into her mouth, swallowed, and stuck her tongue out at Thomas. Michael laughed as he sat down. His wife came around from the left and poured orange juice into the glass at the plate already set for him.

"Don't start you guys. Your father is already running late this morning." She glanced at him from the corner of her eye but he did not meet her gaze. He was already scooping the remaining eggs from the pan on the table onto his plate, after which he grabbed the rest of the bacon. "Did you start the stalls yet?" she asked him.

"Not yet," he muttered, his mind on the food spread before him. "The herd is a little restless this morning... and I got a little sidetracked." She looked at him knowingly but said nothing.

He buttered two pieces of toast and then began to eat. Shannon joined them at the table. She wasn't much a fan of eggs and had a large corn muffin spread before her instead.

"Did you finish your homework Tom?" asked Michael, looking up from his eggs.

"Yeah, all I had to do was read."

"Good," said Michael. He did not ask Meagan if she did hers. She was a very consistent student, and he knew better. However, his daughter was unusually quiet this morning. Normally it would be rather difficult to keep her so silent. He would ask Shannon if everything was all right after the kids left.

The children got up to finish getting ready for school and Michael scooped the remaining food from their plates onto his. Shannon ate half of the muffin before she got up to see them out onto the school bus. She returned after five minutes as Michael was scrubbing the pan that she made breakfast in. "I'll do that. You're running late," she said.

"It's okay," he replied. "What time are you going in?"

She picked up the rest of her breakfast, broke a piece off and put it in her mouth. "I'm going in at eleven just for four hours to cover lunches today," she said, referring to her part time job as a medical receptionist at Doctor Colburn's. "And I'm working ten to four tomorrow," she said through a mouthful of muffin.

"I remember," he said, lying. He rinsed the pan off and put it in the drain with the rest of the dishes from this morning. "Is everything okay with Meagan?"

"She...got something this morning."

"Got what?" Michael asked naively. He dried his hands on the dishtowel hanging on the stove's handle.

"She got her first period today. I was going to tell you later."

"What? Isn't she too young?"

"She's eleven," said Shannon. "That's not exceptional really. Besides I was twelve..."

"Alright, alright" he said feeling shy towards the details. He reached over to the coffee pot and poured it into a travel mug he took from the dish drain. He filled it to about three quarters full and then took down a mug from the cupboard and poured the rest in there. "Is she okay?"

"She will be fine Mike," said Shannon. "It happens to every woman."

"She's not a woman yet."

Shannon rolled her beautiful green eyes. "I'm going to jump in a shower. Will you be here when I get out?"

"No, I'm going out now."

She walked over to him, leaned in and gave him a quick peck on the lips. "Have a good day," she said. "Try to stay out of the sun so much."

"How would you like me to do that?" he asked, smiling. She shrugged, smiled, and turned away.

"And don't get sidetracked again, Mike," she called, tilting her head over her shoulders to give him a concerned glance before walking out of the kitchen. He watched her as she passed into the living room and up the stairs, marveling at the woman who shares his life and bed. Her strawberry-blonde hair swished back and forth as she walked and accentuated her figure, which was still lovely after all these years. He walked back towards the pantry to go out the back door. He stopped and bent over to put his boots back on for the day. He looked out the windowpane of the storm door as he tied his laces. There was a lot of work to do today.

He had been too wrapped up in his own thoughts this morning and even though his small herd of Holsteins was milked he had not gotten much else done so far for the day. The milk had been put in cold water until the boys from the distributor would come pick it up around nine along with the batch from last night. The chickens were fed as usual. Jose, his field manager, and his team had already been at work rowing potatoes since six when Michael had given them the day's instructions. The livestock were small time business; the field was where he made the money that supported his household, though times were changing. For damn sure, times were changing. His was one of the last potato farms on the North Fork of the island. Some of the other farms had converted to growing flowers and ornamental shrubbery. Most of the others had been sold out or converted to vineyards over the past few decades. From Jamesport and then east along the stretch of the island that comprised the North Fork, all the way out to Greenport, it was wine country now.

Shannon's father was a businessman, a big shot marketing exec in Manhattan. He had been pressuring Michael to sell out to the vineyards for years, but Michael would have none of it. What would he do then? The farm was who he was, and he measured himself in its presence and care. He was as much a part of the land as the land itself.

Shannon had stood with him on the subject. It was in fact Michael's country quaintness that had first enchanted her to him many years back when she had met him at a June fair in Jamesport on her way to her parents' summer home in Sag Harbor. Part of why she loved him was that he was so much the opposite of her shrewd and calculating father, who had been annoyed for years and still even to this day that she had married a simple farmer with no ambitions of affluence or metropolitan definitions of prosperity. Her father would have sold the farm as fast as his Montblanc Boheme fountain pen could sign the deed over.

Normally Michael would be with Jose and the boys, but he had three sections of fencing that needed repair and stalls that needed cleaning pretty bad, stalls that he should have been halfway done with by now.

Michael looked at his watch. The face read 8:00 am! He had to get out of the house. He reached for the door and stopped, turning back towards the kitchen table. He stared at it for a moment, looking at its old grooves and chipped paint. The legs were slightly warped, of which one was shorter than the other three enough so that a small wobble was present when you put pressure on the right side. It was the same table he had sat at when he was Thomas' age, eating breakfast in this same kitchen thirty six years ago.

He walked over to the table, remembering the smells and voices of that kitchen, although one and the same, still worlds apart from the one that existed now. His lips tightened into a grimace as he thought of it. Almost subconsciously he began to run his hand over the top of the table, until finally he closed his eyes, and let his mind take him back.

The table was painted a bold red the color of the setting sun. The wallpaper was of a tired beige and peeled at the edges of the wall corners and the ceiling. The room had a musty smell, one that was comprised of a hundred different odors mixed together. One stood out in particular. It was the smell of something just beginning to burn. As the moments went by it grew in power until it conquered all the other smells and was accompanied by a thin stream of black smoke rising from a flat griddle which rested on the kitchen's stove top. On the griddle lay two misshapen and rapidly burning pancakes.

A young boy walked into the room, sleep still dangling from his eyelids. He had reddish-brown hair and sharp blue eyes. He was dressed in a set of oversized green pajamas. He looked at the stove and the pancakes which smoldered on top of it and his eyes opened wide. "Mom!" He cried out.

A torrent of thumps thundered down the stairs and a woman who was once pretty emerged in the doorway. There were deep bags under her eyes and crow's feet danced in the corners of her sockets. She had blonde hair that looked paler the closer it grew to her face. Her eyes were the same color as the boy who stood in front of her. One of them was swollen and decorated with an ugly purple shiner. There was a cut on the right side of her lip. She was very thin, (but not frail), and in a dim light she would seem as a ghost.

"Christ!" she exclaimed.

She ran to the stove and the burning pancakes. She grabbed the griddle and with a spatula that sat on the counter top scooped the two inedible pancakes from it into the garbage can that sat next to the doorway leading into the pantry. She took the griddle to the sink and let cool water from the faucet flow over it, bubbling and turning to steam as it did. After a moment, she turned off the faucet and put the griddle back on the stove.

"Michael," the woman whispered. "Push those pancakes down into the garbage. Hide some of the other trash over them."

The boy did not question the need for such secrecy. He rushed to the garbage can and pushed the pancakes deep into the pail, scooping up some tin cans and pieces of miscellaneous trash and depositing them over the ruin that would have been his father's breakfast. H e looked over his shoulder to see his mother moving quickly to whisk up a new batch of batter and get it onto the griddle as fast as possible.

At that moment the screen door connecting the pantry to the yard outside clapped loudly. Michael looked up to see his father standing in the doorway of the kitchen. He was an enormous man. His shoulders were built and his arms muscular, the product of a life spent working the earth with his hands. He had a large gut which bulged and spilled over his massive belt buckle, the product of a life spent drinking heavily. Dirt was packed under his fingernails and his reddish-brown hair hung in thick curls over his broad brow. His deep brown eyes smoldered in his sockets and his nose glowed deep crimson with gin blossoms. He wore overalls and a red handkerchief.

"What are you doing Michael?" he asked in a deep voice that sent a stream of ice roaring down the boy's spine.

"Nothing," said the boy. "I'm just throwing something away."

"Why does it smell like someone burnt something in here?" asked the man. He looked over at the woman desperately trying to keep her hands from shaking as she flipped the pancakes cooking on the stove.

"Oh that's just from one of the flapjacks I already made Pat," said Michael's mother. "It got a little crisp on the one side but I made sure I got it off the burner just in time." She opened the stove to show the other pancakes she had made earlier. "Just a little crisp is all."

"Oh, is that so?" the man asked.

He looked down at the boy. His gaze was dark and menacing. "Move," he growled.

A fresh bolt of fear ran through the boy. He felt it grab his intestines and tie them into knots. His arms felt weak and his head light. His feet began to walk backwards all on their own. He never broke the gaze of those smoldering brown eyes.

The man reached down and shoved his massive right arm into the can, shifting and tossing the trash until he felt something warm that crushed easily in his grasp. His arm emerged from the pail holding the blasted and mashed remains of the morning disaster.

"A little crisp huh?" he asked in a terrifyingly calm voice. He stood up fully.

"Pat, please, it was an accident," pleaded Michael's mother. "I ran upstairs to gather the wash..."

"You think I'm made of goddamn money Kate?" shouted Michael's father. "I work too damn hard to see you throwing out my money because you can't watch things!"

"Pat it was just two flapjacks!"

"I don't give a damn!" He swing his arm and threw the mashed pancake he held in his fist at her. The black mush smacked her in the chest and dropped to the floor. Her lower jaw fell and her mouth formed into an O.

"I can barely pay the goddamn bills Kate!"

Michael, suddenly feeling very vulnerable, moved to join his mother on the other side of the kitchen but a heavy hand on his shoulder spun him around.

"And you..," said his father, "You want to try to keep secrets from me?"

He stood over the boy and the sunlight from the window that faced out into the yard cast a shadow darkly over the center of the room, completely eclipsing his young son.

"No..." stammered the boy. He braced for the hit he knew was coming. Suddenly his mother was at his side.

"Don't you dare Pat!" she said. "You said you never would again. You promised"

"And I told you not to get in the way of me disciplining my boy," Patrick growled.

"I won't let you Pat," replied his mother.

Michael looked up into her eyes and saw something that was equal parts terror and reckless determination. He looked back forward again. His father darted forward and shot his head out face to face with her. She turned her head to the side purely out of instinct.

"You don't tell me what to do!" roared his father. He fired one meaty arm out and landed a heavy push against her upper left shoulder. The push launched her back several feet but she did not fall. Even on the times he smacked and hit her she never fell. She simply turned her body back around and stepped forward again, wrapping her left arm around Michael's shoulders.

His father glared harshly at the two of them for another moment, then breathed out a heavy, disgusted sigh and declared:

"You see what you make me do?" He gestured to the empty air with his right hand, turned around and walked through the pantry and out of the house, his heavy brown boots beating the ground as he stormed out. The screen door clapped loudly behind him.

Michael's mother waited till his father had left to let go of his shoulders. Michael felt the strength ebb out of her limb and looked up into her face. A single tear streamed down from her left eye. Her skin was taught and she looked paler than ever before. She looked down at him and said:

"Michael, your father has been working really hard lately."

Her eyebrows moved together and she looked as if she was pleading him to understand some complex matter. "There are just so many bills...and the harvests were so poor this year. He doesn't mean to be so cross honey."

She looked strongly into his eyes. He knew what she was trying to do. He turned his head and then something caught his own gaze.

"You know your father loves you," she said.

Michael was not listening. His attention had averted to the kitchen window. He watched his father stride out into the yard cursing and growling to himself. He was heading toward the barn, on top of which rose a sun that raged like an angry god and cast a bright crimson light over the world. He watched his father saunter and sway across the grass, the strong wind ripping at his hair and shirt. He was about twenty feet away from the barn when an especially strong gust blew in from the north of the farm. The wind tugged at his father's clothes until it finally ripped the red handkerchief from his neck and dragged it south across the grass. His father shouted an obscenity and in an almost comical fashion began to chase his handkerchief. Every time he got close to grabbing it the wind would simply snatch it and keep dragging it away.

Michael watched his father circle around to get in front the elusive red prize. Just as he was about to wrap his hands about it, however, the handkerchief caught once more in the wind and lifted up into the air. It flew over Michael's father's head and drifted behind him. Patrick whirled and shot his arm out to grab the hankie when a final gust wrenched it from his reach. It floated up high in the air, twisting and fluttering above the yard, and finally spiraled down into the gaping mouth of the well that lay at the southern end of the yard just before the field full of withered potatoes. Patrick screamed loudly, pumping the air with his fists. He stomped over to the well and placed his large hands on its' sides, bent over, and peered in.

"Michael."

Michael did not hear his mother. His attention so fixated on the events outside.

"Michael, honey. Your breakfast, it's getting cold."

He turned to see his mother standing by the stove, her back toward him as she attended to the rest of the morning breakfast. On the table was a plate with two pancakes and a dollop of maple syrup on each.

"Michael," his mother called again.

"Okay," he said.

She sighed and went back to tending the stove. Michael looked at the pancakes and then looked back out the window. His father was still hunched over the well. He looked finally at his mother again before turning and walking through the pantry to the back door. He quietly opened the door and walked out onto the porch.

Michael walked slowly across the tired pine planks, down the steps and into the yard. He was as quiet as a brooding storm. His bare feet padded through the withering fall grass that was dry and brown from a summer that brought little rain. He tread along until at last he stood no more than eight or ten feet behind his father.

Patrick was still bent over the well. He now had enlisted the service of a bucket that was tethered to a pulley system at the top of the well. He had sent the bucket down to the surface of the water, which lay below about nine feet. Normally it would have been much higher had there been more rain over the past few months. That there was as much water in the well as there was existed mostly due to the grace of God and the few showers he had blessed the scorched earth with over the last week, though they had been, as Patrick said, "Too damn little, too late."

Patrick yanked the rope to and fro, and down below the bucket skipped and dived along the water's surface as Patrick tried to snag his handkerchief. He cursed and shouted at the bucket, at the well, and at the wind, but mostly at the handkerchief, which apparently was refusing to cooperate.

Michael watched this spectacle from behind. His fists were clenched, his breathing fast and irregular. His father had not heard him approach and did not feel his presence. He was absorbed in his task.

Michael stepped forward and stopped. Sweat glistened on his brow. His body shook with desperation and rage. He knew he could be free, that his mother could be free. He thought of the beatings and the nights when his mother did nothing but cry. He thought of the injustice and the cruelty of God's will and his rage flared and he stepped forward again.

And yet something held him back. It was a feeling he loathed and did not understand. It was strangling and incapacitating. And the loathing that he felt for another he began to feel for himself. Loathing and disgust, that, for all the pain, misery, and anguish, he still inexplicably loved his father.

Michael could not bring himself to kill him.

At that painful realization Michael let out a deep gasp and began to cry savagely. Vicious sobs wracked his chest and tears streamed down his cheeks and face. The sounds of Michael's sobs erupted in the air and shattered Patrick's obsessive attention to the handkerchief. Michael's father whirled to see what the cause of the horrible sound was and as he turned his boot planted on the thick rope that tethered to the bucket below in the well. As he continued to turn he rolled on the rope and lost his footing. His feet kicked out from under him and his arms shot out to steady himself but it was too late.

Patrick toppled backwards over the edge of the well and fell headfirst down the long shaft. He did not scream so much as cry a startled little yelp. Michael had looked up to see his father's boots disappearing over the edge of the well. The rope that caused the fall flipped up into the air and fell away to the right. Michael rushed to the edge and grasped the bare stone edges with his slender hands and looked down into the well.

Patrick lay crumpled at the bottom of the well. He was a large man and the rainfall had been scarce. The depth could not have been more than three feet and the smooth stone walls were narrow in comparison to Patrick's girth. The bucket he had been using lay somewhere under him, and the rope straggled up limply from beneath his body to top of the well.

Michael's eyes burst wide open and his hands gripped the edges of the well so tightly his knuckles turned white. He stopped breathing for a moment as he stared at the horrible sight before him. Finally his body took over where his brain could not and he inhaled violently, chest shaking, until his lungs could hold no more and he let out a series of short harsh coughs. He heard a high pitched wail as he felt fresh tears course down his cheeks. After a moment he realized it was the sound of his own scream. And then he felt his mother at his side once again, and she wrapped her arms around him, and all he felt was her warmth.

Michael opened his eyes and was surprised to find himself not a young boy but a middle-aged man. He stood in the kitchen of the only home he had ever known. The smell of the morning breakfast still lingered in the air and the faucet dripped from when he had just done the dishes. The drops hit the bottom of the sink in a particular rhythm; "tap, tap," pause "tap, tap."

Michael realized he had been in a daze and he looked at his watch. Quarter after eight! Had he really stood here for fifteen minutes? He walked out of the house and across the porch towards the barn and its' filthy stalls. As he walked he recalled the events that followed after that day, the day the well had swallowed his father.

He remembered the funeral and the conversations that took place there. He remembered his aunt telling his mother that his uncle would take over the management of the farm until Michael was older. He remembered crying and false eulogies, words that were not true and stories with massive omissions. He remembered talks of life insurance, of which there was little, and hard times that, for a while at least, got even harder.

Yet more than those things, he remembered going home to a quiet house, to dinners without shouting, accidents without beatings, and sleep without fear. He remembered his own relief, his own happiness, his own gratitude for the miracle that had saved his life. He remembered a mother who had smiled each and every day forward until her death many years later.

But most of all, he remembered how he had also known grief. And guilt.

And so he had promised himself to abandon that grief in the well along with the memories of his father's broken corpse. He left his guilt there too; abandoned with the incomprehensible love he had felt for his father that day, a love that made him feel weak and pathetic and made him hate himself. A love forever buried beneath layers of emerald moss and spider webs.

He convinced himself that the times he found himself consumed by his memories and the carnival of emotions in which he regarded his father's ghost were small trivialities of little consequence. He reminded himself that just because he often couldn't help but stare entranced at the well, and just because he sometimes couldn't sleep as his wife slumbered on through the night and he lay awake staring at the dull moonlit ceiling chasing shadows above their bed with his eyes, unable to chase the memories of his first decade on this earth from his mind, did not mean that he had not moved past the nightmarish trials of his childhood.

He had raised a family hadn't he? A good family. And hadn't he kept a roof over their heads and food on the table for all these years? That was why he had stayed on this plot of cursed earth. That's why he hadn't sold out, why they weren't growing wine on his field like all the others. Because he was strong, because he wouldn't run away, because he wouldn't change. Because he didn't care about the past.

Michael stopped just before he reached the barn and looked out over the yard towards the well. For a time he had thought of tearing it down, but in the end he never could bring himself to do it. And so it had stayed through the years as had he, an immutable memento of his denial.

He turned and walked into the barn, his mind now turning to the other tasks of the day. Fall would come soon with its' long days and cooling winds, when the years work would pay off the most. After that, winter, the season of death. Finally would come spring, the revival of life. A time for crops to flourish and flowers to bloom. A time for moss to die and grass to grow. And yet moss always grows in the well, all year and ever, for that is where the moss belongs.

Copyright 2007 Dave S. Shearer
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