Promised Land

   

(Word count: 597)

    She watched nothing as gray rain pelted the pasture below, her hands warming a mug of hot tea.  Her husband had brought his family to this god forsaken stretch of uninhabited coast two months ago.  It was considered a temperate rainforest.  When he had interviewed for the position teaching physics at the rural high school the weather had been beautiful, the sun shining warmly, the subtle scent of rich soil, the country a mixture of greens, and lush.

***

    He was buried in work.  Prepping for seventh and eighth grade math and science, and high school physics, an architecture middle school ‘elective’ thrown in for good measure,  he was overwhelmed.  It was a one school district, there was no science curriculum for any subject or level, he was expected to write the science curriculum for the district.  But no one had mentioned any of this, or the obstacles to science when he had interviewed for the position.  A vast majority of christian fundamentalists made science a dirty word in the community.  Teaching physics by the ocean, how much better could life get?

***

    The leather in the tack room had grown an inch of some fuzzy whitish-green airy mold since yesterday’s ride in the rain.  The ride yesterday had been in the rain, as would be today’s.  Everyday she and their daughter rode in the rain.  The horses were developing hoof rot from standing in water constantly.  She got the watered-chlorine and Neatsfoot Oil to again clean the tack.  She thought she could live in this wet place, she thought she could do it for her husband.  She thought it made him happy.

***

    He returned to his classroom, and sat at his desk, stunned.  He was now expected to also teach a zero hour class, an elective.  He asked himself how it could be an elective if everyone was expected to take it.  He now constantly berated himself for bringing his family to this place of constant rain and ignorant people.

***

    Their son, a high school junior thundered into the house, squishing every step of the way.  “Tell me again why we live in this place Mom?”  He helped himself to the water constantly warming on the wood stove and made some hot chocolate, “I don’t understand why we live in this fu-this mud hole?”

    “How was practice tonight honey?”

    “Wet, same as always.  Why do we live here?”

    She looked intently at their son, searching for the right words, it was the second time she had answered this question today.  It was perhaps the millionth time since they had come here two years ago.  Their seventh grade daughter had arrived home in tears earlier, complaining how the science teacher, her father, had embarrassed her in class, again.

    “Your dad thought it would be the best thing for the family honey,” she answered.  She tried to sound convincing, but knew she didn’t.  She also knew her son knew that she didn’t like it anymore than he did.

    “Right,” he paused and looked at her, pity in his young eyes.  “Right thing for the family, that’s what I keep telling myself also.”  He stood up and squished to his room.  She felt the tears begin.

***

    He shoved five stacks of papers into his case, he was already late and no where near done.  He had not even started grading papers yet.

    He listened to the tires crunch over their gravel drive, turned the engine off, listening to the pinging and popping of the cooling motor.  He watched the constant black rain in this eternal hell, physics by the ocean, the promised land.

(Word count: 597)