Creative Writing: The Grapes Of Wrath

Gordonn struggled to support his family from a young age, especially given the circumstances of his father's condition.

His father was not the nicest drunk, you see. However, that did not stop him from drinking every night. For Gordonn, large portions of those evenings were spent hiding to avoid the thunderous boom of his father's voice. However, yelling soon turned into fists when Gordonn was involved.

~"You're a man, you can handle a beating. And if you can't, by god, I won't stop until you can" his father's voice echoes. It seems to rattle Gordonn's bones as he sits on knees that have long ago buckled, feeling the blood drip from his face and fall to the manure matted hay of the barn's floor. ~

That night taught young Gordonn many

things: One, that it's too difficult to harvest crops correctly with a fractured shoulder. And two, he would rather repeat that night for eternity than ever have his mother be looked at in the way his father looked at him in that barn.

Avavess was a gentle, yet driven woman, and it was lost on Gordonn how a woman like her could fall in love with his monster of a father; a man who never hesitated to beat both her and his son if it suited him.

Every day he would come limping to her, face swollen and streaked with tears, and every day she would pick up the pieces. Sometimes it would be a fresh stew, other times it would be a slow melody to lull him to sleep. However, the best nights were when he would sit himself down with a pained hiss, and seconds later would feel her arms around him, promising him safety.

"I'm getting blood on your dress" he would say, and every time, she would smile. Eyes full of sadness, but a smile full of warmth. It confused him most times, saddened him others. Still, on those nights, it healed him where the wounds cut deepest.

Travelling became his father's main line of work for some time. Weeks, sometimes months, his father would be gone. During those times his mother's skin would become full of color, her eyes full of light. And when Gordonn would go to get water from the stream, he would swear he saw the same change in his own reflection.

Of course, his father would always return, the rattling of worn carriage wheels outside turning both of their guts to stone. Yet, when his father did step foot through that door, he was quiet. No more than an occasional glare was thrown at Gordonn or his mother. They sat together for meals during nightfall, both Gordonn and Avavess staying as quiet as death. Those nights seemed scarier than others, at least for Gordonn. His father would finish his food quickly, and retire to his room for the rest of the night, the only words leaving his mouth those nights being the occasional command for more on his plate.

Once his father would leave the room, his mother found any and every excuse not to sleep. Whether it was scrubbing the table or a book she needed to finish. Gordonn never went to bed either, too fearful of his mother being left alone if his father were to wake. Plus, on those nights, his mother always read to him the longer than the others.

By sunrise, his father would be gone, the only trace of him being the scuff marks on the floor and the lack of leftover dinner. However, his father was not a good man, nor a changed one.

Along with a dozen or so other men from their village, his father headed out to a three-week long mining job that was a few days travel from Gordonn's home.

Camping in the desert with nothing but a dozen strange men and the heat to keep him company sounded as horrendous as it was. Gordonn was just happy his chores didn't change so often.

That joy soon ended when his father came home 22 days later. Without so much as a cough, Gordonn's father ordered him out to the barn, informing him he would be sleeping there for the night. Gordonn quickly nodded and went to grab his bedding. As he turned, his gaze landed on his mother, and his blood chilled.

Avavess' face was twisted in fear and desperation, her eyes filled with silent pleas that bore into Gordonn, seeming to root him to the floor. In those few passing seconds, a cocktail of emotions stirred themselves in Gordonn's gut. With such a storm brewing inside of him, Gordonn was surprised he managed to grab his tattered blanket from his mattress and leave the house without hesitating.

That night, as the fumes from the animals threatened to choke him, Gordonn lie awake in the barn's loft and listened. He expected to hear yelling, perhaps screaming, anything that would give him a gauge on how many flowers he would need to pick in the morning to give to his mother to heal her

heart.

For two hours he laid awake listening, and for two hours nothing came but silence and the song of cicadas. Gordonn didn't get any sleep that night, for that silence was deafening, and told him more than he should have ever known.

As the rays of the morning sun leaked through the barn's walls, Gordonn's father was already gone, leaving behind the same boot marks and the same empty stew pot. However, Gordonn was not so easily deceived.

He recognized the look in his mother's eyes, it was the same look he had seen in a girl in their village. Rumors had circled that her parents had passed and she was taken into the custody of her aunt and uncle. After a few weeks, the girl stopped speaking, and her eyes bore the same hollow glaze that his mother wore sitting across from him. Gordonn wondered how that light that took so long to build in his mother could be snuffed out before the moon even crossed the sky.

Three weeks after that night, his mother fell ill. Though he worried about her health, she seemed to be overjoyed. His father had returned prior to this discovery, but his behavior was just as before. Quite and cold.

On a peaceful night alike countless others, the small fireplace was casting the dancing shadows of his parents on the walls. Dark and twisted as the shadows were, nothing compared to what was forming them.

"Patrik, pleaseGordonn had forced himself to look upon his father hovering over his cowering mother form for the last time. With the room cloaked in the fire's light, Gordonn grabbed the musket above the family fireplace and wielded it against his father's leather-clad back, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing could cover his ears well enough to muffle his mother's screams that night.

Something like that doesn't just change someone, it carves them into someone new. After many years of adjustment and prayers, Gordonn grew into a peaceful young man. Even though providing for his mother, and supervising his father's farm grew difficult, he did it with humility and grace.

Gordonn was a young man of few friends. Following the years after his father's death, only a handful of people were by his side: His mother, though she looked at him differently, she loved him all the same; His good friend, Gourdrick, whose company never failed to lift his spirits; And finally, Sir Leewae, a family friend who brought to life the passion that fuels Gordonn's every waking moment.

You see, Sir Leewae was one of the more elderly of their village, for years only known to the Roote family as such. However, as the family veins of the Roote's became poisoned with the same drink Leewae spent his like perfecting, Gordonn had become to know him as a path to a new life.

There had been a day where Sir Leewae was working peacefully in his property's winery, inspecting the shipment of grapes he had received from the city that afternoon. As he was rolling a plump grape between his forefinger and thumb, the familiar sound of knocking on his door rang through the stone walls. Popping the grape into his mouth, he strutted over and pulled the door open, coming face to face with a young man he had never recalled having invited over, or meeting, for that matter.

Quickly finishing with the grape in his mouth, taking note that this shipment was slightly sweeter than last, he spoke. "May I help you, young man?"

His breath carried hints of grape and tobacco, no doubt from a pipe Gordonn thought before he chimed up cautiously,

"I was wondering if there was a way to, perhaps, make a wine without any alcohol."

At the boy's question, Leewae raised a curious eyebrow, looking the boy up and down.

"I believe you're referring to grape juice, my boy" the man smiled, attempting to not sound as condescending as he usually would with such a suggestion.

For a moment, Gordonn considered simply apologizing and walking away, figuring his embarrassing visit would soon be forgotten. The pungent smell of wine flooded from inside the stone building and filled his senses, causing Gordonn to shift uncomfortably in his clothes. Whatever made people enjoy the bitter aroma was lost on him.