Dad drank all day. Slurred speech, threats of a beating. He wore stained clothes as if unwilling to wash them. Mom washed the neighbor’s clothes to earn food.
Truth is, never a beating, but Dad grew madder by the seasons.
Men of Lynken brew booze from potatoes and barley and hops and grains. Never fruit from a tree, but vines for grapes, great, berry from brambles, good stuff. Never a tree.
Dad turned our homestead into a stupid fruit farm filled with trees taking years to even bear fruit. Fruit saved us in long winters. Drying, storing in the cool darkness. Not brewing.
The family sunk deep into the depths of debt that would someday be passed to me. He haggled with every druid for a hundred miles to help him propagate fruit.
We had the trees and brambles and vines, but I had yet to taste a drop of alcohol from any of it.
And whatever dad was drinking likely came from a cheap grain.
“You doubt me, boy?” He asked, and I knew he meant me.
I couldn’t hide it. We would never pay off this debt. Ten lifetimes worth.
We had one tree old enough to bear fruit. Apples that fell off the tree before turning ripe. Apples hard to even eat, but we starved. Six months from when the last apples fell from the tree.
My dad mostly hid in his barn and kept it locked from us.
“You doubt me. My oldest son doubts me,” Dad said.
My mom stepped forward. “I doubt you.”
“Come with me, Juxta.”
“If you beat him,” Mom said. “I’ll slide a knife in your ribs in your sleep.”
Dad scowled. “Maybe it would be a blessing.”
“Don’t hurt him.”
He leaned down to me. “Besides the lean months where I haven’t provided, have I ever hurt you?”
“No, Dad.”
He touched me gently on the shoulder. “Come see what is in the barn.”
He opened the doors. The sun hadn’t set, and inside sat barrels and contraptions.
Dad held out a gallon mug to me. “Take it.”
I took it in both hands. He lifted a barrel up high and filled my mug. He spilled more on the ground than went into the vessel I held.
I smelled it. Liquor. I had always feared it because I had no real dad because of it. I took a sip. Fortune and glory and I finally saw the truth that my dad wasn’t mad, but brilliant.
“Drink it down, boy,” Dad said.
Glug glug glug, down it went. I stumbled away from the barn and fell.
For my life, I could not stand or move, but my mind floated between the abyss and the heaven of the one true god. The war god’s paradise of fallen soldiers showed me many things. A smart eight-year-old would have puked it up, but I wanted to embrace the heavens forever.
Soon darkness consumed me. Not sure if the setting of the sun or my senses drifting to nothingness.
Stars lived in the sky. I closed my eyes and drifted. I don’t know how long I was down.
The smell of smoke woke me. I still couldn’t move. The house blazed with fire reaching upwards. I drew strength from some god I would pay later.
I raced towards the house. The door barred. The flames singed my hair. I kicked the door, and it flew open but a wave of heat hit me and pushed me back. All consuming heat like every timber and rafter burned.
I pushed into the fire again, still with the borrowed strength of some god. I choked and hacked. My heart burned along with the fire around me. I had to have air.
I leaped for the door and fell to the ground outside. Fresh air was energy and rage, but the house collapsed in on itself.
I lay and wept.
Horses echoed in the distance, a few, then a hundred.
I stood at the front of the line tossing buckets at the base of the blaze. Buckets came too slow, or I didn’t throw them far enough. None questioned if I did the work of a man at eight years old. I fought for my life.
The lord came with wagons. I didn’t even know the lord’s name. Only a vassal, William sat on the throne.
The priest of the one true god stood next to him. Other men moved or surveyed. The barn survived with the still and barrels, and dad’s countless notes.
The lord called out my name. “Juxta!”
I approached the group of men. A debt on my head. At eight I knew enough to know I couldn’t work the farm on my own.
The lord kneeled in front of me. “You know the debts fall on you? You understand?”
“I know.”
“The men will take the livestock, and claim the land. You, Juxta, will spend your youth at the temple of the one true god. I can’t promise you what your fate will be. You will be fed, and survive. Is this acceptable to you?”
I shouldn’t have said it. I should have nodded like a good boy. “Is there another option?”
The priest snarled. “Of course, you have choices, a deep lake, a noose from a tree. I have said a prayer, and I believe you want to live.”
I nodded like a good boy.
Gruel and no meat and the priest never touched me in a private place. I had a strong right cross, so bullies gave me respect.