God's Subsidies Contract [first draft]

God’s Subsidies Contract

Jesse Bentley woke from an unimaginable nightmare. This had been the third time in one week he had the same dream. God, had been trying to communicate with him for sometime now, but for Jesse, the message seemed bleak and horrifying. In the dream, God sat at a large wooden desk in an expensive man’s suit. Next to God stood Jesse’s grandson, David. Jesse’s perception of the room would deepen and his head would hurt when David and a briefcase became visible. As instructed by God, Jesse moved forward in the empty echoing room toward the one mahogany desk, a leather briefcase held by David, and a long fountain pen sitting in an empty cup. As Jesse approached, stepping ever gently on the loud hardwood floors, God would turn to his side and whisper something inaudible to Jesse’s grandson. In the dream, David was a grown man of twenty, with a square jaw and austere posture, carrying with dignity, a bright red tie. Eventually, Jesse made his way to the edge of the desk and stopped moving, looking only at David and never into the eyes of the Lord.
“Yes, my Lord. How can I fulfill my duty as your humble servant?”
God always coughed at this point in the dream. David interpreted each cough like a secret language. David would then turn to his grandfather and deliver God’s instructions.
“The Lord understands that you are having trouble with your farm.”
Jesse would then emphatically shake his head up and down to indicate his agreement, but always averting his eyes. God coughed again.
“The Lord knows that you wish to expand your agribusiness, and the Lord knows how.”
Jesse again shakes uncontrollably, but in this dream, he has no voice, and no ability to speak. It is here, always, that Jesse cries and falls to his knees, clasping his hands together, as he turns to his grandson David and begs for help.
“David, David. Please. Please tell the Lord that I will do anything. The farm must grow. How can I make this land produce an abundance only God can facilitate?”
The final scene—David tells Jesse to give his arm to God. Jesse proudly rolls up his sleeves to reveal the healthy blue veins rushing blood to all the corners of his earthly body. David keeps a stern face as he plunges the fountain pen into Jesse’s arm and extracts the vibrant red into the instrument. Jesse cries with enjoyment. Just before Jesse wakes up and is torn from the cold echoing room with a desk, he hears God speak a deafening and terrifying boom.
“SIGN HERE.”
On this day, March 8, 1929, Jesse Bentley abandoned his bed to splash the dry cracks in his face and stimulate his nerves. He washed and dressed and made his way down to see the blooming buds on his new strawberry crops. The buds had already begun bursting into plump red berries, dripping with dew and glistening with sunlight. Jesse touched the berries with his fingertips as his grandson looked down from the storage barn. David had just finished putting in windows, hoping to turn the attic of the barn into a fully functioning office in time for harvest. When Jesse saw his proud grandson staring down and out of those windows, Jesse felt a surge of gratitude sweep through his body, and he fell to his knees thanking God for all that had been given him. When Jesse wiped the tears from his eyes, he turned to get another look at his proud grandson, but David had turned his back.
The sound of a large truck could be heard coming up the dirt road to the Bentley farm. The truck was carrying a new pesticide that David had suggested they try. Jesse met the man near the new and improved storage barn.
“Sign here,” the man said.
Jesse smiled at the man.
“So, uh, God’s really smilin’ down on us now wouldn’ ya say?”
The man crewed a toothpick and poked at the packing slip with his pen.
“How’d ya figure?”
Jesse breathed the air deep into his lungs and grabbed the pen. He waved the pen about in the air and looked at his strawberries.
“Well, ma crops are bloomin’ early, my grandson’s got some new machines in that are doin’ the work of thirty or so…” Bentley stared at the man a second. “The air’s good an’ crisp. Yes sir, it’s a fine year to be a farmer.”
The man pointed again at the papers.
“Sir, sign please.”
Jesse took the pen and took his time signing the documents with the cursive he had meticulously practiced as a boy. The man stuck the pen behind his ear and closed the gate to his truck.
“You know sir, I’m sure if I can bring up the next shipment unless you start orderin’ a little more o’ this stuff.”
Jesse looked at the man, but couldn’t yet think of the question he wanted to ask.
“Well, it’s just that there’s that big factory farm between here Cleveland, and their orderin’ two and three trucks full of the stuff every week. The guy there tells me their usin’ airplanes to drop the stuff over the crops.”
Jesse looked to the sky for evidence.
“Well, can’t say I believe that. They prob’ly figured out a way to use it as a fertilizer and are stockin’ up so’s no one else can have any,” Jesse said.
The man got into his truck and leaned out of the window with his arm grasping the side of the truck.
“All’s I know sir is, if you aren’t pullin’ at least double what you are now, it ain’t gunna be worth my time to keep comin’ all the way out here just for two stinkin’ barrels.”
Jesse looked back at his strawberries as the truck drove away. They looked smaller. In the last two years, Jesse had prayed to God harder than he ever had before. When he first heard about the farm opening just outside of Cleveland he knew that it was too far away to compete with Bentley farms in Winesburg. The transport would cost too much to make them much profit. His prayer in the mornings grew to three times before lunch when he heard that the farm covered almost three miles of land. Jesse prayed a dozen times before dinner when he heard that larger warehouses made of corrugated metal housed enough food for the state of Ohio to eat for one year. ‘Impossible,’ he thought. “Tell me it isn’t true God.” He said this moving through the house as David brought more and more material through house and plots of land, all headed to the new additions of the old barn. “Tell me it isn’t true God, that you haven’t given the abundance you promised me to an undeserving heathen. Tell me God, does this man, this successful man serve you any better? How many times a day does he pray to you Lord? I will double it, triple it…I will do anything.”
In the coming years the Bentley farm had suffered hard losses—drought, tough competition from the farm up the road, and the worst economic collapse the country has ever seen. But the farm survived. The farm survived because David had planned for the worst. David insulated the barn to protect the harvested fruits and vegetables from bad weather. David had hired desperate men to work for pennies after the crash. David had purchased insurance and received enormous tax breaks because his grandfather had built a church on the farm when he was just a boy. The government helped too. The president of the United States had done a lot to keep the Bentleys and other small farmers from disappearing by providing some government money to get them through the tough times. As David became more and more involved in the operations of the family farm, Jesse grew a little sad at the distance the business had created between him and his grandson. Despite this isolation Jesse felt, he still prayed twenty times a day, thanking God for the abundance he had showered them with. The town had steady work on the farm for anyone struggling to get by, the farm continued growing, and Jesse could see his strawberries stretching into the distance nearly any month of the year.
As Jesse got older he spent less and less time near the new barn and more time in his humble little church at the edge of his property. There, Jesse grew a small garden of lettuce and tomatoes, basil and mint, corn and squash—just enough for a thanksgiving dinner. Now and again Jesse heard the trucks drive up the new paved road, each time the engines got louder and trucks got bigger. David stopped greeting the men at the trucks, but instead sent a young man to sign the packing slips. One day, the young man that signed the papers came to speak with Jesse.
“Sir, excuse me sir.”
Jesse looked up at the young man form his garden. He had been pulling off the leaves the bugs had been eating. He played with a ladybug that had crawled onto his gardening gloves.
“Well look at that,” Jesse said. “She’s crawling all the way up my arm. Can you believe that?”
Jesse smiled as the ladybug made her way up and down the old cracked farmer’s skin.
“Sir, I need to talk with you about this set-up you got goin’ here.”
Jesse looked up but the sun hit his eyes. He looked away and at the church.
“What do you need son? David’s the one you need to be talkin’ to, not me.”
The young man pointed to a blinding white piece of paper reflecting the sun’s rays. Jesse moved his eyes back around and saw a pen in the young man’s hand.
“What’d ya need son? My grandson’s the one that ___”
The young man handed Jesse Bentley a firm clipboard with a letter attached to it, embossed with a gold-leaf letterhead reading, Bentley’s Old Time Farms.
“The boss needs this plot sir. We’re expanding the treatment plant and the new drainage pipe needs to go through this plot to get to the river.”
Jesse looked at the young man and stood up. He had little breath in him, but he managed to get out one word, “David?”
The young man pointed once again at the golden letterhead with Jesse’s name on it.
“You can always move the garden and rebuild the church sir. Sign here.”