• Peigra's Blog:

Fields Of Gold, Pt 3

By: Peigra

"...I'm sorry if that's unsatisfactory, but it's the policy of our company to keep within the stated guidelines of the contract that you signed. It's not within our guidelines nor within our power to keep the market's ups and downs in your favor as far as investments..."

Margaret paused, listening to the client and Garrison, via speaker phone, and frowning despite the earliness of the day and all that needed to be done.

It wasn't the firm's fault that the market had taken a dive the day before due to projected earnings being less than forecast, and Margaret herself had seen overnight successes and afternoon bankruptcies, but the market was unpredictable. You hoped it would go up, forecast that it would go up, and made the best of a mess when it went down.

For some reason, though, Margaret had no desire to speak to her client, a newer one who was just learning that the market required firm backing and that the days of J.P. Morgan were gone. If he had invested his savings, that had been his concern. A portfolio had been made up before his initial investiture, and from Garrison's early morning call before the man made it to his office, he had invested quite a bit more than originally stated.

Heads were going to roll, and Margaret knew Garrison would settle the matter on that end, but Margaret, as the head of the firm, had the final say in the whole matter of settling this affair.

Right now, she had one thing on her mind, and it was hardly finance, nor the stock market, nor the whine of tape machines or e-mail "dings" or the roar of planes overhead.
Margaret Brookstone was half-listening to the conversation, to the pleas of a young man who had not informed his young family that they were probably going to lose their house and two vehicles, as well as a property they had purchased in upstate. For him, she had little sympathy. She had seen many like him in the past, and would see many more in the future. This always happened during a down-swing of the market. She liked to think, as her father had, that it weeded out those who couldn't handle it.

Margaret was staring outside the window, beyond the whine of the hard drives and the monitors, to the gray day beyond the pitted glass, to the storm growing outside that was beckoning to her in nameless abandon.

Garrison was raising a point, and she heard the shuffling of paper, and looked down to the computer monitor and saw the e-mail from Garrison's secretary, who was listening in from the other room. Margaret's reply was terse, and for the first time in quite a long time, the burden of being the Senior Partner and CEO wasn't something she was looking forward to wearing.

The man's voice was whining, as if the firm itself had done something personally to affont he and his investment, and Garrison droned on. Margaret yawned politely into her hand, making little sound, and heard the first rumble of thunder in the distance.

A quick tapping of keys onto the keyboard, and she cleared her throat into the speaker phone. "I'm presently under a thunderstorm again. Garrison is going to make a final judgement for me in this matter, Mister Clayton, and I'm standing behind his judgement, and due to the storm overhead I'm going to end my part in this matter."

A sputter, a silent moment she knew, even at the distance, where the client was gathering his rage. And she also felt Garrison's astonishment, via his secretary, with yet another e-mail.

"I can't risk shorting out another breaker due to a storm, nor am I doing to purchase yet another computer due to my own business needs. When the storm has passed, I'll get in touch with both of you."

Margaret hung up on them, effectively taking a deep breath, and wondering why she was so tired.

Well, perhaps it could be the lack of sleep...or was it? The dammed rooster that continued to find its usual spot beneath her window was going to end up in a pot if she had anything to say about it. And the hens were scratching every last little bug out of existence. She'd seen one go after a mosquito the night before, and had resolved, if nothing else, to perhaps see what Emily had found so fascinating about this place she had lived and died upon.
Her conversation with Garrison ended, Margaret got up and stretched, popping muscles, bone, and tendons in a deep curve towards the ceiling and shaking out her hair. She knew she should have had it up, but something said today, no one would care.

One of the realtors had called, expressing concern about her last message, saying that he had no control over the condition of the local markets regarding property and current sales trends. Something about his voice that morning reminded her of the client...and she frowned at that.

Perhaps she wasn't getting enough sleep. Maybe there would be a way to shut the rooster in somewhere for one night and see if she couldn't catch up on lost sleep...but something said that that wasn't the answer.

She looked to the kitchen, frowning, and made herself a cup of coffee, Margaret-style, and stared at the table with its many finely carved chairs. The table made her smile, for a reason she couldn't explain, and she took her cup of coffee out onto the porch, to the swing, and sat to watch the coming storm.

They fascinated her, colors unimaginable and vivid, a one-time view into a spectacle she could only treasure within her mind again and again, and share with no one save who might have seen something similar.

She tucked her legs beneath her, settling on one of the worn cushions, and let the swing lightly move her as she sipped her coffee. She was tired, still, even after nearly five days of vacation, tired of...tired...was she tired? And what was she tired of? The question came suddenly to her, and she looked down into the murky brew of wet bean grounds for her answer that was not forthcoming.

"Daisy," she whispered suddenly, looking out towards the fence near the barn, to the horses who had been the earlier looking for food, as Allen hadn't come out to feed them yet.

Something, probably more dust, brought tears to her eyes as she smiled, sitting back and cradling her coffee mug like a doll. Daisy, the mare that had been down the road, against the housing ordinance, for years, and had enticed a small child with her liquid eyes and her soft nose and yearning for carrots, or grass out of reach of her long neck.

Margaret wiped a tear from her eye, smiling out at the fence where no horses stood now. She'd not thought of Daisy in so long...the beautiful mare that had been her companion for...two? Three years? Before a late-night accident with an out-of-control drunk driver had ended her life quickly and mercifully. Daisy who had been a sprinter, a jumper, and, above all, had known that the little girl who came at precisely four every afternoon came just for her.

It hadn't been her sisters after all...and she was more mentally concerned that she had forgotten Daisy, forgotten that she herself had been the one who had been horse crazy, before her father had seen her interest in business and had begun nudging her towards her future with the company.

Proud Daisy, who taught her lessons in love and gave her the courage to overcome heights, for a time, but only for that brief time in her life.

She sipped her coffee again, speechless, staring at the pastures and shaking her head. To have forgotten Daisy...

Something moved before her, and she looked down to see a creamy white and buff, with hints of gray, chicken, eyeing her toe and bwucking softly, one eye cast up to look at her critically. Margaret chuckled and waggled her fingers at it. "Go on, go be a chicken somewhere else."

The chicken looked at her again, and then startled her by jumping up onto the porch rocker and settling down at Margaret's feet.

Astonishment, and fear, brought her legs in closer, and she stared at the chicken who seemed perfectly content to sit beside this city woman. It was all that Margaret could do to not move. So she quietly sipped her coffee, ignoring the chicken, and staring out at the field again, rearranging herself in the porch swing and frowning at the damp cushion.

The chicken gave her a dark look, gave one last bwuck, and leapt down in search of something to eat, leaving in her wake a shining, green egg.

Margaret stared down at the thing, not quite certain if she was seeing what she was seeing, and reaching for it with tenative fingers. This was not real, a green egg? What was that book she remembered about eggs and meat? Something in rhyme...something about creatures dancing, furry things...

The egg was warm on her palm, and smoother than she had imagined, a strange touch against her fingers as the traced it with a smile on her face. Finishing her coffee, she set the mug down and heard a small crunching noise, and sat up, frowning and looking beneath her to the eggshells now plastered to her jeans and the cushion.

Margaret looked down, to the stain on the cushions, a deep rich golden-orange puddle of goo, eggshells smeared against its gray-pink surface and to the wet stain on her jeans she'd believed had been a wet cushion...staring down at the unbroken egg in her hand.

And she laughed.

The whole absurdity of the situation hit her, and she tossed back her head, hair bouncing around her head, and laughed.

It was a strange thing for her to do, she of the black suits and the coiffed hair and heels that made her legs ache and endless piles of cyber-paperwork and reports and cell phones and e-mail and weekly meetings and rushing from one phone to the other for insider hints and off to endless other meetings and flights overseas and dinners with people who she would never see again and didn't care the least of and endless engagements with men who bored her...

Margaret Brookstone, for the first time in many, many years, was laughing without being forced to make a facial statement or a sound for the courtesy of those around her.

She laughed until she could barely keep herself from dropping the unbroken egg, then set it down on the cushion again and laughed some more. And in the process she knocked over her coffee cup and it rolled along the porch, bringing more laughter from her. Though why that was funny, if pressed, she couldn't have expressed in any language other than more laughter...

She was laughing, and it hurt.

Standing on Emily's porch, watching the thunderheads gathering again in surly greens and dismal grays and silvers, and she, literally, had egg on her.

It was all too much for her sense of righteous upbringing and stuffiness that she was laughing, laughing so hard that her lungs were starved for simple air capacity and she felt her knees give out beneath her and tumbled down, her mug travelling one distance, herself the other with a riot of hair, clothing and more laughter. Brian had done this to her, she remembered, tickling her senseless until she couldn't hold anything in her stomach...

Brian...and Daisy...

Margaret stopped laughing, wiping her eyes with a delighted, shaking hand and smirking. Beloved Daisy, the chestnut mare who had been lonely in the pasture down the street, whose owners had allowed an eight year old little girl three years of unabashed glory and mystical fantasies.

Daisy had become a unicorn, a pegasus one afternoon, hadn't she even been a sturdy war horse with a blanket tied around her wide neck? The grown-up Margaret stared at the barn, seeing something less than wood frame and red paint, watching a young girl taking her first jumping lesson with her eyes closed and all the trust in the world on the horse beneath her.

Daisy had been in her decline then, but Maggie with her tightly cropped hair and her riding pants hadn't cared a wit. Four-H programs she had discovered, Daisy's penchant for blowing into her hair when she wasn't looking or leaving molasses kisses on her shirt shoulders. She particularly remembered her mother's shriek at the first time she'd seen one in the laundry pile.

Maggie's beloved Daisy, with a tail that never ceased to come loose of its plaits and a mane that looked finer on a "bad" day than Maggie's had ever been with hair spray and mousse.

The three years of competition, the first year's losses, and then the second and third year's winnings. She remembered the deep cobalt of the ribbons, shining against her dark jacket and so slippery on her fingers, she'd dropped it the first time. Daisy whuffing in her hair, seeing the ribbon and giving a nicker of satisfaction, and her father standing...

Brian?

No, her father...

Margaret's eyes were watery from the laughter, caught with an insane need to wet themselves from her actions, but were seized suddenly by something she could not explain...and felt a need to justify the cause. The first successful showing and riding competition she and Daisy had attended, she had placed fifth out of twenty-five. The second year she had come in first, having spent hours honing skills and doing tricks of her own to improve her own riding. She had been so proud of Daisy, and had given her carrots till she got ill from them.

The photographer had wanted their photos, Daisy's shining, soft eyes and Maggie's upright stance filled with pride and more joy than the world could hold in one little body. Everything was bright and glowing around her, and to show the pride of sportsmanship, the photographer wanted a photo of Maggie, Daisy, and Maggie's father, for weren't little girls the pride of every father's eye?

Daisy had whuffed, impatient from the glare of the lights, but stood still with another carrot, and Maggie with her ribbons and her hat coating her sweaty hair and her cheekbones hurting from smiling and laughing so hard the whole afternoon. Someone...had it been Brian, Brian the pest? Someone had gone to fetch her father from the phone, where he was gathering quotes from the brokerage, calling him that his daughter was requesting him for a photo.

The photo...Margaret wondered where it was now.

Daisy, her tail swinging and her eyes focused on the carrot behind the photographer, beaming to be in the light of glory once again. And Maggie, holding the reins with ease, the ribbon at her knee and her face shining like the sun.

And Maggie's father, staring at the camera...no, at the photographer, demanding he hurry and take the photo, that he had a phone call to attend to. Why did he have to stand so close to the beast? No, he didn't want to hold his daughter's hand, she was dirty.

Margaret remembered Brian...pest Brian, Brian the pain in the neck, Brian, who had stood there with tears in his eyes, and volunteered to stand in his father's stead with Daisy and Maggie, but the photographer had refused.

The photo was still somewhere, she assumed, though probably long discarded. Her mother never kept things if they upset her father, or weren't of a business nature. There was no need to.

She remembered staring at it when it had come in from the photographer's studio...Daisy and Maggie beaming, and her father waving at the photographer to hurry and take the photo. He hadn't asked for a second shot, and had stormed off out of the sawdust instantaneously with the flash.

Brian had offered to stand for a second one, but her mother was already waving her towards the exit, away from Daisy.

The following year, Maggie and Daisy would triumph again.

The following year, there would be a photo of her in the winner's circle alone.

Margaret found herself staring at the barn, eyes focused on its deep shades of red and white once again, and wondered suddenly what had driven her to care for Daisy, to want to be on her back, to learn the stirrups and the hackamores and to want to jump on such a creature when she herself was more frightened of heights than a person should be.

Brian...they hadn't spoken in years, not since her father had taken her...taken her when? When had her father started showing her figures, training her up to be his successor?

When had...

But she knew

Grown-up Margaret knew...Daisy had been the key.

Daisy had been keeping her from her father's instructions, keeping her from his side when she should be learning figures and how the stocks went up and down and bulls and bears...not how to jump a hedge, how to adjust a belly band.

Eight...nine...ten...learning her times tables and fractions and how to figure out quarterly reports with long stretches of numbers and the percentages of growth and GNP and the different phones ringing from different informers in the pits.

Brian staring at her from beyond the photographer's camera, pitying her with his brotherly eyes and wanting to see her completely happy. Her father arguing with a man for a moment of his time, but having all the time in the world for Maggie that evening, when Daisy was ill from the carrots, to instruct her on what was happening with the stock market.

She had not spoken to Brian in many, many years. Brian who had married his high school sweetheart...what had been her name? The one he had taken to the senior prom, with the...had it been blue or silver? Margaret could not recall, something about the color that she had made a nasty comment on and they had argued, and she, two years into high school herself, had seen to it that they never spoke again because of it.

Brian had a wife, a house he could barely afford, children...Margaret did not recall how many her eldest brother had. Only that an argument many, many years before had destroyed their sibling relationship, had severed all ties that Brian might have tried to reconstruct with his caring wife's assistance. Margaret only remembered that it had been the nite of the senior prom, and that it had been over her father's doting on her, and her increasing actions in the family business.

She had been there one afternoon when Brian had come to ask his parents for the down payment loan for his first house, with his lovely wife sitting there beside him, and he scowling at Margaret's mere presence. But she, not her father, had the figures of ARM loans and had done the wrangling of estimated profits and loan times. Margaret wondered, and could neither recall nor remember off hand, why her father had specifically instructed her to look up house mortgages for 30-year loans at the percentage of the time.

Her mother had wanted to give Brian and his young wife the money, being a gentle woman who knew her place by her husband's side, a shining fluff of coiffed hair and floral perfume with more social appointments than she could keep track of, and had a maid to handle such things.

Her father had been sitting to her right, listening to Brian's statements, and then had looked to Margaret and handed the matter into her lap...Margaret now wondered if he had been adding to the animosity. She only remembered the look of raw hate on her brother's face when she had pulled out the file on loan rates and had calmly insisted it could not be done with the current salary that Brian and his wife were taking in.

Margaret Brookstone stared at the barn once again, remembering the day the family down the road had moved out, Daisy being gone many, many months at that point, the fences repaired, and a new family moving in. The pasture itself had also sold, becoming two luxury homes within a year's time, leaving no trace of the gentle horse who had come into a young girl's life for three magickal years.

Emmie was staring at her, from over the fence, calmly.
Horse and human looked to one another, and Margaret stood slowly, wondering when her legs had become so unsteady as to not carry her. To the west, she would learn later there were tornado warnings already in effect, and hail coming down fiercely.

As one motion, the goats came bleating to the fence, eyeing this strange woman in her tailored pants and her bright shirt who looked the empress coming to visit the building of a dam. They watched her with curious, open eyes, wondering if she might toss them something extra this morning for their troubles.

Black as the night skies that claimed her after sunset, Emmie's huge hooves pawed at the dry soil, the foal prancing around her feet, skittering this way and that and frightening the goats. The kids were playing with the foal, and some of the goats themselves, seeing Emmie's little one as a new toy for their exclusive enjoyment.

Emmie's head was immense, a grand head, well-formed with gentle lines and liquid eyes that regarded Margaret cautiously. A well-timed snort spattered Margaret, and she took a step back, and surprised Emmie by snorting back at her, though not as wetly as the horse had accomplished.
The great head reached over the fence, and wide nostrils beckoned.

Margaret's action was instinctive, from the days of Daisy and Maggie and their invisible adventures riding beside Robin Hood and outwitting the Sheriff of Nottingham once again.

Human fingers touched the horse's nose, a moment there were no words for, and Margaret touched the soft muzzle with a dainty finger. She was less grizzled than Daisy had been, her hairs plucked for the show-ring, and her mane clipped smartly, her tail bobbed and short, barely a fly-swatter.



Allen expected to find her in the house, driving quickly, as a twister had been sighted in the next county, and he had finally taken a tally of the losses to his family's properties. Thankfully, the barns could be replaced, but the equipment was a total loss, and the banks would be circling. He feared for his brother and his family, for they were already having financial troubles and didn't need any more woes.

Allen's beat up truck made more noise than it was worth, but it was reliable and sound and could out-drive a twister, though he wouldn't admit to anyone that he'd soiled his pants in doing so several summers ago. But Emily's house was empty, despite him going to the screen door at the kitchen. He smelled coffee, that toxic brew Emily's niece called coffee, anyway. Where was she? The computers were silent, for once, and she wasn't to be found...

The open door, out from the living room to the barn, was open.

Allen stood there, closing it behind him slowly, caught in a moment he felt jealous of witnessing.

Margaret, holding Emmie's head and stroking it lightly, on top of the railing, trying to get the foal to come to her as it pranced in and out of the goat herd.

It was wrong to take the steps down from the porch, and wrong to approach her, but she had to be warned. Twisters weren't anything to be taken lightly, even if she seemed to love them, wretched woman.

But Emmie's head was nearly on her shoulder now, and Margaret was doing something, was she crying? Allen didn't know, standing there in the drive watching the pair, horse and woman, one dwarfed and the other overpowering.

How long they stood, one watching in silence, the other wondering how she had come to be such a thing, was not to be known.

It was Allen who noticed the silence before Emmie suddenly raised her head and gave a startled whuff, turning suddenly and racing out into the pasture, her foal barely able to keep up with her. The goats were also racing off from the fence and the barn, startling Margaret who barely kept her balance on the fence and looked around her, seeing Allen for the first time.

He moved faster than she did, hauling her down from the fence and to the shelter before she could realize that the hair on her neck was standing up, that the noise that was piercing the silence was not from her own insanity of being seen deep in memories and tears. The anger at having been clutched by the hand and taken from the fence and hauled towards the house once again...Margaret barely had a moment to think of anything at all, save that Allen was shrieking above the wind now, yelling for her to stay low and to hold onto his hand.

The shelter was to the western side of the house also, in the hopes that if the house was taken down, the winds would blow most of the debris east and away from the door. Allen gripped the door and tossed it back, unmindful of the old hinges, and looked behind him, as Margaret did.

It was such a beautiful thing, a sinuous, watery thing of mist and darkness and an unholy light that fascinated Margaret so that she could not move. Allen had seen them before, and knew them, and watched it in the outer pasture, and knew there was nothing to be done but seek shelter and hope for the best. Nor was there any way he could warn his parents, in the next pasture, of the coming doom.

"Get in!"

Margaret turned to him, dumb with awe, and pointed to the tornado with a shaking hand. Couldn't he see it was a beautiful thing, dancing along the fields of gold with a child's touch of fancy? Allen saw its destruction, watching it eat up the precious harvest that was six months from harvest, and the profits going with it. It was going to be another lean year, but hopefully Emily's insurance would eat up the losses. And then he remembered that his parents had forgotten their last two payments, because the money hadn't been there to make them.

Allen pulled Margaret down into the shelter, tearing at the door to close it, and fumbling with familiarity. The old lantern where Emily had stored it, and the matches, he hoped...found! The long fireplace matches that she had kept there, and he lit the lantern and set it on the wall, the few cans of vegetables at their feet as the wind howled, mocking them for being human and unable to stand against its fury.

The light flickered on their faces, Allen's worried, pale and troubled in the wake of something he could neither defend himself against nor hope to profit from. And Margaret, on her knees again at his feet, somehow, listening to the deafening noise pick up volume, little things now bouncing off the door like a child throwing stones at a glass window to test its strength.

Allen sat down unconsciously, and held her, the roar hurting his ears, and Margaret welcomed his arms around her, wanting to see the thing above her for its beauty, the beauty of something she could not control with numbers or cellular phones or computer modems. Something that came and went as it pleased without care for whom it touched of whence it went or what it destroyed.

They held one another for a very long time, until a roar overhead brought a cry from Margaret's mouth, and Allen said nothing. Something was gone, and he could only pray they would be alive to discover what was gone....