A Prairie Tale
Recently, RobbieRobTown made a grant application to the Canadian Government for new works featuring “Stories of our Heritage”. Rob felt that he should be able to include elements of his favourite themes in a historical context. He was incorrect in that regard. The grant application was rejected summarily.
A Prairie Tale
Cornelia Perseverance Downing threw the door of the outhouse wide, and looked out across a wild and ceaseless prairie. The young barley was just now high enough to be tousled by the same late spring winds which tugged at Cornelia’s skirts. She hastened to readjust her Victorian garb. Green and naked, the barley wore no skirts, and would have laughed at Cornelia’s fussing, had it the voice to do so. “Ha!”, the barley would have said. “Haha to your manifold skirts!”
Cornelia looked at the chicken coop. It had been six long winters since its construction. It needed a proper white-washing this spring, and some portions of the rough hewn walls had to be replaced. She gave the briefest flicker of consideration for the effort involved in rounding up the chickens and keeping them out of the way while she repaired and painted the coop, but that was a matter for another time.
Still feeling fresh and light from a vigorous spring poop, Cornelia bounded down from the outhouse platform and strode confidently towards the stable. She was headed in to town to pick up her supplies. The mighty trans-Canadian railway had only recently been completed, and the station nearest her should have received her summer order by now. It was still nearly 2 days journey to the station by horse, and there would be no assurance of lodging between her own land and the tracks to the north. It was a lucky thing she had both the temerity for such a venture, and the regularity to have a really tremendous poop before departing.
A loyal servant of the Queen, Cornelia knew her lands served a dual purpose. Firstly, and obviously, her barley and her eggs would help to feed Her Majesties great Empire- At least, the eggs of her chickens would. While fertile, her own eggs would feed no man. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, by settling south of the railroad tracks, she was a kind of watchman, ever vigilant of the expansionist machinations of her American neighbours. She wondered if she would ever learn to approve of the Americans. It seemed only Christian to forgive their traitorous and irrational concerns about taxation-, but that was all over a century ago by now. Nonetheless, the mutterings from the border were filled with suggestion that lands in southern Canada were ripe for the taking. Or the picking. They were ripe, and stealable. Like a pie on a windowsill. Except pies don’t ripen. The lands, by the way, were the ripe things. Lands don’t ripen per se either, but they can be stolen. Well, they can be occupied. Anyway…
She snugged-up the harness on her horse, climbed into the wagon, and headed gradually north. She cast a wistful glance back at her simple homestead, the coop, the stables, her unadorned home. It troubled her to leave, not as much from fear for security, but more from pride. Her farm was a continuing source of pride for her, and she always felt she represented herself best to others when she could be standing on the land she worked. What she could not always find the words for could speak for itself on her homestead. She knew it was wrong to be prideful, but she permitted herself this one sin. For a woman to do the work she had done, in the name of God and Country, was a noble thing and worthy of what little praise she would ever receive. Little else brought her as much pride, in fact only one thing did- her stunning digestive regularity. She was a woman that could take a clockwork nine o’clock dump. Though her pocket watch was spring wound, she could set it by the arrival of the Express Steamer every morning. Without fail, the mighty engine of the Big Brown emerged from the mountain tunnel and dropped off its majestic load at Dump Station. No robber could hold up that train, and incidentally no pirate would ever sail upstream. Her pantloads were the rhythm of the heartbeat of the commonwealth. She was regular.
She rode onwards across the fields, some fallow, some lush and verdant. All around, the tenuous blooms of spring had begun to give way to the presumptuous growths of summer. She noted the canvas cover for her wagon had developed a tear, and that the wind was toying at a strip of loose fabric. She would have to fix that when she made camp tonight.
She found a spindly tree atop a small rise, and made her camp there for the night. Just down the hill, if you could call it a hill, a stream ran slowly and lazily on its course to the Hudson bay- Or perhaps The Mississippi, from the way it meandered around the plains it could be anyone’s guess as to its eventual destination. From distant headwaters, it flowed effortlessly towards some yet distant mouth, spilling silt into some vast delta, depositing a beach. Cornelia smiled to herself, as she saw her own body as metaphor for the land she lived on. Just like this stream, Cornelia would take the gifts of nature into herself, break them down through slow erosion, and spread her life-giving soil into the arms of nature, every morning at 8:55.
Cornelia set her horse to graze, and laid down for the night atop a rough woolen blanket. The cloudless sky transitioned from blue into a bruised purple. Every star could be seen, unobstructed by any city light, and each one glistened like a kernel of corn in a vast cosmic poo smeared across the public park washroom of infinity. Soon enough, she drifted into a blissful sleep.
*******
The dawn was pink, and breakfast was cold. Cornelia hastily swallowed two handfuls of oat bran buds, knowing that if she didn’t make good time today, the Brown Steamer would derail and leave heavy skid marks. Her horse pooped without concern, letting tendrils of steam rise into the cool morning air, tickling the sky.
Gertrude, Cornelia’s noble horse tamped the ground with one of her front hooves, sending a thud of vibration through the ground that reverberated into Cornelia’s bowels. The time had come. The inevitable Poop Harvest would come early this year, and the short grass prairie offered no solitude, no delicateness, or decorum.
Cornelia walked a short way from her camp, and found a sufficient clump of grass. Squatting, she honoured the commonwealth with a reeking poop salute. When she finished, entwined in the still-rosy fingers of dawn, she faced the Eastward rising sun, and sang “God save the Queen”. A single tear tracked down her cheek. There was beauty in this land. Every turd in the path of progress was one that would someday cling to the shoe of of a great nation. Someday, somewhere, on this very same stretch of boundless prairie, someone would smell the metaphorical dung on their workboot, and smile.
