First appeared in the award-winning anthology Fault Zone: Detachment.

The Stone

By the time Beryl returned to the house in the early afternoon, the skies had left the ground with another layer of snow. When she opened the door, she found Michael lying on the kitchen floor, his body still and cold. Her world stopped. She could not move.

“Angina,” the doctor had called it. She had pried that piece of news out of her husband one morning three months earlier seeing him double over in pain out by the barn. It wasn’t his first episode. Turned out he had been seeing the doc without telling her. “Oh, it’s nothing, Beryl. I didn’t want to worry you none.”

Winter had come early that year. With harvest concluded, he plowed his fields and laid down next year’s seed, now dormant in the frozen ground until its time in the spring. A prairie farmer’s life is never dormant. This year the harvester needed cleaning, the fence out on the north forty had to be mended, and the barn roof required patching. And of course, there was the livestock with the usual calving. “What’s a farmer to do?” he had said. “The work has to be done.” Michael had persevered. He was stubborn like that. All these farmers are like that! Now he was gone.  

Then Beryl sat at the kitchen table for nearly an hour, staring at her fallen husband’s body.

When she was able to move at last, a flood of events took up her life: the coroner, the pastor, their children in the city, the obituary, arrangements for the memorial service, prairie women offering help and sympathy, and at the culmination of it all, the service and cemetery.

Now everyone was gathered at the house she and Michael had shared.

Beryl quietly opened the bedroom door holding the picture of Michael she had neglected to set on the dining room table, where prairie folk congregated for the wake. Michael had been much beloved. There wasn’t enough room for everyone. Some even stood in the snow outside.

But whispers down the hallway stopped Beryl before she’d opened the door all the way.

“She’s always been a harsh one, hasn’t she?”

“Cold-hearted, I’d say.”

She stepped into the hallway and smiled to let them know she had heard. She felt a little pleasure at their reddened faces.

“Oh, you must be so grief-stricken, Beryl,” came the quick recovery.

At my husband’s very own wake, Beryl remarked to herself, calmly showing them Michael’s picture.

“Such a fine-looking man.”

“We’ll all miss him. The dearest soul.”

Yes, everyone loves Michael. She nodded and walked to the dining room.

It began suddenly, as a sensation in the back of her neck and a feeling she could not dismiss. By the time she had placed his photograph on the dining room table next to the food set out for the guests, she knew for certain. Something within her, tightened by years of habit, strength of will, and boredom loosened just a little. She felt no longer in her body, detached. She saw herself as if from a space a little above in this room of strangers. Yes, that’s who these people are to me — strangers in my own house. She had known most of them all her life, these familiar strangers, dressed in black and wearing long faces. Who are they, really?

Just as suddenly, her usual presence returned. There’s no time for these shenanigans, she admonished herself. She stiffened her back and inhaled deeply. None of this must touch you. Keep it usual, Beryl. Be strong.

But nothing was usual. Genuine grief for Michael affected everyone. Even some of the men seemed teary-eyed.

“Beryl, you are so strong. How're you able to hold up?” the one with the plain face asked.

“Oh, I’m just putting one foot in front of the other, Myrtle.”

Give them what they need. Keep yourself to yourself.

Myrtle looked at her a bit oddly, she thought, and Beryl felt unusually self-conscious. I won’t allow myself the emotion of it. Michael would have felt the emotion. But that was Michael.

For a moment Beryl felt a bit envious of him. Of all of them. She shook it off.

People won’t mourn me in the same way when I go, I know that. All this emotion just leaves a person weak-kneed.

She straightened her back again to hold her head high. Always stand a bit aloof, she reminded herself. Not enough to be unliked, just enough to let them know you’re stronger. You have a certain stature, after all.

Command respect, her father taught her. Beryl had grown up watching him with admiration.

Hat in hand, one of the farmers approached her, his face flushed with worry about the right words to say. “Yer as tough as a rock, Beryl. Tough as they come. That’ll see you through this difficult time, sure. Anythin’ you need…”

She nodded, smiled, thanked him, and moved away. Never settle in one place among them. Always do the right thing. Don’t let them see too much.

She returned to her bedroom to fetch a sweater for a guest, then to the kitchen to put on another pot of coffee. She paused a moment to look out the kitchen window where her grandchildren and some of the prairie kids were working up a sweat from throwing snowballs. She heated water on the stove, then called them in for cocoa. As they noisily sipped at the kitchen table, Beryl stood alone at the window again, looking out over the acreage that spread white to the horizon. There stood the snow-covered granite stone Michael loved. In the living room, her son and daughter caught up with old friends they hadn’t seen for years. She gazed at the snow covering the seed Michael had sowed.

Maybe some of these people here loved him more than I did myself. I was loyal, though. Never strayed. I was grateful for what he did for me. And I showed it. Never asked anything of him. Didn’t have to, did I? He just always loved me. That was his nature. Can’t say I loved Mike the same way he loved me, though, not as a girl might love her man. But I did all the things a wife should. After all, he was just an ordinary farmer — the best on the prairie, but all these farmers are plain folk.

Her father had always said, “Beryl, there’s something special awaiting you.”

It was the city awaiting me. Knew it from the start.

✦

A few days later, the quiet of solitude lay over the house, disrupted only by the creaks as Beryl crossed the worn oak floor. That morning, she had met the attorney to settle affairs. “Michael prepared for the worst and left you in good shape,” he assured her. “It won’t be hard to find someone to do the farming. You’ll have enough to get by.”

After lunch, she stood again at the kitchen window, staring at the large granite stone in the distance. Michael’s rock, the one he took her and the children to on every harvest moon. An emptiness lay between her and everything. An expectation of something to be done. But what?

Michael’s rock will be my permanent reminder of him. That old rock has seen a lot of things.

The memories came. Thought I’d be whisked off to the city — to adventure, romance, and passion. Quite the dreamer I was back then, I was.

She had thought Michael was nice and a good-looking fellow. He was bent on farming like the others. But Dagmar had promised he’d take her away.

I knew Dag wouldn’t make a suitable husband, but he’d get me out of here. ‘Course, he skipped town once I told him I was pregnant. It’s a sin to kill an unborn child, the preacher said. Then Michael showed up at my doorstep. She wasn’t going to let him in at first. She was too embarrassed to see anyone on account of the way she’d started to look. That was mostly in her head. Mother said I wasn’t showing much at all yet. But there he stood in the doorway with that worshipful look in his eye. So she invited him in, bid him sit, and fetched him a cup. Something — Beryl never knew what — made him know she was carrying.

“I’ll marry you if you’ll have me,” Michael offered simply. “I love you, Beryl. I’ll give you a good life. I promise.”

At first, Beryl thought he was making a joke. It made her angry. Then she came to her senses. He was throwing me a lifeline. I wasn’t going to get off the prairie that easily, was I? I’d have to figure out that part later. She dealt with the situation and married him. What else could she do?

Only afterward did she come to appreciate Mike. When the harvest was good, he bought her things she wanted. She was comfortable. She’d wanted a life of passion and excitement. When it didn’t happen, she’d had to muscle her way through. Life on the farm filled her with a kind of drowsiness. It was busy, and the kids came, and she lived there with them in a kind of sleep world. Acceptance set in. A girl’s expectations can get her into trouble. She held everything inside the way her father taught. People won’t understand. Make sure you don’t show how anything affects you. Never let people get too close.

The stone lay mute in the distance and beyond it the eastern horizon and the city — the unreachable, somewhere beyond the plain and the distant mountains separating her from a dream. Behind her, the sun was setting, the clouds above the stone and the distant hills billowing in orange, red, and pink with reflected light.

She’d meet tomorrow with George, who had offered to work the farm.

I’m free to go to the city now. I could find Dagmar. It wasn’t too late, now that his wife had died.

Beryl had seen Dag again at the summer picnic a few years back. How good he looked, handsome and tall, a grown man with his pretty wife and young kids. She saw how he looked at her, though. No mistaking what his eyes told me or that suggestion in something he’d said. What was it again? It made her think there’s a chance.

She eyed Michael’s rock again, and the sky’s azured deep.

Aw, they’re just old dreams. She looked down at the clean, empty sink. I settled for this. And this here is what I got.

She looked up again at the granite stone.

When Mike took her and the children there, when the harvest moon hung fat over the granite stone, he’d say, “We’re connected to this earth.” His carrying on like that was a little embarrassing, actually. “We give to the earth and it gives back. Just like we give to each other and receive what others have given to us. It’s our ancient connection.” That’s what he called it. Beryl never understood what he was going on about, really. He was an idealist, Mike was.

As she watched the changing colors, Beryl remembered her kids at the wake — all grown now with little ones of their own. Becca and Paul grieved, each in their own way. They had asked what they could do for her and offered to stay a while or to stay with them until she adjusted.

“No, I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

They were all gone now. Back to the city, to their houses and careers. They got away like I should’ve. None of us is connected at all, Mike.

✦

Beryl made it through winter and spring. Harvest arrived in early September. George had done a good job with the crop. Prices were low, but Beryl had poured over Michael’s books and learned how to track income and expenses.

Lying awake one warm night, she thought she heard something from across the field, from the west, the direction of her longing. She turned over. It’s just my imagination.

Sleep followed. In the morning she looked in the almanac. Tonight was the harvest moon. Well, I’ll be.

She busied herself that day with cleaning, humming to herself as she put the house in order. In the afternoon, she gathered a few pumpkins from her garden and hauled them to the fairgrounds.

The moon’s red face will stare at me tonight. She couldn’t get Michael’s ritual out of her head. The memory had a mind of its own, she conceded, and fought it no longer.

When she rose from the supper table to carry her dishes to the sink, she paused to look out the window. The sun behind her was nearly down.

The urge came on like something she had to do against her better sense.

It would take her several minutes to get out there. She sighed, grabbed a flashlight and jacket, and trudged toward Michael’s stone. There was a chill in the air.

Guess I’m doing this for him.

She felt the give of the soft, loosened earth under her feet.

Maybe there’s something more… No, no.

She sighed. No, Beryl, when you break it down, it’s just crop yields and margins, yields and margins, year in, year out.

The last pink of the sky faded into dark maroon. She turned on the flashlight.

As she reached the large granite, she noticed the usual few sprigs of wheat near the stone left uncut where the tractor couldn’t get near enough. She reached down, and, out of habit, pulled one up from the earth and brought it to the rock — the way Michael always had. Against all reason, Beryl climbed onto the rock’s flat surface and lay down, as he always had them do, to face the sky with a wheat sprig on their chests. She felt the stone, still warm from sunlight, on her back.

“This is the surrender,” he used to say. “We’re not in charge of this — any of it. Even this stone knows that.”

I never understood a word of what he was going on about.

Beryl fell asleep for a while.

When she woke, the stone was still warm. It filled her with a kind of reassurance. Above her spread the vast black loft of moon and stars, beneath which she and Michael and all the prairie, and even the city far away, were small. She felt a bigger kind of yearning enter her.

Maybe I’ll just lie here for a while. This might be as beautiful a sight as I might ever see.

A tear willed its way into one of her eyes, forcing her to squint to take in the grandeur that spread across an endless above. And for the first time, everything seemed different to Beryl, in a Michael kind of way.

© Tim Flood, 2025. All rights reserved.

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