Leve Foreman was the son of a farmer. He had been raised on the farm since he was born, and farming was all that he knew. His father had fought in the Great War and came back to an even tougher battle. While he was away, his wife had perished during a bank robbery, perpetrated by herself and a local whino. After his father’s return to the states, he became an alcoholic and a womanizer. He often enlisted the services of prostitutes in order to pass the time. That is how Leve Foreman came to be.
          One sunny Saturday afternoon, Leve’s father heard a knock on the door. Already drunk from that morning, he headed angrily to the door, opened it, and saw nobody.
          “What the hell is goin’ on ‘round hea’?”
          He looked around to see what indeed was going on, only to see a cardboard box at his feet. He opened the box to see a sleeping baby boy, clad only in a blanket.
          It being autumn, there were many leaves falling from grace from innumerable trees so far up above. One fell on the young child’s forehead, urging him to cry uncontrollably. Thus began what was to be an early death, an early fall.

          Leve’s daily routine as a child was basically...well, routine. He woke up early, very early, and fed all of the animals. He fed the pigs, the chickens, the horses and the cows. When he was finished feeding the animals, he fed his father. His father’s breakfast consisted of a pint of whisky, three raw eggs and eight slabs of bacon. After that, Leve would go and plow the field until early afternoon. At this point, he would go and eat his lunch, which consisted of the same things his father’s did, except there was no whisky, the eggs were cooked, and the bacon was fed to the pigs.
          He never attended school. He learned what he knew from his father, so he didn’t learn very much. He spoke perfect bad English, was very fluent in drunken slurs and his vocabulary ranged from obscenity to incoherent babbles. His father was quite proud.
          When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Leve’s father was anxious for Leve to get out of the house and defend his country. In 1941, his dreams game true, and Leve was drafted. On Leve’s final day in United States, his father gave him a bottle of whisky and a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes.
          “These’ll keep ya busy on the boat, boy!! Kill one of them German boys for your pa!!!”
          “Yessir.”
          Leve gave the whisky and cigarettes to the other privates on the way to North Africa. He worried about who would feed his animals, including his father, every morning. When he arrived in North Africa, he immediately volunteered to man the artillery on the battleship. He was used to working for others, and cared not for himself. He guarded the ship valiantly, and survived many German offensives. After the victory in Europe, he continued to defend the ship in the East. He was never wounded and never afraid. The other privates, however, were not friendly to him. They made fun of his southern dialect and his homely manners. Leve ignored them, imagining the next day they were Japanese kamikaze pilots headed straight for him.

          After the Japanese surrender, Leve stayed in Japan for a few years. He liked watching the Japanese people running around and trembling in his presence. He thought it was funny. After a while, Leve tired of this and left. He returned home not with a feeling of pride, but with the idea that he had fulfilled his purpose in his young life. He was anxious to see his pigs, his father, his cows and his chickens. He took the train from the shore to a little train depot in Texas, then walked to his former residence. Leve came through the open gate, expecting to see his father asleep on the floor, only to find an empty house. Every thing was gone, the furniture, the pigs, the booze, the horses, the raw eggs, the chickens and the plow. He ran to town in a fit of tears and shouting, screaming, “Where’s my pa? Where’s my pa?!” He ran through the little town for two hours yelling and crying, running and cursing.
          One of the townspeople noticed Leve and said, “aren’t you the son of the drunk that lives up the road?”
          “Yessir. That’s me. Where’s my pa?”
          “Your daddy is dead, son. He was killed during a bar brawl last year. Had it coming to him if you ask me.”
          “Where’s all my animals?! Where’s da pigs and chickens?”
          “They were probably sold to the local butchers. Now get along before I get nasty with you. It isn’t right runnin’ around town screaming about people’s daddies and such.”
          Leve stopped crying and yelling. He began to walk calmly out of town, back to his old house. He sat in the middle of the empty floor, legs crossed, hands covering his eyes. He looked at the emptiness of the house, then searched his head for any sense of meaning and found nothing. He could think of nothing to instill some sort of positivity in him. He got up and walked back to the dirt road that ran by his house. He continued down the road until he got to a railroad crossing. Here he sat down in the same position he had sat in the empty house. Again he searched for a sense of meaning, thinking the possibility of an outcome would be greater if he was simply out of the empty house.
          He had noticed the single light approaching for some time now, but didn’t think to do anything about it. He heard the rhythmic pulsing of the train’s gears and the infernal blowing of the train’s bell. Leve did not get up, however. He thought to himself, if I was to go sit over yonder by that tree, I still wouldn’t get no ideas on what to do next. I could go back to Japan and shoot planes, but there’s none left to shoot. It’s like everywhere I go, I ain’t got no clue on where to go next. Maybe if I got a few pigs, some horses, some chickens, some cows...big cows, and maybe...

          Leve’s house was eventually torn down. The townspeople never spoke of what happened to the Foreman family. A few years later, a warning was added to the railroad crossing where Leve spent his final moments. The sign read:

© 2000 by Andrew Morgan