My Daddy Brought Home a Photograph from the Paper Yesterday
Great Grandma walked across the plains,
Her blue dress grey with travel stains.
She bore the hardship, for she knew
Her faith in the Lord would see her through.
Her once pink hands were calloused now,
And she had said goodbye somehow
To husband dear and children lost,
Praying the end would be worth the cost.
I walk the darkened city street,
My hurried footsteps keeping beat
With a trembling heart, but I swallow my fear,
Reminding myself that the Lord is near.
I wear my travel stains deep inside,
Where I battle iniquity's rising tide,
Praying husband and children will not be lost;
And that the end will be worth the cost.
We all must walk these earthly miles;
Different times bring different trials.
—"Counterparts" by Susan Noyes Anderson
Joseph Rogers didn’t return from the war whole.
It was not just his body; it was his mind too.
He was angry, so he drank. He wanted to forget, so he drank.
And he did forget.
He forgot those small things that made him a good man, a good husband, and a good father. He forgot why he was angry, so he turned his anger on his wife and his son.
Sarah Rogers had loved her husband once. Even prayed for him while he was away. But she forgot that love, the first moment, he touched a hair on her pup’s head.
Steve Rogers entered the world during the war. He’d never met his father for he was away fighting. But he hung onto every word his Ma told him about his Pa. When Joseph had finally come home, Steve had been so excited. But he forgot how much he’d longed for a father when Joseph beat Sarah black and blue.
Joseph got it in his head that everything would be better out West, so he forced Sarah and Steve to leave behind the only home they’d ever known and go someplace far away. If he’d known what would happen, he wouldn’t have cared.
Sarah watched as her husband was shot and scalped. She didn’t scream or cry; she aimed her pistol and shot back.
Steve screamed when his mother was shot. He cried when he was swung over a horse and forced to leave the bodies of his parents to the cruelty of the desert.
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