His family's farm was part of the most fertile section of Seven Hills Valley. His father often sat around after supper was finished, puffed on his pipe and recited the family history, which, he said, could be traced back to the first arrival of white men to the region – the original trek led by Baptist minister Obadiah Blight and the Protestant faithful who set out from Boston in search of the land spoken of in the Great Book. The Skeen family was one of the original 77 families who set out with little more than faith to carry them across the heathen lands and were, by the grace of heaven one of the 12 surviving families who arrived and cut up the fertile valley into farms and into the central village of Blighton.
Rufus knew this history intimately because, besides the rain, the crops, and the Great Book, his father talked of little else. “It's important,” he'd say... and say... and say. “It's important to know your roots, where you're from. It's the only you have to know if you're acting like a man.”
He was sick of hearing his father talk about it and sick of having to think about it. All of it. Sick of hearing his father talk about it. Sick of having to recite it back at randomly. He could be working in the barn and his father would walk in and make him recite the entire lineage to present, with correct birth and (when applicable) death dates. Sometimes he would make Rufus recite the names of the the original 77 families. Rufus felt as if he were living in the past when the entire world around him was pushing its self into the future. The Village of Blighton was growing, and the people who lived there were growing with it. There was talk of a new dam and hydroelectric plant that would turn Apple Fork River into a lake, and there was talk of turning the area around the lake into a state park. So not only would Blighton benefit from newer and cheaper electricity, but it would create a destination, make it a Place People Go instead of A Place People Escape.
But that was the future and Rufus's father, Aloysius, would have none of it. The Skeen farm was the only farm in the valley not to sell out to the newly formed Seven Hills Energy Cooperative. More people were moving into the valley, trying to escape the city, and new houses had to be built. The other farmers sold out at healthy profit, became partners in the new energy cooperative, and were opening businesses in town to cater to the new arrivals. Restaurants and rooming houses and clothing stores. Old man Fettierre was opening a ladies' shoe store.
Every night Rufus went to bed praying his father would wake up and decide to sell the farm. After all, the phone calls and visits from cooperative representatives were almost a daily occurrence. And even as he prayed every night to leave, he dreamed each night of the places he read about in books and saw on television. All he wanted to do was escape. He wanted to live someplace with public transportation. Someplace that didn't require him to get his hands dirty when he worked. Someplace where people didn't look at you cross-eyed if they didn't see you walking into church on Sunday morning. He dreamed of moving to the city and changing his name to Luke or Robert or Stanley – a name that had nothing to do the Skeens, with the 12 families, with Blighton, or with Apple Valley.
Yet every morning when Rufus woke up to complete his chores, Aloysius was as intractable as ever. “Our family has always been provided for,” he'd say. “And that's more than most people will everbe able to say.”
Whenever Aloysius lit the burned bowl of his briar pipe after clearing his supper plate – the cue that he would once again begin to talk about the family and the Great Book – Rufus and his twin sister Selma would lock their eyes on one another and simultaneously roll them. They knew better than to interrupt or allow their lack of interest to show because their father believed deeply in the idea that sparing the rod spoiled the child; and no child of his would spoil on his watch. No sir.
Though Rufus saw the rod much more often than his sister. And every time he did, for whatever infraction Aloysius chose to punish him for, Rufus saw with increasing clarity that someday he would get out of Apple Fork, away from Blighton, and into the larger world.
And he also saw with increasing clarity – and no small bit of satisfaction – that it would break his father's heart.