Potatoes

By Kelsey McCarson

I never wanted to dig potatoes, but my dad began an annoyingly consistent pattern of sending me off to do unbearable chores for neighbors at an early age. I was only four or five years old. It’s so hard to keep track now. It doesn’t much matter. I hated those damn potatoes and I’ve never forgiven my dad for sending me to dig them.

They asked me why I did it. I told them that it had to happen. I told them about destiny, and more specifically my destiny in regard to fire and potatoes. They didn’t understand. Cops don’t believe in destiny. They believe in convictions or doughnuts, but not potatoes. Sometimes, I’d like to burn the lot of them too, but that’s only a fleeting feeling. I’m not insane.

Like I said, I hate potatoes. The only good thing about potatoes is that they can burn. They can shrivel up and become nothing. They can lose all the power they once had. They can become useless nothings waiting to be blown away by the wind. I’d like to burn the lot of them.

Mr. Oldman always waited for me to come over and help him. He said he couldn’t do it without me. Even at my tender age, I knew he was full of shit. He was a grown man. He could do a lot without me if he ever tried. He was just a needy bastard.

Mr. Oldman had a nice life. He was held in high-esteem by other grown-ups in the town, but I knew him better than they did. I knew him better than anyone. All they saw was a lay leader of the church, or a volunteer at the library. I saw the real him. I knew him. He was a potato picking bastard if there ever was one and I hated him for it.

Every Sunday he would come over to my house and pick me up. It was always after church, that sick bastard. And my dad would practically shove me out the damn door to meet him! He acted like Mr. Oldman was such a great man and all, but I knew the truth. He had to pick potatoes for someone when he was a little boy, and he wanted me to know what it felt like, too. I hated him for it, and I still do.

Oldman could tell I hated picking potatoes. Even so, that damn potato picking punk would come to get me every Sunday like it was some sort of religious ordinance. He’d come to my door with a big potato picking grin on his face and call my name. God, I can still hear his voice sometimes in my dreams. I shudder when I think of it: my name on his lips.

He’d take me by the hand and lead me to his car. It wasn’t a long walk to his house, but that lazy bastard would always come get me in his beat up pick-up. It was green and stunk of potato juice. I can only imagine all the potato picking bullshit he had done in there with other boys. It made me sick to my stomach.

When we got to his house, he would always change into the Oldman I knew. He would take off his outside mask and his face would contort into that stupid looking grin. He’d ask me if I was ready. I never was, but he’d fling me out of the pick-up by the waist and drag me by the arm into the back where we picked potatoes. I never tried to run away. I just did my work. He loved it. I can still remember his sick smile. And no matter how much potato picking I did, there was always more. I hated it, but he loved it. He told me so everyday.

Eventually, my family moved and I didn’t have to pick potatoes there anymore. Years later my dad and I were driving up state to visit some relatives and we stopped by to see Mr. Oldman. I didn’t want to go, but dad insisted. When we got there, Oldman came to the door with this goofy grin on his face. He had some silly looking kid by his side. My dad asked him if he had relatives in town or something, but he just smiled and said “Nope, he’s my new potato picker”. He smiled that stupid grin at me as he said it, but I just looked down to the kid at his side. He was older than I was when I had to pick potatoes, but he looked like me. He didn’t like picking potatoes either. I could tell. That’s when I decided.

That night, I snuck out of the motel room and went to see Mr. Oldman on my own. I assumed he was asleep, so I didn’t bother knocking on his door. I snuck in through a back window and crept down the hall. That boy must have finished his potato picking duties and left because when I entered the bedroom, Oldman was alone. He was startled at my entrance, but he knew what I had come for. He tried to smile at me, but I told him to get his potato picking ass out of that bed and as soon as he did I lit that field to flames. I watched the fire devour all the bad memories I ever had about potato picking with Mr. Oldman. He ran out of the room screaming bloody murder, but murder isn’t what I had planned.

I heard him on the phone calling the police and the fire departments. He was standing outside in his briefs crying into his cell phone like some kind of whimpering child. That chicken shit had called the police first, because he was scared of me. Him afraid of me! The firemen did the best they could, but Oldman’s potato field was lost forever. Then the police came and put me in jail. They asked me why I did it, and I told them to ask that potato picking bastard Oldman, but they never got the chance. He was found dead the next day with his potato in his hand.