The Meetinghouse (Prologue)

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As soon as the foothills of Tennessee turned into the red clay soil of Georgia, as soon as the cold snowy winters of the Midwest turned into the mild rainy season of the south, the Brovte River ran through the crop fields of indigo country, quenching the thirsts of slave workers and hydrating the soil that farms ran on.

During droughts, it sometimes thinned until it could barely be called a trickle, and in the times of storms and floods, it was wide. On the hot lazy summer afternoons when all one wanted to do was lay around the home and be fanned, it was calm and slow. When the weather was harsh and unpredictable, it was a rushing and churning surf.

In every aspect, the Brovte River seemed to be synchronized with the small towns that depended upon it. The river itself was the divide between the Harrison and Scheffield counties, the separation between the sprawling pillared plantations of the rich in Harrison and the low cabins and small fields of the poor in Scheffield.

The people of Harrison and Scheffield never intermixed; the Brovte River was a boundary not one dared to cross. There was a bridge, but it was simply a means of getting from Scheffield to anywhere else, or a means of getting from Harrison to anywhere else, but certainly not from Scheffield to Harrison or from Harrison to Scheffield.

One summer, a beaten wagon was traveling down the smooth roads of Harrison, looking for all the world like a mutt at a prestigious dog show. Its wheels splintered and groaned with every rotation; the poor old mare hitched to it was scrawny and tired. A swaybacked dairy cow followed, nearly jogging with her sore legs to keep up. In the back of the wagon were a few things – necessities, certainly, for this family had no luxuries - and driving the entire parade was a small man wearing overalls and a straw hat. A woman in a prairie dress and apron sat beside him, clutching the strings of her bonnet to hold it on in the breeze. Her stomach bulged slightly – the early beginnings of pregnancy.

The cart turned down the road heading for the Brovte River and continued to moan. Citizens stopped to see the newcomer, wondering who was of the nerve to show up in such a manner, and what kind of person they must be. To their relief, the wagon rolled over the bridge and crossed into Scheffield, where it belonged. The residents of Harrison breathed a collective sigh of relief; surely, this would be the last they would see of the strange parade.

That is, until the Brovte River between Scheffield and Harrison would no longer be a separation, a barrier, but a connection, a unification.

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Wow, I loved this! I don't know if it's exactly "old-style" language, but whatever kind of language it is, I like it. Your descriptions are so strong, I could literally picture the wagon with the cow and the pregnant lady. The only thing I could say that I didn't really like was how long you went on about the separation of Harrison and Scheffield.

GenShawklan wrote:The people of Harrison and Scheffield never intermixed; the Brovte River was a boundary not one dared to cross. It was an official separation that had been decided many years ago – to dare go to the other side was nearly a mortal sin.

There was a bridge, but it was simply a means of getting from Scheffield to anywhere else, or a means of getting from Harrison to anywhere else, but certainly not from Scheffield to Harrison or from Harrison to Scheffield. The two were oil and water, no matter how hard one tried, it was impossible to intermix them.