What makes a man evil?

Born with it? Learned? 

Or, has he been cast his lot as a reminder to those who might stray… ”This is what power and obsession can become if unchecked.” 

Maggie somehow saw past it...or was blind to it.

Her maker might say, "Maggie McCabe knew full well and used his evil for a greater good, to protect an unborn child." 

But Joseph Cassidy’s evil slipped through the cracks of time, unfulfilled. And now seeps into the life of the woman it was used to guard.

What makes a man evil... 

Royalty in the Garden

Royalty of the garden, an iris, its golden throat, spilling into purple velvet, a scepter, grasped between the chubby fingers of the little girl who marched about.  So rich, to touch it with those tiny fingers, you’d expect them to come back awash with violet.

Some gardener’s in our tiny town thought it a shame to slice the stalk of the striking flora. Not her grandfather, Jonas McCabe.

Whisked away in to her imaginary kingdom, talking to the queen, ordering the jester to dance and commanding everyone must pause for tea, time stopped.

 A rustle of a skirt would respond to the chair she directed her Grandmother Anne to sit in. From heaven she came to Jessica’s quite real kingdom. On a farm some years ago just outside Gracier, Iowa.

Soon Enough

You have never…I mean never seen anything more antsy, more impatient than a farmer waiting for two things. Crops to go in…and crops to come out.  Like a church lady getting ready to serve the congregation, or a hungry nursing baby. It can’t happen soon enough.

Matthew’s passion for the smell of freshly turned dirt, he inherited from his grandfather. He can’t get out the door of the law office fast enough come spring. 

His father, Joseph, on the other hand, would let it all go. Let me rephrase, let it all go, for a price. Every stitch abandoned to Joseph Cassidy’s greater good. That too will change...soon enough.

Spit, Slobber, and Fireworks

Sparks fly like none other when those two cross paths. I mean to tell you, firecrackers have nothing on them. 

How bad you ask? Well, when Jess shot out of the spit and slobber float’n in that cow’s trough, the heat simmering off her flaming cheeks, swear I saw steam. God as my witness. 

Matthew, however, well I don’t think he noticed…at least her cheeks.

Yet Another Thorn

All the beauty it portrays cannot overcome the darkness, of the earth, Jess' broken heart and this day. 

The strength in Jess, it runs deep like it once did in Jonas and Ann, her grandparents. Ann perhaps more. She put up with that old cuss better than anyone. 

He lost the love of his life and their child in the blink of an eye, and Jess, well Jess saved him. Kept him alive…in spirit.

Now, watching her reach out and pull that single yellow flower from its final resting place with the man who had raised her...sums up over three decades of pain, caused by something held all too tightly. Yet another thorn in a beautiful rose.

Gust of Resistance

The biting wind of March reminds you, even at a time of renewal, there are challenges. Sometimes the gust of resistance can be too much. 

I know two people who could be as tough, harsh and resistant as that wind. Directness like none other, snap a wondering soul to attention. 

But every spring melting snow exposes. One finally succumbed. The other continues to stand. 

Everything and Nothing

The winter, bitter at times, can provide stillness like nothing else. Through the tree's dusted branches, set among the random, one of a kind drifts, you can see everything, and nothing. Like looking into the familiar faces that make up this Iowa town…sometimes you see everything… and nothing. Strange to ponder. Bitterness, fear… and love can do that.