Deep River Farm

Satan was breathing hard after the mile and a half run through pasture and logging trails to the far North end of the farm.  Rebecca Blanton never felt so free and exhilarated as when she was in control of this powerful animal, forcing him to the limits of his endurance and feeling his heaving muscles beneath her.  Rebecca thought Satan was especially energized on this romp, somehow drawing energy from the thrill he was giving Rebecca as he effortlessly carried her 105-pound child/woman’s body out toward the far end of the farm.  The two moved as one and her shoulder length coal black hair streaming out behind her seemed an extension of his equally dark and wind whipped mane.

Her father would be furious with her for mounting this half-broken black stallion rather than the calm mare that was designated as hers.  Well to hell with Father, she thought as she slowed Satan to an easy canter.  This wasn’t the first time she had defied him and it wouldn’t be the last.  It was 1977 and she was fifteen.  Things had changed for women since the 50’s when her mother got married, and she had no intention of emulating her mother’s subordinate role.  She was smarter than any of the boys she knew and most of the men.  Besides, what her father was really mad about was the way men were starting to pay attention to her, and the way she couldn’t resist flirting with them when she knew Daddy was watching.  She enjoyed irritating Daddy almost as much as she enjoyed the power she was beginning to feel over men.  Riding Satan with reckless abandon was just one more way to assert her independence and further break her father’s dominance.

Rebecca no longer cared if her father got angry, and she had no fear of any punishment he might inflict on her.  Enduring more of his yelling and maybe getting grounded were the worst she would have to face.  Such meager attempts at discipline had always been his idea of his only responsibility in parenting, at least as far as having any relationship with her.  She used to fear that the yelling meant it was her fault that he didn’t love her.  Then when she was eleven she had overheard him complaining to Mother about not having a son to succeed him in the family business one day.  She could still vividly recall his comments longing for a son like Mason, his partner’s boy.  Mason was a star athlete at Central High School in High Point and was already working part time in the company.  Daddy had gone on and on about Mason’s accomplishments and potential.

For two years after that Rebecca had done everything she could to get her father’s attention.  She immersed herself in tennis and swimming at High Point Country Club and was good enough to win some events, but he showed little interest and attended only sporadically in response to Mother’s nagging.  When she won the regional finals in the backstroke in the summer of 1975, he had hardly taken the time to glance at her trophy.  She had even tried to talk to him about becoming a business manager one day, not that she knew what that really meant.  His comment was always an impatient “Bidnis ain’t no place fer a lady”.   Then he would return to reading his paper or some technical journal.  Eventually she’d concluded that there was nothing she could do to get him to care about her.  She’d realized out that she could never be what he wanted because she wasn’t a boy.  She could never be a man or a son like Mason.

It’s hard on anyone to be put down and rejected just for being who they are.  For Rebecca, a girl seeking validation and love from her father, it was devastating.  Many tearful nights were followed by days of sullen anger, which gave way to a growing resolve to prove to everyone, and especially her father, that she could do and be anything she wanted.

Rebecca began to study the women she came into contact with, mostly at the country club or at school or at church.  What she saw and heard was almost uniformly disappointing.  Most of the working women were nurses or teachers who were locked into a career with little opportunity for advancement. The conversations among the ladies consisted mostly of complaints about their husbands and bragging about their children.  Still, there were a few women at the club that were different.  She saw them sometimes at lunch, sitting at tables with men wearing suits and ties.  These ladies dressed different too, in blazers and skirts rather than dresses, and from fragments of conversations that she overheard, she could tell that husbands and children weren’t being discussed.  And they were talking to the men as equals.