Sixth Ditch at Sunset

By: Bella Rivera

 Born to cotton pickers in the poor, rural landscape of the southeast Missouri

“Bootheel”, a young boy vowed to make it out of the southern poverty and dirt road only

described as “sixth ditch”, named for the numbered network of drainage ditches designed

to drain the swamp farmland. He enlisted into the Marines and became his own hero in

the marshes overseas, striving to make something of himself. During his bootcamp

training, he fell in love with a caring southern girl, eventually returning to California to

fight for an education and turn himself into the extremely successful businessman he

envisioned as a child. To Ronnie Atchley’s oldest granddaughter, his spirit lives in the

parallels of the American Dream and his own legacy. However, his own life story-his

identity, is so much more than that.

As the weathered dust clouds moved across the uneven wooden porch, Ronnie

looked out across the soft dirt road and into the swampy ditch which lined the dusty

roads for miles; his whole little world marked by the crumbling sign which read, “sixth

ditch”. Running his dirt caked fingers through his sandy blond hair, his vivid blue eyes

creased in the corners as his tan skin folded into what his mama called “the Atchley

smirk” as his father’s shadow rounded the corner and towards the small porch where he

stood, waiting. He looked back inside at the four walls he called home, his mother at the

slab of wood they called their dining table, balancing a bowl of grits in one hand while

bouncing a baby on her knee. Around her, his younger sisters were playing with the little

ones while his brothers raced around the cloth curtains with sticks pretending to be in

outer space. Their rhythmic screams and laughs filled the one room house with a warmth

and vibrancy that could not keep a grin off their older brother’s face as he turned back to
the horizon. The great melting sun brushed against the sticky cattails that grew out of the

marshy streams of water running over and under the tangle of botanical chaos. The same

ditch that had been made use of each summer as Ronnie and his brothers swam and

splashed in the warm muddy water. The same ditch that made people who passed by in

their roadster Ford pickups understand why the local’s southern drawl pronounced it

“misery” and not Missouri. As the tall, muscular figure of his father slowly inched up the

dirt pathway with a heavy bag of raw cotton bolls slung over his shoulder, Ronnie hung

his arm around the paint stripped banister and gave a long, two pitched whistle that

made all the children’s ears perk up from inside the doorway. Soon, the padding of bare

feet beating on the splintering wood grew louder as Ronnie’s eleven siblings joined him in

welcoming home their father as the buttery Missouri sun began to set.

The dewy, peach syrup of a sunset made Michelle shield her eyes against the glare

as it hit the kitchen window. Turning back to her daughter, her mind was still distracted

with the stories her father Ronnie once told her of his childhood. It was a warm evening,

only reminding her more of family reunions in Missouri and long car rides with her daddy

singing in his rustic southern accent. She shook the memory loose and began to answer

her daughter's question, still not fully present as her inner monologue rambled on about

her father’s poor upbringing and the responsibility he held for his younger siblings. As

she slipped further and further into her mind, the small boy with glowy skin and big blue

eyes faded into the version of her father she admired most; the grinning, mischievous,

seventeen year old who joined the Marines and fought in the vast paddies of Vietnam.
She closed her eyes as fog rolled over the backs of her eyelashes and she found herself

emerged in the thick darkness of the musty jungle, her father calling out to his lieutenant

and he plunged himself into a muddy foxhole. Michelle winced as she remembered the

muffled thuds of her childhood as her father threw himself to the ground from his bed;

waking from his nightmares to find himself safely distanced from the war. The heavy mist

rolled over the short banks, the thick humidity making it impossible to think straight.

Michelle’s forehead creased, for if there was one story her father had never been able to

tell, it was what came after the jungle stopped it’s whispering and the soldiers fell into the

black silence of midnight, only to meet the roaring heat of gunfire at dawn.

Greeting the pale light of the sunrise with a yawn and a small grin, it took Ronnie a

moment to remember that the familiar, citrus sun that reminded him of home belonged

to a world far beyond the one where he sat with his mud caked helmet inside his foxhole.

Every day in ‘Nam was an adventure, the letters he got from Donna in his supply box the

only things keeping him together. God, he loved that girl. As much as he wanted to tell

her, he could never bring himself to write to her of the gaslamp blue fire that sprayed

across fields in the sunken black of night or the men who screamed out in terror while

greasy jungle beetles took cover under their boots from the firework show of gun fire.

Even now, as he used his pocket knife to pop off the lid of his canned C-ration, he

repeated his well rehearsed speech out loud, convincing himself of his decisions by

focusing on the faces of his brothers and sisters as the mailman delivered his pay to their

wooden porch. No, he was one of the big boys now, barely seventeen and already half of
the man he hoped to become. He scooped the tin clean of chunky meat, forming small

sentences in his mind that he would later write in his letters back home: “​Hey y’all, today

us boys got our supply boxes and man, I ain't never been so grateful to see a pair of socks.

And mama, your grits would sure put these meals to shame...”.​ Hearing the all too familiar

whistle of his sergeant, he gathered his pack out of the mud and scampered up the

narrow ditch and into the humid Vietnamese morning.

Michelle gave out a sigh as she wiped the packed soil on her gardening jeans, the

humid afternoon making her tangled beds of southern flowers droop in despair. Hoping a

bit of sunshine would get her mind off her daddy, the baking sun seemed to have the

opposite effect on her. Slipping beneath the cool awning for the pitcher of sweet tea, she

could not help calling her daughter to join her by the pool, remembering how her father

would sing her ​Michelle ​by The Beatles on hot summer nights as her own sixteen year old

hummed ​When I’m Sixty Four​ and plopped down beside her. Michelle pressed her oval

nails to her temples, trying to remember her daddy’s DJ name he gave himself in college,

longing to tell her daughter of the crates full of 33”records that filled his office in their

Texas mansion, propped up against photos of her mother Donna, his framed business

degree, and his own book, ​Six Ditch Setbacks​.

After flipping for hours through the books he had brought home from the library,

Ronnie set them down on the dining room table next to the girl’s barbies, drawings, and

Donna’s knitting. Picking up Stacey’s latest coloring page, he gave a long whistle, bending
over to tell his six year old, “Well little lady, I’m sure glad I had the G.I. bill to get me to

school, cause my schoolwork never looked ​this​ good.” She giggled, making her daddy grin

that Atchley grin and scoop her up, Michelle looking up as she helped her mama make

dessert. Looking around the spacious house, he knew that above all, this master's degree

would not be for him, but for his girls. After a dinner of red beans and rice, their daddy

playing silly songs on his guitar and the giggles that followed, Ronnie settled into his

office chair with a plate of cobbler. Looking up at the girl’s school portraits which hung

next to the painting he had commissioned of his tiny childhood home on Sixth Ditch, he

kept his gaze for a moment longer, reminiscing the summer before when he took the girls

down to the “Bootheel” to see their grandparents. Trying to immerse himself in the worn

volume five textbook, he overheard the hushed whispers coming from Michelle’s room,

Stacey undoubtedly crawling into bed with her big sister for the night. The silvery moon

was especially bright, forming a hazy glow that spilled over his bookcase and onto the old

Marine's helmet that was settled between his record collection. Ronnie realized it was

going to be a long night, and as he began to take notes on the next chapter, he kept on

grinning, his bright blue eyes focused solely on what his future could hold.