Jönson

Ford Madox Ford

Jönson was of the land, and his appearance reflected that more than anything. His height was not impressive but placed him well within the boundaries of his ancestry since the Jönson bloodline had always had to resort to ingenuity and innovation to overcome tasks requiring even an average reach. His hands broad with short fingers, calloused to withstand piercing ice and burning hot coal, to be sure, his beard akin to Schrodinger’s feline ambiguity, though neither the absolutisms of science nor their opposites were part of Jönson’s limited realm of existence. Not to say his world was any less than to what he aspired. It contained all the elements necessary to sustain every undertaking he could fathom even if there would never be any certainty as to which part of that life equation defined the rest. It would not ever occur to Jönson to have any thought of this. He was complete in his being and doing.

And thus, his wife’s latest pregnancy had left him with close to no emotions he could acknowledge, let alone articulate, and he had not spoken more than ten words at most about the circumstance. All of these were in passing to his brother, who, short, of a stocky build, brownish-haired and slouchy, had, as per usual, shuffled into the kitchen in his burgundy, concrete, and third-day snow colored home-knitted woolen socks through the backdoor, leaving his black clogs with heel caps…