La vida es una mentira; Miénteme más,
Que me hace tu maldad feliz.
(Life is a lie; Lie to me more,
For your wickedness makes me happy.)
Armando Domínguez Borras, “Miénteme” (bolero)
Out of a habit ingrained over fifty-odd years of hard work, Timmy McFarlane got up before dawn, fixed himself a serving of thick-cut bacon, scrambled eggs, biscuits and gravy, and drank a big cup of strong coffee. He sat alone at the dining room table, chewing mechanically as he rehearsed in his mind the disheartening agenda for the day. He could hear through the open bedroom door Daisy’s soft snoring, but did not for one moment think of waking his wife up. There was nothing she could do but become infected with his misery.
Food consumed, he went out of the cottage, climbed onto his S7 combine, and drove to his soybean field. Even from afar one could tell his crop was ready. The plants had turned to a dry brown color, and most of their leaves had shriveled and fallen to the ground, leaving behind a field of bare, dry stalks. The soybean pods had become grayish and made a discordant sound as the breeze made the beans rattle against the dry husks.
Today the combine would cut and thresh the dry, brittle plants, separate the beans from the pods, and convey them into the combine's grain tank. Once the tank was full, the beans would be off-loaded into a grain cart for transport.
Timmy parked the combine at the edge of the field and sighed. The final step would be to store the harvested soybeans in the grain bin he kept on his property, ready to ship to market; perhaps they might be retained in storage for a while to wait for a better price to be available. There was the rub: his bin would soon become full, since there was almost no market demand for American soybeans because the government had imposed high tariffs on imports from China and other consuming nations and they, in retaliation, had ceased importing soybeans from the United States. What was he to do?
***
As Timmy morosely went over his mounting debts and his inability to turn his farm output into cash, he started recalling the promises his party had made before the election, which he had energetically conveyed to friend and foe alike: the imposition of widespread tariffs on Chinese and other foreign goods would cause exports to rise and diminish the overall U.S. trade deficit with the world; the accession of the party to power would usher a new era of prosperity and renewed respect for the United States; America would be great again and everyone would win so much as to “get tired of winning.”
And there were other unfulfilled economic promises that he heard and gleefully imparted on others: a massive return of manufacturing jobs to the country from overseas through its trade policies; inflation abatement; making America affordable again; reduction in half of energy and electricity prices; reducing the cost of a new home by 50%; lowering of prescription drug costs; use of a new Department of Government Efficiency to implement massive cuts in government spending that would achieve trillions of dollars in savings. None of these economic goals had been achieved and, to the contrary, inflation was up and the income of businesses like his was declining.
And there were many other promises outside the economic area that Timmy had faithfully repeated and endorsed but were far from being accomplished: building a "big, beautiful wall" on the U.S.-Mexico border, to be fully paid for by Mexico; ending the Russia-Ukraine War (within "24 hours"); ending the war in Gaza; developing a next-generation missile defense shield, often branded as the "Golden Dome for America," and a number of other vows that, in retrospect, were impossible or unlikely to be achieved.
This chain of realizations brought Timmy to a melancholic conclusion: he had been an unwitting participant in dispersing false promises to his fellow citizens, lies that many people, in Kansas and elsewhere, had trusted and acted upon. Timmy was a Methodist and believed in his church’s social creeds, under which lying was a violation of the golden rule of kindness and respect for others, particularly if doing so would be harmful to them.
Timmy was not a bleeding heart Eastern liberal nor a hippy from the depths of California; yet he felt to some extent an obligation to acknowledge having propagated these lies and seek to make amends for them. But what was he to do?
The more he thought about it, the more he realized he was caught in a web from which there was no easy escape. Coming clean after being such an ardent proponent of the government’s false promises would discredit him in the eyes of many who knew and trusted him; some would even wonder if he had taken leave of his mental faculties. Moreover, his “conversion” would be futile, since his State was full of like-minded people, highly conservative individuals whose main allegiances were, first to themselves and their families, and then to their direct economic interests. Farmers lead a tough, perilous life, constantly in conflict with Mother Nature, having to contend with plagues, livestock diseases, adverse weather, and other calamities. It is every man for himself and, if government lies instill a bit of hope amidst adversity, they should be tolerated, if not welcomed.
Also, there was no longer much room for truth in this modern world. Counterfeiting once had been the province of a few skillful rogues; nowadays, everything was faux: the photographs that were reproduced online, the false “news” dished out by the media, the imitation fabrics and jewelry, the foods full of artificial colors, textures, and tastes; even – he believed – the sporting events whose results were prearranged and the machine-generated works of art and literature. In a world full of falsehoods, there was no use for mea culpas, no need for guilty pleas.
His mind made, Timmy started up the combine and proceeded to sweep the soybean field in the hope that, somehow, the government’s rosy prognostications would come to pass, improbable as those forecasts were.
END
Bio:
Born in Cuba, Matias Travieso-Diaz migrated to the United States as a young man. He became an engineer and lawyer and practiced for nearly fifty years. After retirement, he took up creative writing. Well over two hundred of his short stories have been published or accepted for publication in anthologies, magazines, blogs, audio books, and podcasts. A novel, an autobiography entitled “Cuban Transplant,” and four anthologies of his stories have also been published.