In the Field
I once followed a boy around who worked in a field. Each day he rose early from wherever he called his home and came here before dawn peered above the trees to greet me. Down the rows he would go, changing his routine with whatever part of the year it was.
In spring, he hurried about preparing and seeding and watering, carrying humongous bags on his sides. His callusing little hands would reach in and dust the earth briefly with its contents, and then he would move on to do the same a foot away. The bags were entirely unequal to his size, which is why it was always a surprise that he didn’t tip over, especially when the heat of summer came.
In that season, green surrounded me like a cage. It made it easier to spot him, compared to the richness of the dirt that matched his tanned skin and every part of what he was. The crops would be gathered as quickly as he – and anyone who would help – could manage. Then, they would be gone again.
The cold months were those which I loathed. Everything was empty and everywhere was bleak. Nobody came then. I had no smiles, no words from people to distract me. The field was practically forgotten. And then, as if nothing had changed, the cycle would start up anew and quickly the sacks wrapped around his sides seemed to shrink. He grew like a weed that knew it wasn’t supposed to be there. His hair darkened and his hands and feet grew riddled with lighter scars. The look on his face was more settled; knowledge and ache wanted to dig lines in his expression. I knew he couldn’t be too much older, but his pace was slower with each visit. I think he was tired of the field, and that hurt me. These hills and these roots were a part of me and had been since I died there. It was as though when he looked at the life before him in what appeared to be indifference, he was watching me in the same way. I found myself no longer wandering off for even the briefest of moments while he was there. I stayed by his side, focused on every part of him and savoring the moments before I was left behind.
If I did this, I could allow myself to imagine that he’d died here too and spent the time with me. I could picture not being so alone. But then the night would win out and time stretched before me, never ending. I could not remember. Why was I here? Had I fallen asleep only to crawl from my bed in my dreams and lose my way?
Lost.
Each time that word would creep up in my thoughts and with it the reasons for my isolation. He was no more real than a fleeting idea until the light returned a few hours later.
He saw me only once, but I was there for a moment. He was kneeling by the green sprouts, gently guiding them and tearing out what didn’t belong. I was crouched beside him, curiously watching the process of a farmer bonding with his crop. In the next moment he was standing, frozen. I followed. Someone must be behind me, I thought, and naturally looked back there too. When I could spot nothing standing out among the dust of the day, I thought maybe the heat had gotten to him. It had happened before when he was a young boy. He’d risen from sitting too quickly, his seeds too heavy to carry any longer, and instantly tipped over like a felled tree. No one had found him. He was alone. The rain woke him, splattering against his cheeks like tears. But this time - for the very first time - I heard his voice next to me. The sound was like smooth creek pebbles. I didn’t even know he could speak, he never had.
“Who are you,” he asked.
I looked at him again…and he gazed back, eye to eye. I hadn’t spoken in so long that when I tried to answer, no sound came out and my mouth did not move. A spirit as unshifting as a painting was what I’d become.
In the next moment, I was gone. He rubbed his eyes, looking up and down but not seeing what he had before. He turned left and turned right, eventually spinning in a circle like he thought I ran off and he missed it. His feet carried him to the truck and he drank just as I had first guessed, assuming it was only dehydration. Then he left.
The field and I saw two weeks before he showed himself again.
It needed to rain and so it did. That was when he came back; a wet day when the showers went on, unceasing. It did not touch me. His feet hit the ground lightly as he stepped out from the truck. The door barely closed behind him. He was looking for something, lifting his head to silently search through and between his carefully-tended plants. I hoped – a small and persistent tug in the base of my throat – that it was me. That day he didn’t work or wade through the muddy lanes, and when the thunder rolled in he leaned against his truck to stare deep into the middle of the field for the longest time. I think he thought I might still be there, but I wasn’t. I was standing by his side, as I always was. We stayed there for almost an hour once I realized what he might be searching for. Thoughts were visibly swimming behind his eyes – the color of walnuts, I always compared. I was as still as stone.
That is where the past meets the present, for I am here now and so is he.
He steps away from the dented rear fender, soaked to the bone, and reaches for the door handle. Longing to follow, I turn to watch him go like I always do when he leaves for the day. I’m preparing myself for another night waiting in the leafy greenness and mud. He stops with his hand wrapped around the bar of silver metal. I do not hear it pull free. This confuses me. I swing around him to see his face. He stares at the thing in his grasp with his eyebrows pulled together in concentration. The rain has his hair running down his forehead in black rivers. Something jumps beneath his chin at the center of his throat.
Then he looks at my feet.
The Bus Stop
I have never been to New Hampshire yet here I stand with a bus ticket that tells me that’s where I was trying to go. The driver of the greyhound shoved me down the steps claiming that is where I am, but he doesn’t understand that I had no conscious intention of coming to this state. I’ve never been away from home, my mind whirls. I shove the wrinkled paper scrawled over in numbers into my pocket and my nails scratch against the contents there. I pull out a handful of rainbow hard candies, lint clinging to their corners. The blue one looks the most inviting so I place it on my tongue only to spit it out a moment later; it’s always cotton candy when I expect raspberry.
There’s a man with one of those fancy pointed hats leaning against the bus stop sign and he’s watched every move I make since I stepped onto the pavement. I don’t like it. He jumps back with a yelp suddenly as if a snake came out of nowhere and bit his leg. A few other people pay him attention and I walk on past the bench. It cradles an elderly woman as she subtly rocks back and forth in her seat. She did not flinch at the man’s outburst. When I look back at her there’s a tiny quirk to her mouth.
I trudge on down the curve of the walk and the arch of the trees to a place I spotted before the bus came to a halt. Here there is a well-worn path tramped down by deer or racoons, some wild things that have been going back and forth longer than people have been here. I duck my head under the branches that still end up tangling in my hair and glimpse her slippered feet just behind my own. She’s not very sneaky.
“Do you want me to do it or should you,” I ask without facing her.
I hear a reverberating crack from above that sends a branch, bigger around than my torso, crashing down a few yards ahead. I’ve gotten my answer.
It’s autumn and the ground is carpeted with all the fallen dead bits of the trees that surround, deep enough that as I walk I kick out the leaves with heavy crunches like a thick snow. The tree branch might’ve belonged to a sycamore I notice, eyeing its splotchy white marks before I sit down on them. I cross my legs in front of me, close my eyes, and wait. It’s not long before I feel her fingers cold and dry envelope my face. There will be only minutes before it’s over and I’ll wake up, starting over as someone else. I wonder this time when she’ll show up again, if I’ll make it past middle school or maybe it will be one of the long ones with a few grey hairs.
“It’s my birthday today,” I remind myself.
Away Now
The door knobs and the drawer handles, all the pull strings and light switches in the house talk to me, but it’s only when they sense I’ve forgotten them. When I leave a room with the bulbs in the ceiling still burning bright there is a whisper by the frame of the door. This is a relatively new development, three months or so. They are getting louder. I have trouble not pausing to listen. I’m not sure, but I don’t think they know I've heard yet and that perhaps they just keep speaking to everyone until they’ll inevitably catch us on their hooks. But I so badly want to know what they’re saying, so much so that I have not traveled from this house in a long time. I’ve taken to leaving everything on, in its place, and open. Maybe they think I’ve gone mad…or maybe they know. I let them speak and they are starting to howl.
I rise from my chair on the fourteenth day, at my wits end and ready for a wash despite knowing once I turn the tub knob there will be complete silence. I will be alone again with my thoughts. The television plays the same news channel that’s been cranked on high these two weeks reiterating what I’ve listened to again and again with the smallest of changes to their broadcasts to keep people hooked to their stories. I am certain that what this house has to say would be more interesting, if only I could have caught it.
The hall is the only place that is dark. My legs automatically swerve away from the open drawer of the small table at its center. I am guided to the cold-tiled washroom only with the smallest amount of relief. The sink runs at a trickle and as I reach forward for the top towel on the shelf my ears prick. There, beneath the screws tightening the cabinet handle to wood, soft as salt pouring into a jar.
“Take it away now. They all say it’s time to go.”
Notes:
I’m not quite sure what this first scribble is about but while I was revising it it reminded me of a specific kind of struggle I’ve watched someone go through. Someone I used to be close to and no longer am. It reminds me of a hereditary struggle.
At the very least, I would like someone to read it and feel a little more seen, but that’s always a hope of mine.