Sowing Season

by Brian Patrick Edwards

  “Honey? It’s going to be okay, darling. Hey,” he said, kneeling beside her to rub her back, “it’s all going to work out, babe.” The sight of her upset deeply troubled him. She was always so stoic and typically hid her strongest emotions under the mask of cheerfulness. Her existence always seemed almost painless, until moments like these. It hurt him to see her in pain -- hurt him even worse when he couldn’t comfort her.

  “I’ll be okay. I’ve just loved living here. I know Maria and the others can’t stand this neighborhood, but I don’t see it that way. I’ve put so much of myself in this place and spent so much time trying to make it nice for us, you know? It’s what I’m good at -- making the best of things.” She dried her eyes carefully, as to not ruin her freshly applied makeup.

  “Are y’all about ready or what? Stone’s gonna be there thinking we’ve stood him up. Let’s go!” Maria shouted from the hallway, just beyond the half-opened door to their room.

  “Is she okay?” she asked, peeking in and noticing Michael’s posture, hovering over her on the floor.

  “I’m good!” Amelia forced a smile, “I’m ready, too. Is the cab here?”

  “Yes. Got here about five minutes ago. I tried calling for y’all, but neither of you heard, apparently,” she rolled her eyes in obvious sarcasm.

  “Ah, well it’s not like we live next door to the mountain or anything,” Michael retorted with light-hearted sarcasm aimed at his sister. He helped Amelia to her feet and they followed everyone outside and into the cab.

  …

  Just as he entered, his anxiety about the meeting returned with force. I’ll keep my promise to keep the peace, he told himself interiorly, yet unwelcome emotions welled up inside him anyway. Weeks had passed since he had set eyes on Stone. The pressure to both remain civil, yet not send the false message that he agreed with Stone’s Zealot activities threatened to open the battle wounds. He silently prayed for strength and an open heart.

  Stone and Cole were like children to Michael; although, in actuality, they weren’t too much younger than him. Still, that’s how he thought of the boys. He rescued them from their perilous life -- an existence rife with betrayal, pain, and darkness. They endured it for too long, while growing up under their mother’s roof. He didn’t get to feed them Gerber’s or change their diapers. He was only a child himself during that time. But, he did help them with homework and did his best to model true manhood for them. He introduced them to Christ, the Bread of Life, and to the faith that they were deeply involved in.

  Stone’s decision to join the Zealots brought him stabbing pain that never completely went away. Every time he thought about it, it made him wonder why -- why did it turn out this way? What had he done, or not done, to push Stone toward such ideas and beliefs? It’s all my fault, he yelled at himself inside his head. It’s nobody’s fault, but mine.

  Ironically, Cole was the exact opposite: pure, God-fearing, genuinely filled with charity and the will to help others, expecting nothing in return. Michael never witnessed any behavior from Cole that wasn't praiseworthy in some way. And Michael instinctively knew he couldn’t take credit for it. Cole's sanctity was the God-given light of Christ, as many living on their block called him. The boy didn’t have a violent bone in his body. Michael couldn’t recall the last time, if ever, the teenager had acted in a fit of anger.

  How could two, so close in age turn out so vastly different, he wondered. Cut from the same cloth -- yet one was silk, the other burlap. It made no sense to Michael and he pondered the mystery of it in the short cab ride, coming to no conclusion by the time they reached the mountain.

  …

  The car dropped them off at the foot of a steep incline covered with a mass of trees and stone. It was one of the last forested refuges of their city. It sat like a gleaming jewel surrounded by the sea of blue silicone panels, which covered Irondale on their side of the mountain. Birds called from the leafless autumnal treetops, making beautiful, but loud unusual sounds never heard beneath the panels that concealed the neighborhoods where most people lived. Immediately, Cole’s mind traveled back in time to hundreds of years ago as he struggled to soak it all in, the fresh outdoors he seldom visited.

  "Where are we meeting him?" Michael asked as he caught up to the teen standing excitedly at the edge of the tree line.

  “Stone said we should take the Ridge and Valley Trail,” Cole pointed with his hand, “eastward for about a mile. Then we’ll take a right and hike along The Crusher Trail until we get to the Mining Site. Said we should see him there.”

  “Ah, the Mining Site -- you remember the Mining Site, Maria?” Michael laughed.

  “Yes.” She answered quickly, uninterested in reliving the moment. As a child, she ran ahead of her family and climbed upon the entrance of the abandoned mine and then jumped down to enter it. Their dad never took them back to Ruffner Mountain.

  “Dad wore your romp out for that. I mean, there were people jogging by and everything. Didn’t care who saw.” Michael laughed louder, recalling the memory. Maria made a rude hand gesture to her brother, which only made him laugh harder.

  John and Amelia finally reached the three of them at the edge of the trail and the party of five began their hike through the woods. The trail was rocky and steep, with overgrowth blocking it in some areas. This caused Cole, inexperienced with outdoor activities, to trip on occasion. He had always been kind of klutzy and the lush forest trail only made this more apparent.

  “So,” Cole started, taking a deep breath, “how about this fresh air?” He tried to mimic the movies he had seen.

  “Cole, there’s nothing fresh about this air, bud,” John corrected him, laughing. It was easy to smell the distinct, though distant, scent of lunch cooking at the restaurants near the mountain. “The Café is all I can smell.”

  “Does fresh air have a smell?”

  Michael thought about that for a bit taking time to recall his father’s adventures and their camping trips. “Smells like dirt, I think.”

  “Dirt?”

  “I mean, yeah, whenever my dad asked if we could smell it, all I picked up on was dirt, maybe some trees, and possibly a carcass rotting in the heat. I’m not sure.”

  “No, no, no,” John interjected, “fresh air is the absence of human odor. If you're deep enough in the woods, you won't smell food or emissions of any sort. No perfumes or anything, only the crisp wind off of the pines. And it’s much more than the smell, it’s the sounds…the sights. Tree limbs creaking against each other and foliage gently falling from above. Birds singing. Ground animals rustling in the bushes as you walk by. Authentic fresh air fills your every sense with its magnificent presence.”

  "Well, we'll all know soon enough," Cole grumbled, thinking of the trip way down south they planned to make.

  "Hopefully so." Michael crossed his heart. He hated when people spoke with absolute certainty about the future. The trip down would be difficult and there was no predicting the sort of dangers or obstacles that might await them. Cole’s inability to see the roots and other debris before tripping over it is comparable to his ignorance about their impending road trip further south. He crossed himself again as this awkward truth took shape.

  Amelia and Maria’s chatter followed the three men whose lead put them slightly ahead of the ladies by about a dozen feet. Maria complained about how tired she was, and about how she wished they had picked a better place to meet with their cousin. The woman’s belly showed no noticeable bump yet, but since she chose to wear jeggings -- that’s jean-leggings for the uninitiated, a highly observant person might detect a slightly noticeable protrusion from her lower abdomen, right where a pregnant woman’s womb begins to first reveal its secret. John made her wear one of his hoodies, so it would loosely hang over her, in case any authorities, or a nosy busy-body saw her and became suspicious. She complained about the hoodie too, saying it reeked of her husband’s sweat, since it was the one he recently wore to work.

  “Girl, you’re just a ball of
unhappiness, aren’t you?” He chuckled at the sight of her when he turned to look over his shoulder.

  “Um, excuse me? I’m sorry…would you like to trade places? If I haven’t had time to do it first, wash your putrid stinkin’ clothes before you make me wear them!”

  “I’m joking!”

  “Mhm, we'll see how loud you're laughing from the couch tonight if you don't watch it."

  “Enjoy it while it lasts, Mikey,” John advised him quietly, leaning into his brother-in-law.

  “Enjoy what?”

  “Enjoy Amelia while you can. If, or when, she gets pregnant, you’ll be a slave to her like you never imagined.”

  “Oh, I’m sure of it.”

  “You say so, but I’m telling you, you’ve no idea how many chores and errands you’ll be sent on. Especially if she gets as sick as Maria. She’ll send you everywhere. She’ll crave things you’ve never known her to enjoy and make you return things she’s always loved. It’s a mini-hell, man. A mini-hell.”

  “Stop fussin’,” Maria called him out sourly, she easily heard his loud whispers. The increased breathing rate from the hike made it nearly impossible for him to succeed in his attempts to whisper.

  “Yeah, we can easily hear everything you’re saying up there. Just warning you, you’re on your own when this mama comes after you,” Amelia chimed in with laughter, looking with a knowing expression at Maria.

  Cole led on, following the map he pulled up in the HUB of his Visum. The lower right corner of his vision contained the map in the form of an augmented reality, showing their progress along the trail. It disappointed him to rely on such a thing, something so flawless -- a device that rendered many would-be challenges effortless. I’ve never experienced the feeling of being lost, he admitted in his personal silence. Nothing I’ve done has ever forced me to trust my own gut.

  Before this age, people carefully observed changes in their surroundings. They gave names to the oddly shaped trees with their equally oddly shaped leaves that appeared along their paths. Cole did not. He carried on through the capabilities of his Visum. The more he thought about it, the more it disturbed him. What’s the point of life when one’s path is not of their own deciding? When there’s no chance discovery? No surprises? He continued to ponder, completely enwrapped in his thoughts. The others kept up a steady stream of chatter since they first began hiking, but he heard almost none of it as he continued to contemplate the effect of these digital devices on the human experience, or rather human devices through a digital experience.

  “Cole. Hello? Cole, buddy…” Michael called to the boy, over and over again in an attempt to snap him out of what looked like some sort of trance.

  “Hm?” Cole responded, still not actually paying attention. Michael’s words came and bounced off of his ears as if he wore sound-canceling shields over them.

  “Cole!” Michael raised the volume of his voice a bit and slapped Cole’s back lightly, startling him.

  “What, Crazy?” Cole asked, his abrupt return to the present left him in a sort of fugue state.

  “How much longer until we get there? I mean dang, we wanted somewhere discreet, but an expedition like this seems a little overkill.”

  Cole pointed ahead at the next fork in the trail. Michael could see a smaller path curving to the right and disappearing into a ravine littered with decomposing leaves and other natural debris.

  “We’ll take the path by the Maria-tree.” He smiled at spontaneously coming up with such a fitting name -- he nodded toward an oak tree with a large burl bulging from its side.

  “Ha!” Michael shouted, “Did you hear that ladies? Cole says this tree is called the Maria-tree!” He slid his fingers lightly across the warped bark covering the protruding hump.

  “I don’t look like anything like that,” Maria retorted in a dismissive tone.

  “Well…,” he started.

  “Well, what?"

  “Well, you have to wear that monstrously baggy hoodie for a reason, sis,” Michael pointed out, enjoying the opportunity to poke fun at his sister.

  …

  The Crusher Trail was considerably shorter than the first and the family of hikers could see the end fast approaching with each step. Despite Michael’s veneer of good-natured humor, the anxiety from earlier rumbled underneath along with biting pangs of shame each time he remembered punching Stone that awful night.

  In short order, Stone would be standing in front of him. He prayed he could manage to handle speaking with his cousin, hug him even, in a way that healed their relationship. The others were excited to see Stone again, and rightfully so, but he still wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. An epiphany -- maybe true, maybe false -- suddenly came to Michael as they pressed ahead along the final trail. In a rush of clarity and self-awareness, he saw that his own out-of-control anger was the reason Stone left their family. Now, he could clearly see it was his intemperate and angry words, along with his wailing fists that drove the boy away from home -- and further into the darkness of the Zealots.

  The five arrived and stood before the monstrous, rusty iron ore crusher, which towered beside a hill with its red skin looking alien and out of place in the surrounding environment. Viewing it from beneath, the group quietly studied its cone-shaped top. Long ago, rough men fed huge chunks of iron ore into its mouth-like opening so its jaws could crush it into much smaller pieces.

  “I smell cigarette smoke,” Maria sniffed at the air, frowning over the stench in utter disgust. “Good Lord, it’s awful! Isn’t it illegal to smoke in a park?” She asked to no one in particular. Maria clutched at her stomach with one hand and covered her nose with the ample sleeve of John’s hoodie.

  “I don’t. Maybe it’s just your imagination? Most people who come through here are joggers. Doubt anyone brought a pack of Reds with them.” John squeezed her shoulders gently, hoping she wouldn’t get sick from whatever she smelled. He sniffed again to see if he could smell any smoke as he wondered to himself about the minds of pregnant women -- actually, he wondered about the minds of all women, mysterious as they were.

  “No, I smell it as well,” Amelia declared, making a grimace, “and it’s pretty strong. How can you not smell it?"

  No one answered as they waited to catch sight of Stone along the trail they traveled down only minutes before. Crack. Crunch. Crackle. Leaves and twigs sounded from behind them. As they all turned in near unison, Stone appeared before them. He looked so different -- almost unrecognizable at first. Something had changed about him. Had he grown taller? Leaner? Cut his hair differently? None of these things explained it, but that didn’t diminish the fact that something had surely changed.

  “Hey, guys,” he greeted them awkwardly as he moved closer.

  Unable to wait any longer, Maria half-jogged over to him for a hug, wrapping her arms around him entirely before he prepared himself. She jerked away from him immediately after catching his scent. He reeked of cigarettes.

  “Ugh! When did you start smoking?” She made a face as she admonished him.

  “Few weeks ago.”

  “Why? It’s horrible for your health and makes you smell like a chimney sweep!” Of course, they didn’t have chimney sweeps, so Stone couldn’t fully relate to the comment. Maria was referring to a nest of baby birds that fell down to the bottom of their chimney one year, filling the living room with the stench of soot and ashes. They agreed not to move the nest and its avian babes, fearing it might cause the mother to reject them. The baby birds squeaked and chirped and hopped around until they learned to fly well enough to wing their way out to freedom.

  “Yeah,” Michael sympathized, “Amelia won’t let me smoke a single cigar either. Haven’t had a good night in weeks.”

  “Well, it’s good for my mental health, at least!” Stone chuckled lightly, still buzzed from his last smoke. He approached the others, hugged Amelia, Cole, and John. Michael stood behind the group that encircled his cousin, awkwardly, not wanting to push too hard. “Michael,” he greeted hi
s older cousin, reaching between the others for his hand to pull himself closer, “how’s it been goin’ everyone?”

  “Well, all things considered, not so bad. We’ve missed you very much, buddy.” Michael meant it with all sincerity.

  “You all look -- well.” Stone studied both women, trying to confirm his suspicions that one or both were expecting. Maria laughed at his stare aimed directly at her stomach area, completely concealed by that baggy hoodie.

  “I’m guessing you already know? Did Cole tell you?” Her inquisitive tone was tinged with a hint of disappointment. Every pregnant mother enjoys sharing the news with people who didn’t know and she was no different.

  “Cole didn’t tell me anything. Really pissed me off because I knew he was keeping something from me. He kept your secret very well.” Stone didn’t tell her about his suspicions. He wanted her to confirm his theory verbally.

  "Well, you look like you already know," Maria whined with a pouty look.

  Cole quickly interjected, “I promise I didn’t say anything to him. He refused to talk to me for a week because I refused to say anything! Anything he knows, he figured out himself.”

  “What’s the news, then?” Stone stared at her face impatiently, motioning his hand in a circular fashion.

  Maria looked around them, making sure that no hikers or joggers were close by, then revealed what he already knew, “I’m pregnant.”

  “I knew it!” Stone shouted excitedly, followed by laughter.

  “Sh! Don’t make a scene!”

  “Well, I knew it. The whole moving thing. And are you too, Amelia?”

  “No,” she replied bluntly.

  “No? I thought you said everyone was leaving, Cole?”

  “We are,” Michael confirmed, trying his best to sound sincere. “We’re headed south and you are more than welcome to come with us.”

  “But why? For how long? What about the house?”

  “We haven’t sorted everything out yet, but we think it’s best to stay together under these particular circumstances. I don’t want to be a million miles away from Maria, in case she needs us; and, if Amelia were to get pregnant as well, I don’t want to have to make excuses to others about yet another trip down. We all agree it’s best if we travel together and get it out of the way.”