by Bart Tuma
“Are you here by yourself tonight?”
“Yeah, it’s been a long week and I just wanted to relax. I really can’t stay long, but its Saturday and I needed to go someplace.” Erik thought that was a stupid thing to say since it made him sound desperate, so he quickly added, “I’m going fishing tomorrow with a couple buddies so I need to get to bed early.” That sounded better, even if it was a lie.
“Good luck. Next time you come in, you can tell me some fish stories.”
Erik had run out of things to say so he simply nodded as she worked her way to the next table. He followed her with his eyes as long as he could.
He tried not to be too obvious with his stare, but even that was ended when she left the next table and went behind the bar. It was easy for Erik to escape in his mind with the darkness of the bar. He lingered with the thoughts of the smell and voice of Laura, but the more he thought the more he let his mind wonder.
He thought of Aunt Mary, not because he wanted to, but his mind got distracted with other thoughts. The dinner conversation crept into the softness of Laura’s image. He could have gone to Fairfield like Mary suggested. He knew some people there, people who could even be called friends. There, he could’ve gone to one of the local hangouts for people his age. He could have recalled old high school days and football, or indulged in small talk. There would have been laughter and bragging in an attempt to impress each other. There might even have been a chance to become closer to some people who were not friends by title only. In a way, that would have been nice, and it would have pleased Aunt Mary. However, the more he thought, the more he knew the impossibility of that dream. He just wasn’t like those people.
Those people were part of Fairfield. Their lives were as much of a fixture of the town as the buildings themselves. If by the age of twenty-five a person hadn’t left that town, he would never leave. It was almost like a disease that held them there, no matter how much they hated it.
He hated the town. He didn’t respect its people for their tenacity, rather he blamed them for why he hadn’t left
A loud shout burst Erik’s thoughts. “Laura, bring us another pitcher, and then you can come sit on my lap.” A stocky fat farmer was sounding off at the table next to Erik. Erik looked at Laura and saw fear in her eyes.
“Hurry up, girl. You don’t want to be rude with paying customers. I’m trying to drink more of your boss’s beer, and you know there’s nothing like a nice warm girl to heat up a man’s thirst. Don’t look at me like I’m some type of dirt. Come over here.” She already had a pitcher for another table, but took it to the farmer first. As she leaned to put the pitcher on the table, the farmer grabbed her ass and yelled with glee.
He didn’t know what caused him to move. It might have been the fear in Laura’s eyes, or maybe the fact he’d just been pulled from a dream taking him from this hated place. He didn’t think he simply reacted. He’d never been in a fight and he certainly would never start one.
Erik didn’t have a plan. His first step made him trip on the table’s leg and fall forward toward the farmer’s table. The big farmer pushed Laura aside, stood and grabbed Erik to keep him from knocking over the pitcher of beer. His actions put Erik in perfect position and he slammed his fist into the stomach of enormous fat. He felt his knuckles bulge into the fat and then hit a solid layer of muscle. ‘What the…!” was the farmer’s only reaction. He stepped back to get his bearings. Erik took the further opportunity to land a blow to the farmer’s face that brought the sound of gritting teeth.
Erik knew that would be his last easy shot. The farmer, who had now dropped his beer, jumped behind Erik and he felt a fist hard against his kidney. The pain was so deep that it drove his knee to the ground. Erik felt someone else pull him to his feet, first by a firm grip on Erik’s short hair, then by a twisted arm. Erik knew he didn’t have a hope. The fat farmer coming towards him was snarling with his need for revenge. His punches came hard and fast with Erik’s only hope of passing out to void the pain.
Finally another member of the table pulled the farmer back. “You better stop before you kill the kid. He ain’t worth the trouble.” Erik fell limp to the floor.
Erik was in a haze but still saw Laura pick up the $18.00 left on his table and shout, “Yeah, guys, the kid’s sorry and he wants to buy you a round of beer.”
Erik tried to stand, but he couldn’t. The bar owner and a farmer each took a leg and pulled him face down toward the door. Erik felt the wetness of the broken beer bottles and a few slivers of glass cut into his face. Someone stopped them just short of the door.
He only saw her canvas shoes, but knew it was Laura’s voice, “I don’t know what you’re doing or who you think you are, but I don’t need anyone’s help, and I sure won’t ask it from a loser like you even if I did.” She picked up his head by his hair and looked straight into his eyes. “You’re a loser. You understand? You’re a loser, and I hope I never see you again.”
Erik was thrown face first down the steps, hitting three then rolling down the last one.
He crawled around the side of the building until darkness covered him and unconsciousness seized him.
When he came to, he was lying on the ground. He recognized the rough wood siding of the tavern and ascertained that he was on the dark alley side of the bar, hidden in the shadows; left there like a heap of garbage. He coughed up the dust from which he had been lying face first in. Mud from the mixture of dust and blood covered his tongue and the side of his face. As he got up from the ground, his back screamed in protest, but he pulled himself to the pickup, afraid that the border police might find him and cause him deeper trouble. He was glad he had parked his pickup away from any bright lights.
When he reached the pickup, Erik drove straight to the rodeo grounds where he knew there would be an unlocked restroom. His headlights shone on the “Whoop-Up Days” sign painted on the side of the building. In the concrete restroom, the water smarted as he attempted to clean a long cut across his cheekbone and pulled out the remainder of what looked to be glass from a broken bottle. The cut wasn’t deep, but that was no consolation right now. The pain was almost welcomed as atonement for his stupidity. He could endure the cold water for only a short time. Its effect and his bruised kidney combined to make him feel faint again. A grab to the side of the chipped sink turned his knuckles white but kept him upright. He looked at himself in the polished tin mirror and saw his stupidity.
Afterward, he drove. He drove away from the town and into the country, making no attempt to miss the chuckholes. Several times the thick gravel caught his tires and attempted to drag him to the ditch. He drove recklessly, not because of the effect of the fight, but out of indifference. His head no longer had dreams or even thoughts. He wasn’t mad or sad or feeling pain or feeling anything. He was as blank as the fields he worked every day.
Reality was all that was before his headlights. There were no dreams or illusions. He had lived off dreams for years, and now he knew there was nothing, only his foolishness. All week his only hope to fight the boredom of the farm was Laura. He had put all his hopes in a girl he had never even spoken with before tonight.
What an idiot. If my only hope was a barmaid that I haven’t even the courage to ask for a date, I really am pathetic. He had lived in a bunkhouse and thought his daydreams were enough. They were nothing. He had nothing. No parents, no girlfriend, no plans on how to get out of Fairfield. He was a dreamer and a bad one at that. The land around him was reality, not his dreams. The fact that Laura was a disappointment was no surprise.
“I should have known this was coming. What’s new? It’s happened before and it’ll happen again.”
Without a purpose in mind, Erik turned off the gravel road to an even less traveled dirt road. The road went left into the pastureland. This was land that was not fertile enough to be tilled for crops, but instead it was left for a few head of cattle to feed upon. At this point his mind wasn’t registering landmarks or location, he simply drove the p
ickup to nowhere. This road, probably only used to move farm equipment and for land owners to survey their fences, became even smaller. Soon it was not a road at all, but mere traces of ruts that were not maintained by anyone but the occasional passing vehicle.
The big sky of this land was without a moon or star that evening. Erik kept driving. He had no idea where he was, but he kept going. Finally the ruts turned into merely prairie grass and Erik cut the motor of the pickup without disengaging the gears. The pickup jerked forward with a few last gasps of the motor, and then it came to a halt. As he turned off the headlights, there was no hint of light or sound in the land. Erik was alone. This was not a new feeling for him. At times it was a place he sought. Not this evening. This evening the loneliness was not a feeling, but an entity. It was something Erik could physically feel in the pit of his stomach. He ached not from the blows of the fight, but the presence of loneliness.
In the past he would have escaped into his dreams. There were no dreams this night. There was Erik, in a pickup in the middle of nowhere, not knowing where he was going and not knowing how he let himself get to this place.
Since he couldn’t dream, he thought of what was. He remembered the conversation with Aunt Mary and her hopes for him. He thought of that sunset and how it had made the land so different. It was the same land he had worked each day, but the sunset had changed the view to beauty. He thought of Aaron Hanson and the talks he had with Erik. Aaron had talked about turning to God and committing your life to Him. They were all conversations that Erik took as religious pat answers. “Turn your life to God and commit yourself to Him and He will give you new life,” had always seemed too easy to Erik. Before, it seemed like just another way to escape from what was real. Erik had his dreams. He didn’t need another escape. He didn’t need another illusion, he needed answers. There was no person to direct his question or provide the answers. There was only him. This evening he had no one to turn to, no dreams to escape to. He didn’t bow his head as others did when they prayed, but rather looked up through the dusty windshield at the night’s sky.
“God, people tell me I need to commit my life to you. I can’t really say I know what that means, but I know I haven’t done it. I know You’re real, but I haven’t ever really acknowledged You’re real in my life. I want You. Maybe I should say I need You. I realize I’ve been living a lie. I can’t get along by myself. Please forgive me for ignoring You for so long. I do need You. I need to meet You here and to be held by You. I need to be held by someone who loves me. I haven’t done much with my life but mess it up and turn my back on people who cared about me. I don’t want to turn my back on You anymore. Please, Lord, hold me and touch me and help me get my life together.
“God, I know You exist. I don’t know if You know I exist, but if You do… I need Your help. I don’t have any right to ask anything from You, and I know I’ve probably been running from You. I don’t know. I know I haven’t wanted to face You. I don’t want to be left alone again. Please don’t turn your back on me. I know I’ve turned my back on You, but, Lord, don’t do the same to me. At this point I don’t know anything, but I know I need You. Please, please, please, touch me with Your life. I have been told You care about every person. That You care about us so much that You sent Your Son Jesus to save us. I need You. I have nowhere else to go. I don’t know what to do. I need You, please hear me and touch me with Your arms.
“I can’t expect You to hear me. I haven’t done anything to make You want to hear me, but if You are as big and as loving as they say, please touch me. It has been so long since I have felt anyone hold me. I don’t know if anyone ever has. Please, please, hold me. I don’t want to live in another dream, but if You’re really here, hold me. Send Your Son to me. I want to know Jesus.”
Erik was silent. His eyes searched the silent sky for a moment. Then he looked down. “Whom am I talking to?” Erik asked himself, “You’d think I’d learned about empty hopes.” He suddenly burst into tears. There had been times in the past that a single tear had come to Erik’s eyes, but this was not a single tear. Streams of tears flowed down his cheeks and through the cuts of the previous beating. They were tears that would not stop. His sobs became so heavy his whole body shook as if it were chilled by a Montana winter’s night.
And it continued. He cried and cried and sobbed, but as he did it seemed as if his tears were cleansing him. That pain within his stomach was gone. The entity of loneliness was not present. He felt warm, comforted. Something had happened. Something was different. He had been touched. He didn’t know how, but he knew he was different. He had seen that promise of what he could be, was intended to be, within him. He had been touched not by a dream, but by something much more real. He knew at that moment he had been touched. God had touched him. He also knew this was not an undefined entity. This was Christ who had died on the cross and still lives.
Finally, he let go of the steering wheel and lay on the seat. He quickly fell asleep after the long evening of the bar fight and the fight within himself. His sleep carried no dreams.
Chapter Four
As he woke, the pain in his back from the cramped seat and previous fight jolted throughout his body. He struggled to sit up in amidst the tools and junk that covered the seat. The sun was just beginning to envelop the land, but its heat couldn’t yet be felt. His face felt tight as he gingerly felt the scabs from the fight begin to form. None of this was the center of his attention. Something else had happened last night, and he was different.
He smiled when he saw the broken clock on the dashboard with the hour hand pointing straight up and the minute hand broken off. Well, everything’s back to normal. Laura was just another in a long string of broken dreams.
He began to take inventory. He is still hurt from the cuts, but he felt there was nothing serious. He was more interested in something beside his body. Was happened? Am I crazy or desperate? Was I really touched—touched by God? These thoughts came quickly. The reality hadn’t changed in front of him. The prairie land with its short coarse grass still surrounded him. His jaw still throbbed with pain, but something was different.
As Erik sat in that old Chevy pickup he knew things were different. He needed things to be different. Erik knew God had answered. There had been too many times in the past that he thought things were real, like Laura could love him. Erik knew he was a rainbow chaser, and at least to this point had found no pots of gold. This morning seemed different. There was something tangible and different this morning. He should be disgusted and ashamed. He’d just been humiliated and beat up. This morning his emotions had taken a different path than depression about his failures.
He sat on the prairie with the morning sun beginning to warm the land and he thought. He made no attempt to move the pickup or himself.
“So this is what Aunt Mary and Aaron Hanson were talking about. I’ve always known that He was real, but He’s real, here, now,” and then Erik spoke out loud, hoping he would be heard in place filled with silence.”He was really with me last night. He was really with me and it seems like He’d been with me all along. Maybe He has been. It’s just as my aunt and uncle told me. You were here if I would acknowledge You. It’s hard to believe how stupid I’ve been to hear about You and think that You were somewhere far off when You, who I needed so much, were so close.” But Erik’s declaration brought up more questions.
The land around him was still barren. The aches from the prior night’s fight still stung, but something was different. How could God be in such a place?
He continued to sit in the pickup and he rolled these thoughts around in his mind as if he was rolling a piece of sweet candy in his mouth. For several hours he simply sat with a sense of calm. The only doubt he had was how God could love someone like him.
But what would he do now? He knew he couldn’t talk to his aunt and uncle until he was sure. They had heard too many of his pipe dreams, but the more he sat there and tried to talk to God under his breath, the more he knew he wasn’t the
same. Most things go away the more you question them, but his sense of His presence grew stronger.
One other reality couldn’t be avoided. He was starved. He decided to drive to Fairfield since it was too early and himself too much of a mess to field his aunt’s questions. She would be mad and complain that he hadn’t let her know where he was. It was rare for Erik to stay away overnight. But he could deal with that later. It seemed like there was much more to deal with and understand besides his aunt’s displeasure.
Erik started the pickup’s engine, but let it idle much longer than needed. He was in no hurry. He steered the pickup back along the route of the night before, from a place with no road to dirt road, from dirt road to gravel, and finally from gravel to black top pavement. He drove south and then turned west directly towards Fairfield. He knew he needed a meal, but knew nothing else. Things had changed, but he didn’t know exactly what had changed, or what it meant.
The morning sun was beginning to heat the land even at this early morning. He rolled down a window and felt the breeze whip his hair across his face. The cuts on his face still stung, but the sensation made him feel normal. Pain was a feeling he knew more than any other.
***
There was only one restaurant open on Sunday mornings in Fairfield, the Glacier Inn. The front of the restaurant looked the same as the other stores containing hardware or clothing on Main Street. However, the main street was empty on a Sunday morning except for in front of the Glacier. It would be clear even to a passing tourist that this was the place to stop. Erik knew that The Glacier Inn would have every table filled on a Sunday morning and then again about noon when the church services were over. The city folks and farm families had worked hard all week and a Sunday breakfast at the Inn was their chance to forget the work and laugh with neighbors. Erik knew he would have to wait for a table, but didn’t care. He did care that most of the people in line knew him, and would see that he had been in a fight. It wouldn’t be long before the gossip started. He hoped he could get to Aunt Mary before she heard it. In better times when the crops were good, his aunt and uncle would have stopped here after church, but this year didn’t allow for such luxury.
