Planting Season
By Daniel Held
It was a dreary afternoon, threatening to pour rain and slam thunder into the ground. Two men toiled in a garden, which was approximately 17 by 49 feet and surrounded by a picket fence, located next to a small, dingy shack. One of the men appeared rather young, maybe just entering his manhood, yet at the same time lines framed his sunken, deep eyes that burned with a certain intense anger despite his otherwise emotionless face. His hands were rough and calloused and while his body was lithe, it was also powerful from hard work and a stringent diet. The other man, however, could be described as something like a potato. His skin color was similar enough, but his head was bald and round, and his body was slightly pudgy and fat. The old man had lived his life already; he married, had children, and worked. The man seemed somewhat disturbed, as if a fly that he could not see was buzzing around his ears. At the gate of the picket fence were the remains of their meals: bottles of alcohol and plates that still exuded the scent of an indescribable substance.
The young man wielded a shovel; he held it as if were an extension of his body and used it just as effectively; however, the way he held it was similar to how you would hold a weapon. The way he manipulated it to dig the trenches made you think that if he had a tool of murder in his hands he would excel in the same way that he expertly dug at the soil. The old man, on the other hand, held a pocket knife the young man had lent him and was slicing potatoes in half in a steady rhythm with practiced hands. While the young man, with a fierce and wild determination, toiled to dig trenches with sweat in his brow and a pain in his back, the old man reverently sliced and planted potato halves in the trenches. Each worked in quiet solitude in their own little worlds and any attempt to talk made by the old man was ignored by the young man, as it was obvious that neither could understand the other.
“What happened to you?” inquired the older of the two. His question was answered with a deafening silence, broken only by the stabbings of the shovel into the fallow soil.
“This is no way to treat me,” the old man started angrily, “why are you so cold to me? I do not know why you are irate, but maybe I can help you.” Again, nothing. The old man could not see the young man’s face as the old man was turned away. No longer impassive, the young man’s face was contorted with wrath, as if he could think of a million reasons why he was incensed, each one maddening him more, making him eager to hurt the old man. Still, he remained quiet. They continued as before, and soon enough, the young man’s face slackened into his usual, passionless countenance. Above, the sky opened up and began to pour its contents upon the earth; resounding booms of thunder could be heard in the distance.
The old man, however, moved in the opposite way of the young man. He hated being ignored, and his pudgy face twisted with rage with each passing second. He simply could not bear this child and his little games! Who did that boy think he was anyways? What gave him the right to ignore him as if he, his father, was an insignificant speck? He boiled and seethed with anger until he snapped and his rage surpassed any logical thinking he might have possessed.
The young man did not think; honed instinct seized control of his body. The old man, with his insulting words and violent actions, had crossed the line. Something rose up in the depths of the young man and possessed him; a fierce visage of mixed fury and savage joy spread across his face. With experienced hands holding a familiar tool for a different, though still a familiar purpose for the young man, he easily solved the problem. The old man, frantically digging at the ground to propel himself away, stared in horrified terror at the now-unrecognizable young man, wearing a self-vindicated bloodthirsty grin, with victory and sadism flashing in his eyes, holding his blood-soaked shovel, yearning to cause pain, his menacing and ready body silhouetted against the flashing sky. The young man began to calmly slice one last potato, thinking about why today had turned out the way it did. Just yesterday, they had gone through their daily routine of acting as the best of friends; though, the two never really had liked the other and even had grown to hate each other at times, but they always had been able to work despite their arguments and fights. Maybe it was the old fool’s feigned innocence as to not knowing why the young man was the way he is. Because of him, the young man had lost everything he had ever held dear and had been forced to mature and become strong at a young age, losing any semblance of joy. As the young man pondered, he planted one last sliced potato that would never grow, but rather to rot in the ground, unmarked and unhonored.
Sitting in the muddy garden, the man, with tired eyes, looked skyward towards the now drizzling rain. He stared blankly, water creeping down his blood-soaked face, onto his drenched clothes and the saturated soil. After a while, the man got up and left, vowing to himself never to return. The man determined for himself to forever bury his name, like he had his father, and instead build a new, better life from a new beginning, without his past. As he stood on the road, he turned left and began to walk down his path, ready for whatever life might throw at him with his newfound confidence. The lightning storm, spent, vanished from the sky, forgetting the gray clouds above in its undue haste.
The views and opinions in the Enterprise blogs are those of the author and are not neccessarily shared by Falmouth Publishing.
