all is as it is

This post is a story by Moiret Allegiere about about awakening to manhood.

The boy, sweating, stood silent halfway up the hill. Above, in the blue skies, the sun shone brightly. Warm. Late spring. A slight breeze – quite welcome, thought the boy – broke the stillness of the air.

The boy looked out upon the seemingly endless fields below. Ancient fields, a small portion of which were his and his was also the grass which he had just cut by the sweat of his brow and his scythe and nothing more.

The boy wiped the sweat from his eyes with the palm of his left hand. His right hand, the dominant one, hung limply to the side of his body, swaying. His muscles ached. He thought it more than he felt it. Years of toil had learned him to expect as much. The grass cut then was not his grass, yet the work and the toil and the sweat and the blood belonged to him and him alone. And the very same work and toil and sweat and blood had taught him that his right arm, when not in use, must be loose and limp and tender. As if not to spoil the meat or blood or strength within, but tenderize it, preserve it and conserve it.

Because harder times had been before and harder times would come once more. All things must be conserved and saved so as not to face that snarling beast again, having spoilt or spent knife and rifle both.

“The great divide”, thought the boy. 70/30, with the harder times bearing the brunt of the thing thus split. A beast of burden led with a thin string of silver across a rickety bridge. The boy knew this. The father of the boy taught him this. The boy was five and was watching his father cut the grass and dry it and turn it into food for the sheep. The man always saved some.

Rather would he see his sheep 30 percent starved than for them not to eat at all. So he said. He never strayed. His sheep were always well fed, and his children and his wife as well. The man never strayed. A few of his children had strayed already, yet they strayed only from his path onto their own path as had he when once he grew from boy to man. All was as it should be.

The boy stood there still, and he looked at his fields and then towards the lush green of the plants growing there which he himself placed there for food, and then towards his house which he had built upon the plot of land his father gave to him. A house in which a woman and a baby also lived and breathed and ate and slept.

The boy sighed.

He looked at his watch. The time was where it should be. He stood and he looked some more. He looked at his father’s house.

Still well-kept and maintained and nurtured and loved from seed to harvest.

Beside him now, and quite suddenly, his father stood. Quiet, perhaps, as is his wont, yet lively still, far from dead, merely crippled by arthritis and now incapable of tending to all that which he once tended to.

The boy gave the man a nod, and he smiled. The father stood and he looked. Then he smiled. And they looked both upon the son’s work and the son’s world, neither saying a word because no words were needed. Some time passed. Still was the air and the time was where it should be still. The man gestured with his arm.

“Sit down, son,” he said.

The boy sat down. His father stood there, smiling.

“How’s the baby?” He asked. He had always been a kind man, yet never before as kind as just now.

The boy thought.

“Growing, crying and shitting.”

The older of the two grinned and then he laughed, heartily, and his mood changed abruptly, as if suddenly remembering something long forgotten. He paused and turned to the boy. He looked at his son’s face. Still young and handsome and maintained and nurtured and loved from seed to harvest. And in his son’s face he saw at once his own face as once it was in younger years.

“All is as it should be then?”

“Yes,” the boy said.

“Yes,” said the man.

The older of the two went quiet for a bit, fumbling in his backpack which he always carried with him. The fumbling went on for a little longer than it should, thought both boy and man. The man found what he was looking for. The man was always prepared and the man never strayed, not now and not ever.

He pulled out a beer, and then he pulled out another. Piss-warm now, perhaps, yet it was still beer and still the time was right where it should be.

The son sighed and he smiled as his father opened a beer and handed it to him, saying nothing. There they were. The boy sitting and the man standing. They stood and sat and they looked at what was theirs and theirs alone, and they drank from their beers. Then looked and drank some more. Some time passed just as time does and they stood and sat as if all that was there or anywhere was them and them alone. The older of the two then put his hand upon the shoulder of the younger, and, smiling warmly, he nodded as if to say goodbye even when his lips and his mouth and his mind and his reason said “See you later, son”. He turned and walked away, going home.

The boy sat and he looked some more upon all that was there that was his and his alone. And he sighed and he smiled and he laughed and then he made to leave.

The man got to his feet and the man turned and walked away, going back home following behind the older man, too far behind to catch up yet close enough to never stray.