The Harvest

The corn grew tall. Stretching upward with arm like appendages, as if to touch the sun itself. Golden and brittle, but full of promise, the harvest was approaching.

My inhibitions were hidden in between the husks. With my pink shoes scattered carelessly next to me and a corn pipe full of cherry tobacco, I inhaled the sweet and velvety thick pollution into my lungs and dug my feet into the grooves of the Earth. My porcelain white feet became tarnished as a dusty layer of Minnesota goodness fought for my attention. I leaned back into the dirt between the concrete rows of corn stalks, "I feel like I could stay here forever."

"No you couldn't." His voice startled me away from my sunlight drunk sensibility; I had somehow forgotten he was there, laying in the row to my right. He sat up quickly and picked up my shoes and his, and ran up the row back toward the gravel path. He looked back with joking honesty in his eyes.

"Your mind is too big to live here. You'd hate it. It's all farming and 45 minute drives to town," he yelled at me from the road as I dusted myself off and ran after him, rocks grinding into the bare flesh of my city feet. "You would still want to dye your hair red and act like a city girl," He stopped pacing across the gravel and looked at me. "You couldn't do that here and you know it."

His honesty disarmed me and suddenly I felt like a child begging to be held. It was as if I had read the last page of a novel first and realized I didn't want to read the novel at all.

"You know I could do it, Bob. You know I could," I stammered. "if it was you and me."

He sighed a hearty body-filling sign, smiled, shook his head and continued up the rocky path toward the house, "I'll make you a deal. Live your life and if we're both alone when you're 30 and you still think you want to be here, I'll be here. But not until then."