Chapter 7 - A Kansas Farmer

Ad astra per aspera – The Kansas state motto, which means “To the stars, through difficulties.”

The five of us stared quietly at the man, whose gun was pointing at Thad’s head. What was there for us to say? The shock of the run, of the terrifying hail of grasshoppers against the wall, of being in this strange and ancient land had finally caught up to us. Thad was too busy swallowing the frog in his throat to speak. Even Heppy, standing on Aly’s shoulder, was uncharacteristically free of bird calls.

The stand-off stretched into a minute before an unknown and unexpected voice rose from one of the darkened corners of the hut. “Oh, Grampa, what are you doing? When you invite someone into your home, you can’t very well threaten to kill them the next second.”

None of us spoke, nor dared move while the gun remained pointed at Thad’s head. The wrinkled, old man squinted, squared his shoulders, made as if to squeeze the trigger, then sighed and lowered the barrel.

“I reckon Maddy is right. More to the point, I couldn’t go killin’ no one in cold blood while she was watchin’.” Thad, relieved, began to speak, but was interrupted. “That don’t mean I like you, boy. I still ain’t heard no reason why I shouldn’t kill you.” Heppy cawed. “And don’t think I like you much either, bird. I warned you not to consort with his likes. Now look what happened.”

Having learned his lesson, Thad hung his head and said nothing. Instead, it was Kenzie among the five of us who spoke. “Please, mister. We don’t mean to intrude. The moment that storm outside ends, we’ll be on our way.”

The old man looked at Kenzie. “What’s your name, girl?” he asked.

“My name is Mackenzie,” she replied, “and this is my brother Jonathan, my sister Aly, and my cousin Dewey.” She indicated each of us respectively. “I assume you’ve already met Thad and Heppy.”

“You can assume right,” the man replied.

“Grampa!” called out the voice in the corner. I could not make out a shape among the deep shadows. “Don’t be a dunder. You gotta tell’em your name.”

The old man gave Kenzie an embarrassed smile – I relaxed at this – and said, “You can call me Jim. I farm around these parts. Wasn’t expecting any visitors today. On the other hand, I guess you weren’t expecting to visit, were you?” The man laughed. “Anyway, sorry about the state of things. It’s hard to keep everything in its place.”

Now the farmer named Jim picked up his lantern and walked over to the corner of the room where the voice had issued from. I could see a girl sitting up in a bed that could easily have been fashioned of bits of twigs and branches that came from the river we had camped at the night before. “And this,” continued Jim, “is my granddaughter Maddy. She’s doing real good today; aren’t you, girl?” He smiled with shining eyes at the girl in the bed.

The girl reached up and hugged Jim around the neck. “Yes, Grampa.” She let go and gave him a serious look. “And if you let me up, I can help you out with these guests.”

The old man smiled fondly, patted Maddy on the back, and said, “No, no. That’ll be alright, girl. I’m sure I can manage.”

Maddy sighed and looked at us. “So what brings you all out this way?” she asked.

I answered. “We’re headed to Kansas City, but those grasshoppers drove us your way.”

The old man frowned curiously at me and asked, “Kansas City? What might send four children, a crow, and a thief to Kansas City?”

Jonathan spoke up. “A thief? Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Now see here…” Thad began, but was interrupted again by a quick gesture from Jim to his gun. Becoming hesitant, Thad attempted to placate our host, “I mean, I may have made some transgressions in the past, but I’m a reformed spirit, I am.” He sent a quick glance in Jim’s direction and stepped behind Aly.

Turning back to the old man and his granddaughter, I replied, “We have to reach a friend of mine. Honest Abe told us he was in trouble.”

“Abraham?” asked Jim, sharply. “What’s so important that the old man of the sea would get moving?”

“Um,” I turned to the others for support, but they watched me and said nothing. “Well, see, my friend Matty is pretty special. He and I ran into this other old man a few days ago, and I guess that man isn’t as nice as Honest Abe. I guess he might try to hurt Matty. Abraham said Matty could protect himself, but he needed our help to do it.”

“Really?” said Jim. He sat at the corner of the bed, near Maddy’s feet, and regarded me thoughtfully. “This ‘other man’… Did he look very much like Abraham?”

Again I looked at Kenzie, who shrugged, and then I turned back to the old man. “Yes. At first, I thought they were the same person, then I noticed that Abraham didn’t…,” I hesitated. What exactly had I noticed? How could I put it into words? Finally I said, “He didn’t smell as bad.”

Jim threw back his head and laughed, hard and hoarsely. With tears streaming down his face he said, “Yes. That’s a wonderful way to put it. I think I’m going to have to tell Abe that one. ‘Didn’t smell as bad!’” He chuckled a moment longer.

When he had finished, he continued. “Well, if Abraham says you need to go to Kansas City, you need to go to Kansas City.” He turned to Thad. “You’ll be taking them along the Trail?” Thad nodded, mutely.

“Good. Once these grasshoppers pass by you can be on your way. I haven't been up that way in twenty odd years, but I'm sure everything is still fit. In the meantime, make yourselves at home. These hoppers are…,” he paused. His eyes had been wandering the ground. He crept back to the front door. When he was about two paces away, he flung himself to the ground, his right hand opening wide and quickly closing. He stood up, brushed himself off, and smiled at me. He held out his hand and opened the fingers to reveal the grasshopper within.

“Ever had chocolate covered hoppers?” he asked, grinning. I blanched.

Over the next hour, Jim prepared a stew that he assured all of us was free of any bugs, “Intentionally, anyway,” he added. This gave me little comfort, but the stew smelled wonderful, so I blanketed my unease. I realized we still had not eaten lunch, and my stomach was not happy.

My cousins had arranged themselves around Jim and the stew cauldron. Thad and Heppy were sulking in the corner opposite Maddy’s. I sat in a wooden rocking chair, staring at the front door.

After a time, Maddy called out to me, “Was it Dewey?” she asked. I did not respond immediately. Something about her made me very nervous. Contrary to popular belief, little boys do indeed develop crushes, and they do so very early. There had been a girl in school that I very carefully kept as far away from as possible. She sometimes wore a little red dress with flowers. Maddy reminded me of her – they were about the same age, but there was something else. I could not put my finger on it.

After pretending like I had not heard her for what seemed an appropriate time, I stood up, backed against the wall and said, “Yeah. What do you want?”

Her cheeks went red, and she said, “Nothing.” We eyed one another. “I was just hoping to talk to someone other than Grampa. He’s really nice, but all he wants to do is talk about wheat and barley and milo.”

I digested this, decided her request was a safe one, and said, “Ok.” I walked over to her bed, pulled up a chair that Jim probably sat in to read to her, and said, “So… what do you want to talk about?’

Maddy smiled at me, then quickly looked away. “Maybe you could tell me about how you got here,” she said from behind the hair that had fallen in front of her face. My heart skipped for a second.

“Ok,” I said. Until the stew was ready, I talked, recounting the old men, the wave, the water, and our path into this strange other-Kansas. Maddy listened and said nothing, snatching glances at me when she thought I was not looking.

After about half an hour, Jim walked over and said, “Stews ready.” He gave me a funny look and a smile, then walked back to start ladling out portions. Outside, the thundering continued.

We ate around a table that had also been drawn near Maddy’s bed. Thad continued to sulk as he ate his, but Heppy seemed in much better spirits. He pecked the stewed meat out of his bowl with gusto and cawed happily to himself.

As we ate, Jim turned business-like. “Children,” he said, “I’ve been thinkin’ about it, and I’ve decided that Kansas City is just too far to a walk. So,” he looked at Maddy, and then turned to the rest of us, “around the back of the house, I’ve got a cart and a plow horse. I’m gonna' give you more than you can fit in the cart, but it shouldn't be a problem if you're will to take turns walking along and guiding the horse. That way we can load up some noncombustibles and jugs of water and make sure no one gets too hungry or thirsty along the way.”

“Awesome!” said Jonathan.

Aly looked worried. “But won’t you two need that cart?” she asked.

“Eventually,” said Jim, evasively. “Just be sure to bring it back, and I guess we’ll be fine.” I knew there was something he was not telling us, maybe several somethings, but I decided not to say anything for now.

The pounding of grasshoppers continued for the next two days. In that time we all tried to prepare ourselves as well as we could for the next leg of our journey. Jim provided Kenzie with a map he had drawn. Between the lectures of Thad and Jim, Jonathan learned the fundamentals of horse driving. And Aly used all her charm to reconcile the two grown men. For a time it seemed her efforts would be futile, but to my great astonishment, she had persuaded Thad to recite a poem for us by the end of the second day, and Jim did not shoot him on the spot at its conclusions.

As for myself, I grew attached to Maddy. We would talk. I would tell her stories, and she would laugh. When I told the story about how I got my name, she giggled for several hours. Until that time, I had not considered the story particularly funny, but under Maddy’s ears it became a riot. Yet for all that I told her about myself, she seemed reticent to speak of her past. At first, I ignored this, but by the end of the second day it was like an itch I could not scratch.

Thad’s poem that evening was as strange as the first one, if not more so. He grunted, looked around the room nervously, and began.

“Sometimes, even
when I look at
something entirely
unlike you
my chest hurts.

How can beauty
cause such
an unusual contraction
in vision,
lungs, and hearing?

Why do I skip
a beat
and harden my mind
at skin
and bone and blood?

Cartilage stretching a face
in unusual designs
provides for an interesting
response.”

After the embarrassed coughs, sighs, and groans – and unexpected clapping from Maddy – had ended, we prepared for bed. When everyone else had drifted off to sleep, I got up and walked over to Jim, who seemed never to sleep, as he rested in the chair facing the front door with his shotgun on his lap. The thunder of grasshoppers had died away now. The farmer's home stood peaceful among the plains.

“Jim?” I whispered.

For a moment he said nothing and continued to stare at the door in front of him. Then he sighed and said, “I know what you are going to ask me, Dewey. I want to tell you. I want to explain.” He pulled his eyes from the door and looked at me. “I’m going to say as much as I know, but you won’t be pleased.”

As he spoke, I became aware of the soft sounds of breathing around us. I listened for Maddy's tremulous sighs and nodded. “Something is wrong, then, isn’t it?” I breathed.

“To say the least,” the farmer said. “When you’ve spent as many years as I have working the ground, clearing weeds and watching for rain, you start to feel your crop. A mother will know hours before the first cough that her child is sick. A farmer can tell almost the moment he’s finished planting how plump his yield will be.

“Madison has been stuck in that bed for a long time. In my dreams I can still see her running through the clean rows of wheat, laughing as her hands pass over the stalks. I’d be surprised these days to see her walk twenty feet, much less run a thousand.”

He stood and rested himself and his gun against a wall to better contemplate the young girl in the corner. “Things are different here, you know. This isn’t the world you grew up in. This is a place where all times coincide, where the very essence of a thing shines brightest in an almost everlasting moment. In my dreams I see Maddy running, but not in my memory. We’ve lived in this home for what could as easily be a hundred seasons as it could be five. We exist in an almost infinite time in which we live our lives unchanged. I read the Farmer’s Almanac. I toil with the seasons. I look with pride upon the harvest and anger upon those pirate so-called “cowboys” who rob my livelihood and destroy my land’s work.

“And Maddy is a tired girl, stuck with some unknown illness that has her wasting away in a permanent, painful, and – God help me – cheerful malaise. I don’t despair, because she doesn’t despair.” Jim’s eyes began to water.

“I once took her to Abraham and pleaded with him to somehow help her. For a time he had me stand outside, waiting, but when he ushered me back in he told me…” Jim paused. For a moment I thought he would break down into tears. He did not. Instead he did the opposite. His shining eyes dried. His bowed back straightened. He did not cry. He became a rock. He was a Kansas farmer, solid through it all. “He said there was nothing he could do. He said that it was Maddy’s lot in life to be as she was and that only she could change it. I asked him how she might do that… how I could help her.

“But he said that wasn’t up to me. Abraham could not help her. I could not help her. Dewey, you can do nothing either. Only Maddy can help herself.”

I stared at Jim, and Jim continued to stare at the girl in the corner. For several minutes, neither of us said anything. I suppose that was Jim’s way. He only said what he needed to. When the silence became unendurable, he turned back to me. “It’s time to sleep, Dewey. Tomorrow will be a long and difficult day for you. You’ll need your rest now.” That said, Jim took up his shotgun, returned to his chair, and became silent and immobile, like a boulder, ready for whatever flood may come his way.

I returned to my place on the floor and tried to sleep, but could not. The tragedy of this implacable land had struck my gut like a brick. How could these two tired souls exist like this on a frontier land that should not be a frontier any longer? A deep sense of shame swept through me, as I imagined my beautiful, easy life with parents who cared for me, with cousins who would throw off all fetters just to be with me. Most of all I felt weakness and shame in knowing how powerless we all were to cure a little girl of an empty, meaningless sickness.

Jim did not cry that night. I did it for him.

In the morning it was as if our conversation had never happened. Jim was pleasant and energetic. He had risen before dawn and already packed the cart with everything we might need, save our personal items. With his help and guidance Kenzie, Jonathan, Aly, and I fit the rest of our things into the back of the cart.

My cousins worked quickly. They seemed pleased and ready to be off. I could not seem to work with their speed. I felt wrong, like we were not finished with this place. The problem was obvious, when I thought about it. Maddy was still asleep. How was I to leave without saying good-bye?

As we packed and stowed away our supplies, I dragged my feet. While the rest wolfed down their breakfasts, I toyed with mine. In every possible way I lingered, hoping that Maddy might move so I could hug her farewell.

With our repast over, the cart packed, the mule jumpy, and Thad and Heppy antsy to depart we stepped outside. The cousins all climbed into the cart, as I had volunteered to walk first. Jim shook our hands and gave the mule a slap on the backside. With that we began to move. I looked back at the house for what I resigned myself to be the last time and turned away.

There came a shout. “Wait!” I heard Maddy cry. I turned again, terrified and grateful. There she stood, outlined by that solid doorframe that had protected us from a storm of grasshoppers. Then Maddy did something that shocked both Jim and myself. She hiked up her skirts and ran.

As she laughed, tears coursing down her eyes, she seemed to fly. All around her wheat stalks that had already been harvested then ravaged by the past few days seemed to bend away. A brisk breeze from the southwest picked up, causing her hair and skirts to billow around her, as if she were an angel speeding through the heavens. Then she was upon us.

“Dewey,” she said, bent over, trying to catch her breath. “I’m so tired. I must get back to bed. It hurts. Oh, it hurts.” She paused, spent another few moments gasping, then caught her breath and stood up straight. “It hurts, but I couldn’t let you go. Not yet. Not without saying good-bye.” Then she flung herself at me. I closed my eyes as she hugged me so close that I could barely breathe.

“I have something for you,” she whispered in my ear. She released me and took my hand. “When are tired or uncertain, think of me and hold this to your heart.” Into my hand she placed a ring upon a chain. “This was my mother’s and her mother’s and her mother’s. It is nearly as much of me as my own little finger.”

She smiled a quiet smile at me and said, “It doesn’t feel like just two days, does it? I will miss you.” Then to my surprise she kissed me on the corner of my mouth and ran behind Jim.

I focused my attention on the farmer, who smiled the sad smile he had given me before. “Well?” he asked.

I stammered and said, “I’ll miss you too. I’ll miss you both.” I looked again at the ring in my hands. “Thank you, Maddy,” I whispered and turned back to the wagon, where my cousins and Thad were grinning at me. “Shut up, you guys,” I muttered.

The four of them returned their gazes to the northeast, and we were off: the sun at our faces, the world at our backs.