Christopher's Journey: Sometimes it takes being lost to find yourself

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  The process of scything seemed almost natural to Chris even though he’d only done it once with the hay. The hot sun beat down it’s rays scorching Chris’s back as he found his rhythm with the scythe, back and forth, back and forth. It actually helped to have a song in his head with a similar beat to keep himself moving. What he wouldn’t give to hear any song from his time. Something with a drum punch and electric guitar. He tried hard not to forget the lyrics of the songs he once heard almost everyday. The only music he had heard since he arrived came from a fiddle, a harmonica and the piano from church.

  When Mason returned home from school, he joined the men out in the field. As Mr. Browley and Chris continued to scythe the wheat, Mason began bundling them with twine and setting the bundles up against each other.

  “What do you do that for?” Chris asked Mason as they took a short water break.

  “I’m bundling the wheat into sheaves and placing them into stooks.” Mason replied.

  Mason may have been talking in a different language and Chris would never have known it. “Into... what?” he asked in obvious confusion.

  “We need to get the wheat off of the ground to dry, so we bundle a stack with a tie to keep them together and lean them up against each other to get them off the ground. It dries the wheat out.”

  Chris nodded his head to signal that he understood. He understood the words, at least.

  Later that evening when the supper bell chimed, Chris stood upright for the first time since their last water break. His back cracked and ached on the way up. It wasn’t until Chris stopped working that he felt his muscles twitch and pulsate. He wiped his dirty, sweaty face and walked up to the house meeting Mr. Browley and Mason on the way. His legs felt like he was walking on two pieces of jello. Scything always seemed to take everything out of him. He wasn’t sure if he had the strength to even lift his fork.

  “Are you alright?” Mrs. Browley asked noticing Chris’s lack of desire to eat.

  “I’m just more tired then I ever have been. I think I’d rather sleep than eat.”

  “I hope you’re not coming down with something. George, you and Mason can handle the evening chores, can’t you?” Mrs. Browley looked at her husband with concern on her face.

  “I suppose so. You go on and head home and get some rest. We have a lot of work ahead of us for tomorrow.”

  Chris took every ounce he could muster to stand. He nodded to Mr. and Mrs. Browley and headed out the door. The shuffles of his tired feet made a dust path behind him and it felt like an eternity when he reached the sod house that now supported a sturdy door and a strong window.

  He didn’t even want to get undressed but had little desire to lay, with grimy clothes on, in a bed that Mrs. Browley had just washed and starched. Mortified with the night dress, as they called it, Chris slept in the clothes he arrived in. A simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He had noticed over the last month the ill fit in these clothes now. The jeans seemed tight around his thighs and the t-shirt choked him around the neck while his growing arms and chest almost tore out. He hadn’t even realized how much he had filled out the four months he’d been there.

  “Farm work does wonders on the bod.” Chris said out loud, flexing his arms.

  Realizing how much effort that took, he laid down on his fresh bed thinking that he’d be out before hitting the pillow. Instead, his head filled with those nagging thoughts again. Mostly, as usual, about Hanna. He still felt strongly about her. Her scoffs and glares had subsided over time but she still seemed to keep her distance. This yearning and aching for her didn’t seem to subside in Chris at all but the decision made by him was to give her space and try to be himself. If she didn’t like him for being himself, then it was not meant to be. That’s what Chris tried to believe, anyway. He wanted her whether she liked him for him or not.

  His thoughts then shot to Mr. Browley. He hadn’t realized it then but something Mr. Browley had said seemed to waft into Chris’s head. ‘You go on and head home and get some rest’. Home. This place that Chris despised only months earlier did seem like home to him, now. He felt he had a home, he felt he had a family. He was in love and would do anything he could to show Hanna that he was a good man. He had grown to appreciate hard labor and the ability to survive with work rather than theft.

  ‘Home.’ Chris thought again. ‘I’m home.’