I toned down the darkness a bit in this one to try to move away from my comfort zone. It gave me an opportunity to also play with transitions and flashbacks. But of course, there’s a bittersweet angle. There had to be.
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
This was the spot. In some ways it had changed. Most of the alfalfa was gone, replaced with sprouts and stalks Will didn’t recognize. In other ways it was exactly the same. Like the sky, still full of blanket blues and pillow whites. Or the sun, lounging on the edge of the world unashamed of its glory. But he’d changed so much, except for the memories that had brought him here.
Here was a field he remembered well, his only companions now the weevils and aphids nibbling on what would soon be harvested and coiled into giant rolls of hay to sit under the precious sky. If only he could fly.
What was he going on about? A child’s mind that had gotten him into much trouble over the years, yielding many regrets. One towered over the others.
He uprooted a weed and rolled it between his fingers. Its seeds spread as if awakaened, and flew. Not much of a breeze, but those seeds were determined. They didn’t make it far, but far enough, right over to a patch of dirt, still damp, a mud so thick he’d almost lost his boot.
Those seeds settled into his bootprint, aligning themselves like tiny crop rows.
“And you said I had a black thumb,” Will said to the ghosts.
He waited, hoping for one in particular. One who called those hay rolls cinammon rolls that were freshest right before the sun dipped down, because it wasn’t too hot or too cold.
And there she was.
“Like Goldilocks,” Billy said to her.
She was like Goldilocks, with her hair all yellow like the hay she stood on, with her face all pretty and smiling.
Just right.
“Huh?” she asked, letting her backpack slip from her shoulders, which were just right, too. He would have touched them if he was up on that hay roll with her, if he had the courage.
“‘Not too hot. Not too cold.'” he said. “Goldilocks.”
“Billy James, I don’t know what you’re going on about.”
“Don’t call me that. You sound like my Momma.”
She looked over her shoulder as the sun lowered through the clouds, glazing them with that golden frosting. Her ponytailed hair captured that light, and he’d never seen a prettier girl.
“Remember when we used to play house?” she asked. “Back when we were little. That old shed in your backyard was our mansion and the horse trough was our olympic size pool? Where your black thumb failed the crops?”
He looked at the ground and kicked a stone free. “Don’t say it so loud.”
“Billy James are you afraid of the world learning that you played house with me at six years old and that I thought I would be the wife and you would be the husband, but you got all weird when I tried to kiss you when you came home from work and insisted that I was your mother and not your wife?”
He knelt beside the bike they’d ridden here and squeezed the front tire. “I think you got a flat.”
“Don’t you change the subject, Billy James,” she said.
“I said don’t call me that.”
“You’re the one who wanted me to be your mother, and you said that’s what she calls you.”
“I was a little kid.”
She looked down at him with her hands on her hips, ponytail still alive with the sun. Her cheeks were rosy in the right places, and he felt his own turn red, probably in the wrong places.
“Okay,” she said.
He kept squeezing the tire as if would tell him what to do next, give him a sign. Maybe a genie would pop out of the valve and grant him a wish to wish himself out of here. No, that was stupid and didn’t make sense.
“You going to come up or pinch that tire all day?” she asked. “It’s almost time.”
She faced the setting sun, which outlined her, and he saw shapes he’d never seen before. His cheeks burned.
He put his face to his shoulder as he tried to climb the hay roll so she wouldn’t see. All his attempts left him with nothing but handfulls of hay.
She cocked her head at him. “Never too old for Mommy’s help, huh?”
“Shut up,” he said, and immediately regretted it when her smile faded.
She squatted and held her hands out to him, then shook them when he didn’t give his to her.
He finally did and planted one foot on the hay roll as his other left the ground. Her head was thrown back with effort, exposing her neck. His open mouth went dry.
“Why,” she said through gritted teeth. “Didn’t . . . you . . . leave . . . your–”
She heaved him up onto the hay roll and he tumbled on top of her but quickly rolled off with his arms windmilling for balance.
“Backpack,” she said and grabbed his arm, steading him.
He stammered something, and she shook her head at him, her smile back.
“It’s time,” she said and plopped down, cross-legged.
He sat beside her.
“You still have your backpack on, silly.”
She slipped the straps off his shoulders and it was like his whole body electrified.
They sat in silence for a while, just watching the sun. It distorted the horizon like it was covered in plastic wrap. Birds took flight off a power line.
She elbowed him in the arm. “I know who Goldilocks is, you know.”
He nodded. “I know, I was just . . .”
“Just what?”
He shrugged.
“You smell the cinnamon?” She sniffed the air, and when she brought her head back down, it rested on his shoulder.
He turned into a scarecrow.
“How about now?” she asked.
He couldn’t separate his lips.
“You in there, Mr. James?”
“Mr. James?” he sputtered.
“That’s right.”
“Okay, then.”
Only the sun’s crown crested the horizon.
“Going,” she said, “going, and . . .”
From across the field of decades gone by, Will caught a hint of cinnamon and said, “Gone.”
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