Horizon Pike

The mud and gravel on Horizon Pike had eroded during the last wave of flooding, transforming the once familiar country road into a crooked, unforgiving coil. The wheels of Ethan's thirty year-old '87 Chevy pickup sank in little jumps and dips as they found their way, trying as best they could to satisfy the cautious whims of their driver.

To the right, a run of slightly weathered split-rail fencing, which he had painstakingly installed two years ago followed the curve ahead and disappeared. On the left, a massive pine forest stretched itself high and deep. The trunks of the needled giants showed decades of battered strength, their bark taut and gnarled from countless storms, hungry insects, and families of animals making their homes. From the moment he'd first seen it, this vast sea of pines had always reminded him of an infinity mirror, replicating itself over and over, flashing eerily toward some unseen focal point.

He slowed the truck to a creaking stop and hand-cranked the driver's side window down. Staring out into the pines, he inhaled deeply, smiling sadly, remembering, naming each smell in a faint whisper- "pine needles, wet earth, early spring wildflowers, rain coming soon... again." Ripples of memory traveled like overlapping lightning strikes down the back of his neck: their first night in the house together, the warmth and contentment he had felt in those first days watching his wife, Alice, map out where they would plant, while he crouched, dipped his fingers into the dense soil and brought it to his tongue to taste the loamy texture.

Smelling that same earth now, wrenched back to the present, sitting dumbly in the middle of the road, his hands tightened around the steering wheel. Unconsciously shifting the beat up farm truck into Drive, he pressed slightly on the gas pedal, steering down the uneven stretch, nearing the long sweeping arc toward the property. Just past a copse of birch trees on the right, the view opened up and the farmhouse appeared. He made it a point to keep his eyes fixed stubbornly on the neglected ten-acre field and not on the farmhouse beyond it. He knew Alice was probably watching for his arrival.

Gathering his resolve, he accelerated quickly and yanked the steering wheel a half turn to the right. The truck reluctantly obeyed, it's aging V-8 grumbling and growling under the hood, as it took a short incline and came level at the front corner of the field, its wheels spinning erratically in the deep, untilled soil. The steering wheel shuffled back and forth, his arms shaking from side to side like a dancing ragdoll, the temperamental Chevy fishtailing and spraying soil and straw from its back wheel wells. He came to a sliding stop about ten feet from a lonely-looking 1970 International Farmall tractor. Sitting stoically for a few moments, he gazed intently at the machine, its chassy blanketed with alternating layers of orange paint and rust.

When they had closed on the purchase of the farm two and a half years ago, they still had a couple months before they would move out to the place from center city Philadelphia. But their excitement had gotten the best of them and as they were driving back to the city, floating on the adrenaline of the closing, they pulled off the road to inspect this very tractor, which at the time had a sad-looking for sale sign hanging awkwardly off the metal seat. They bought it that day, completely forgetting the gap of time before they would actually set foot on their new property. They laughed with each other when they realized it, the farmer they purchased from looking perplexed and nodding slowly with confusion and skepticism. But he let them keep it in his barn until they moved. It ran decently and had served them well the first year the land was farmed.

From the driver's seat of the Chevy, the memory forced a cynical chuckle, and he shook his head wearily, amazed at their naivete back then. Stepping down carefully off the running board, he exited the truck and whipped the creaking, dented door shut with an overzealous slam. He reached over the side of the truck bed, his body curving into an awkward C shape. He pulled up a weathered, tan tool bag, turned around, glanced back vaguely across the field, and spotted a dim light glowing from the farm house's kitchen. Small movements in the frame of the window froze suddenly, and he knew she had stopped whatever she was doing to watch him, God knows what passing through her mind. He nervously held his gaze to the window as he walked around the side of the tractor and dropped the bag next to him, face to face with the old work horse's engine housing. He lifted his eyes to the surrounding land and scanned the ten acres. He thought it looked like an expansive, hastily-stitched quilt of rotting remnants from last year's flower harvest. A full year had passed since he'd handled this soil. The accident had taken him away, and with it, the work that needed to be done... the work he had grown to love. Farming had taken some getting used to: the early mornings and running from task to task until the evening's half-lit silence would slow him down and whisper gently for him to rest. He'd walk back to the house exhausted and energized, every muscle in his body humming with a mix of soreness and satisfaction.

Now, she wanted to take on the work alone, and so many other things apparently, alone. But she needed this favor from him- to fix the dead tractor so that she could cut furrows in the dormant ground, turning over the earth, with the hope of ushering in a new, abundant yield.

He came forward a couple steps, removing the needed tools from his bag, and bent low to get a closer look at the spark plugs. As he spotted them nestling in the oil-caked engine, a familiar, searing pain suddenly shot from the top of his left foot, through his kneecap, and twisted up into his inner thigh. The burning sting knocked him to his hands and knees in the deep, sloppy mud. He violently inhaled through clenched teeth, his eyes tightly watering in a twisted grimace. Deeply breathing the pain away, still on all fours, he turned his face upward toward the house, and saw her silhouette in the window, little angles of light half-illuminating her face like a distant, steady clock keeping watch on his struggle. After a few moments, she slowly, absently looked down and was gone from sight.

Sitting back on his heels, taking one final breath to gather himself, he reached up and grabbed the rusty, curved side of the tractor's seat and awkwardly rose to his feet. Warm waves of soreness pulsed along the path in his leg, where the gripping sting had been. Glancing at his hand and then back to the empty kitchen window, he smiled faintly, remembering the first time they had tried to plant in this field, foolishly overestimating their ability to make things grow easily from the ground. That first day working on the farm, the two of them labored just past dusk, their bodies unimaginably exhausted, their hands mummified in dust and dirt. Sitting quietly in the soil after the marathon of planting, eyes locked, they gently massaged each other's spent muscles, recounting their mishaps from the day, their delirious laughter descending into the perfect silence of passion and understanding. In spite of his exhaustion that night, he had lifted her, wrapping her legs around him. He remembered how bold they were, quickly stripping naked as the sunset brought on a steady country breeze. They made love standing under a dim, orange sky. He could still taste her smiling kisses as he remembered putting himself inside her, a startled, screaming laugh escaping from her mouth when her bare back came up against the cold steel frame of the tractor. He could see her mouth whispering to him how incredible the chilled metal on her back felt mixing with the warm, full feeling of him inside her.

He could feel the cool, country breeze dancing with their nakedness as they walked back in the dark, leaving their clothes strewn over every part of the tractor. They had joked, goose-pimpled as they laughed all the way to the house, that if any of their new conservative neighbors had been watching them, their beautifully shameless, open-air lovemaking was the ultimate rebellion.

Now he stood next to the dead machine, his hand on that same steel. It felt dented and lukewarm under his palm. He turned his attention to the engine and got to work.

__________________________

He came in through the mudroom door. Standing at the sink with her back to him, Alice sharply turned her head, first glancing at his mud-caked boots, and then staring him down with complicated annoyance. Comprehending, he slipped off the boots and wet socks. As he cautiously entered the kitchen, the coolness of the Spanish tiles sent a familiar jolt into his bare feet. over two years, so many times in and out of that room, heading both to somewhere, and from somewhere.

As he passed her on her right, he stopped, reached around her left shoulder, grabbed a cobalt blue drinking glass and filled it from the stainless steel faucet. After smoothly swallowing all of it, he said gently, "it's fixed. Should work for you now."

She coldly nodded staring straight ahead, guarded, her shoulder blades just barely touching his chest. his presence was still such a burden for her, but his proximity was electrifying. He gently set the glass on the counter and looked out the window over her shoulder, both of their gazes fixed on the dense pine forest beyond the large field of uncultivated, dead flowers. He knew she didn't want him there, but she stood, tensley, her mind swinging between deep-set rage and curious anticipation.

He broke the silence. "You ok if I take a quick shower?"

She looked at him over her shoulder, shaken momentarily from her carousel of thoughts. "Yeah, that's fine,'' she mumbled warily.

She had barely noticed that he had gently placed his right hand high on her waist, his fingers spread out wide, an index finger on her bare skin resting against her rib-cage up under the loose tank top she had slept in. His pinky lay across her hip bone, brushing the top of the low waistband of her pajama bottoms. She now looked straight over her shoulder at him. As their eyes locked, the pain of the moment held them both fixed to the earth. They seemed to be exchanging rapid messages to each other in a heated stare of exhaustion, sadness, love, and regret. Their breath came quick and in unison. Her shoulder blades pressed harder into his chest. He pulled her closer, just a little, but enough that the full length of her body curved against his. Without realizing it, she began to move against him in a sleepy sway as if prompted by a very distant, forgotten rhythm. Resting his forehead against the back of her head, he sensed the danger of the moment, gripped her waist hard, and then broke away, retreating to the foot of the stairs just outside the kitchen. She had not taken her eyes off of him from the moment he stepped up behind her at the sink. With a lost glance, he slowly made his way upstairs to the second floor.

She turned back to the window and stared out, her heart pounding her ribs out in little jumps. Her hand unconsciously dropped to where he had placed his. She froze, puzzled, and felt a wet grittiness. He had left a muddy handprint, like a quickly rendered tattoo. Somewhere between annoyance, anger, and need, she watched herself put her own hand on top of the muddy phantom hand on her skin. He'd lightly pressed his fingertips into her when he walked away, and she could still feel the pressure, as if he had just slightly dipped himself under the surface of her, a charged, complicated reminder. Her fingers searched and softly scraped across her belly and back to her hip bone. She concentrated, feeling her own skin; pale, wet, and gritty from his grip. Her eyes lolled shut, her fingertips trembling and unconsciously travelling under her waistband, downward. A deep and sudden twinge of pleasure took her by surprise, ripping her breath away. She stopped herself, and when she found her breath, it came out in a vicious, mind-erasing exhale that sounded like a long hiss. She quickly gathered herself, turned the water on full blast, wet a dish towel, and scrubbed his muddy impression from her skin. She heard a short, tortured yell from upstairs. She had turned the hot water on in the sink, leaving him caught in a cold shower. She smiled at the thought of briefly taking away his comfort; a vengeful, teasing gesture. Then she began to turn the hot water off in the kitchen sink. With a faintly wicked grin, she spun the knob... Very. Slowly.

Leaning with his back against the far wall of the shower, he laughed bitterly at her practical joke, knowing she was making him wait for the hot water. He felt the temperature slowly change as streams of cold water gave way to warmth pouring down his legs. He tilted his head back, arching his neck, his mouth lazily open.

After a few minutes, he tilted forward, as if surfacing out of a half-sleep. Looking down, he watched the streams of water pelt the front of his body, taking the soil and dust from his skin; strange, small, dirty rivers on the floor of the tub forming a delta, and then dissipating around the drain and twisting down into the darkness.

He hadn't realized it, but as he followed these muddy tributaries with his eyes, he was absently running his index finger along a knotted and curving scar on his left leg that ran from the middle of his kneecap, up the front of his leg, and came to a gnarled stop at the top of his inner thigh. With bored fascination, he lowered his finger again and started tracing a second time, from his kneecap, up the serpentine pathway left by the incision. When his fingertip reached the end of the scar just next to his groin, a sharp, tingling pain took hold and wrapped like an angry boa constrictor around his upper thigh. This often happened because of the nerve damage he had sustained. The prickly wave travelled to his lower abdomen like wayward butterflies, and shivered swiftly downward. Knowing what was coming, he braced himself, pressing his hand into the wall. An intense rush of blood flowed into his groin, a mix of welcome sensation and pain, signalled directly from the top of the scar. Since the accident, he'd felt this strange shot of pain and pleasure emanating from his wound a number of times. He ran his fingertips under the length of his half-erection to the tip, almost trying to catch this pain signal. His length twitched upwards and settled in his hand, growing and stiffening.

He felt confused and slightly annoyed, being turned on like this, being teased and tormented by pain and pleasure. And the very place added to the intoxication- their shower, now her shower. He was still so weakened by her; her presence, her mind, her body.

His head now dipping slightly forward and his eyes closing, he thought of her nearness in the kitchen, her stillness, her waist and ribs in his hand. Almost fully erect now, he began to move his hand up and down with a light grip. After a moment, he stopped, exhaled quickly and softly knocked his head back against the tiled wall in frustration. Staring straight ahead, pained, he turned his attention back to the scar. Sometimes it appeared to him like a mountain road he was viewing from 30,000 feet above the ground. Other times he imagined himself in miniature, caught like a trapped animal struggling in its zipper-like, leathery curve. Mostly though, when he became fixated on it long enough, flashes of the day everything changed would steal his mind and take him back to that Spring...

__________________________

March was always the time of year when farm machinery got overworked, hastily fixed, and then temporarily broken down. And because he was the youngest in a 3-mile radius, the older farmers could be seen on many occasions making the long trip up his driveway to ask for help with tough fix-jobs that required some muscle and sustained work in awkward positions, mostly underneath something huge and heavy.

One particular veteran farmer, far past retirement age, picked him up on an unusually cold morning in late March. That year, they had seen good planting weather early. But this day was an exception. The man drove his fully-loaded Ram with reckless abandon, causing his young passenger to swear quietly as he spilled coffee on his lap in little tidal waves.

Exiting the truck at the neighboring property, he swung himself deftly out the passenger side door. It was a dry, crisp morning, and the 6 a. m. sun gleamed with a diagonal glare, filtered through dust and tiny specks of straw carried by a swooping, steady breeze. His neighbor broke into a chipper yet laboured jog toward his house, announcing over his shoulder that he was going to make a pot of coffee for them. He gave the old farmer a tired nod and strolled over to the outbuilding nearest where they had pulled up, hands in his pockets, kicking stones across the gravel driveway. He'd chosen his dark blue Chuck Taylor low-tops instead of his steel toe work boots that morning, and his feet felt light, the uneven topography of the gravel pressing into the soles of his feet. He had no business wearing shoes like these, about to repair heavy machinery on a working farm. But from what the farmer had told him earlier about the situation, he figured it would be a quick and easy fix.

At the long side wall of the outbuilding sat a corn combine. Its wheels had been removed and it appeared to hover, balanced on large cinder blocks at each of its corners. He stood before the hulking machine, contemplating it. He would never need something so big for his land. It simply wasn't necessary for a 10-acre flower farm. But his neighbor had 500 acres of corn and soybeans to plant and harvest. The man's son and daughter had chosen not to continue in the line of three generations of farming. So, the land was tended by the old man and a number of fairly capable part-time hands.

Scanning his eyes from one end of the combine to the other, he could see that there had been a number of makeshift repairs over the years. He saw on the left lower end a piece of badly bent metal in the shape of a twisting, upside down "u". The end of the piece dipped downward, protruding well below the level of the wheels. From the old man's description, this was the fix that was needed. He let out a puzzled chuckle. He had been a diesel mechanic by trade, and guessed that they all thought a diesel mechanic could fix just about anything on a farm.

The old man had placed a small sledgehammer next to the combine in anticipation of the repair. So he knelt on all fours, grabbed the sledgehammer and army crawled underneath between the cage like bars. Now he understood why he had been asked to come. He had to lay in a twisted position and hammer out the bent metal with an awkward, backhand swing, taking most of his body's leverage out of the equation. Fortunately, he most likely had enough upper body strength to get the job done. He didn't have a weight room body, but he was broad-shouldered and naturally muscled from being a former college athlete. He gauged the angle and distance with the sledge and took a swing. The twisted metal vibrated and gave a little. He hit it a few more times and it obeyed, starting to adjust back towards its rightful position. He now had to hammer the piece back the other way a bit, so he changed his position, turning on his belly to make the task easier with a better angle. He began to pound the stubborn metal, and could see past his work to the far right corner where the combine rested on its block. He froze, laying the sledgehammer on the grass next to his head, and saw what he hadn't noticed when he'd first walked up to the crippled machine: the front corner was perched precariously on the edge of the cinder block, with about half an inch to spare. He thought for a moment, figuring that the sheer weight of the machine, combined with its balance on the other three cinder blocks would keep it steady. It would only take a handful more hits to straighten the damage out, and then he could quickly shimmy his way out from under the combine.

He took a hard swing, then five more, and the piece finally came back into alignment. With a quick breath, he tossed the sledge a few feet out to his right into the grass. It tumbled awkwardly, leaving little sprays of dew in its wake. He began to army crawl, finding his way out, and stopped for a moment, sensing a strange shadow passing overhead, moving in the direction of his crawl, like a prehistoric bird of prey flying low. He heard a grotesque, hollow grinding and craned his neck up, seeing that the front corner of the combine was beginning to slide forward from its balance on the tilting cinder block. He rolled sideways as fast as he could, the machine's huge metal frame avalanching toward him. His right leg rolled free. Now on his back, he turned quickly to clear the left side of his body.

His momentum came to a sudden, violent stop as the front edge of the combine landed lengthwise on his left leg, yanking him mercilessly back like helpless prey. At first, staring up through the waving branches of the huge maple next to the building, he could only feel the weight, the massive downward push of thousands of pounds. He deliriously imagined himself caught in the bowels of a sinking ship, plunging into the abyss. His awareness numbed, he looked from side to side helplessly, oddly mute. He was outside of himself, like he was a few safe feet away, observing the scene.

He managed to pull himself up to his elbows, and in a daze looked down. The front edge of the combine had landed perfectly in line with and on top of his leg. The metal edge appeared to him like a ruthless, clumsy blade, splitting his thigh wide open lengthwise, and causing his knee cap to splay sideways and up in an awkward ascent, almost ripping through the stretched skin. He began to register the severity of what had just happened. He saw, almost too vividly, that there was a horribly deep tear in his quadricep muscle. Mangled. Slightly shredded. He saw the dull, off-white of bone, broken and splintered like a lightning-struck sapling. Now there was a rising tide of blood, overtaking the bone and muscle, quickly pooling and spilling over the sides of the massive wound. With dumb curiosity, he wondered if the lumbering machine had severed the artery in his upper thigh.

He began to feel strangely alive, the pain appearing slowly and throbbing viciously through his leg. For a moment his voice struggled and sputtered in a quiet, pathetic cry. Then, as he began frantically looking around, he heard himself, as if at a distance, screaming for help, straight up into the air. The screen door of the farmhouse sprang open, and the old man descended the stairs in a clunky, terrified run. He threw the full coffee mugs to the side, the hot liquid skidding across the tops of his hands. He shook them as he stiffly and made his way to where the young man lay. As he approached, he uselessly mumbled, "Jesus Christ" over and over, his eyes darting back and forth, searching for a solution. The younger man pleaded for an ambulance, helplessly waving the old farmer away to go back inside and call for help.

Losing gaps of time in his mind, the next minutes were like a suffocating montage: He saw the boots of various firefighters coming in and out of focus, paramedics talking quietly, gently hovering over him. And then a surreal, painfully relieving weightlessness, as the firefighters slowly lifted the combine off of his leg with two large truck jacks. The efficiently urgent flurry of activity once his leg was free- putting pressure on the wound, balancing an oxygen mask on his panting mouth, being lifted onto the gurney and hustled into the waiting ambulance. The slow, bumpy ride toward the road across the grass and gravel, his maimed, dead leg being thoughtlessly jostled.

Almost to no one in particular, the old man exclaimed, "I'll drive up to fetch your wife. We'll come straight to the hospital!", as he lamely trotted after the departing ambulance. The old man climbed up into his truck and hastily began accelerating before he had closed his door. He teetered awkwardly from side to side and then shut it with a hollow clang. The ambulance turned right onto the road, accelerating quickly in the direction of the small regional hospital three miles away. The old man swung his pickup around and jumped and drifted into a quick left turn, making his way to the young man's farm to deliver the news to his wife and get her to the hospital.

To Be Continued...