Farmer in the Dark

August 13, 2018

Greetings from the lesson,

There is danger in the world.

The road was quiet, we had our slice of the pavement to ourselves for miles at a time.  Most of the traffic had moved to the new interstate a few miles away, roaring between the Blue Water Bridge and everywhere west.  We edged toward Canada, pedaling one behind the other, tucked against the white line.

The day was fading, already showing that dull orange-gray that summer evenings can hold.   We could see fireflies in the woods along M 21.  Night was coming, emboldened by the sun’s retreat.  Darkness flowed at us from the east and we pedaled to meet it.

The map in my back pocket said that somewhere in this stretch of road was a roadside rest stop.  A little red picnic table icon on the smudge grey line that took us from our town to another country.  Not a fancy rest area, like you would see on the highways, just one of those gravel turn arounds, maybe a pit toilet and a rough-sawn pine picnic table, and if we were lucky a pump well.  

It’s hard to say what two teenage boys had in mind.  We left home too late in the day to make it to the border, or to anywhere in particular.  We were planners of adventure, and sometimes the adventure overshadowed the details.  It was maybe seventy miles to Canada, but we’d have to stop somewhere along the way. 

We were carried on courage born of optimism and innocence.  Our world, so far, had shown us mostly challenges that we could overcome, only exploration and discovery and laughter and beginning again. We did not think in terms of Plan B.  Life was endless summer.

And now the day finally gave out.  Somewhere in the dimness we missed the place we thought we would sleep.  We rode on, thinking we might still see it, until the time came we couldn’t see anything.  The darkness soaked us in.  We coasted to a stop, stood talking about what to do next. 

Lights played on the road from behind us, and a station wagon slowed at the shoulder and eased to a stop. The passenger window was down, and a young girl peered at us.  A man was behind the wheel, outlined by the light from the dash.  He leaned over and looked up at us. 

“Need help?” he asked.

We bent down and looked back, Tom and I, and told him our one sentence story.  The man waited for a moment and said: “If you need a place to stay you’re welcome to come with us.”

I did not like this.  Standing in the dark, not sure of where I was, a stranger was offering help.  I did not feel helped, I felt fear.  This was danger.  Ice crept up from my chest.

In one of the rare moments we were not mentally in synch, Tom immediately said “Sure!” I nudged him, and we straightened, and I tried to whisper, in a few words, the one thousand frightening images that had just flashed behind my eyes.  There was something that didn’t feel right to me.  Tom laughed his ‘get over it’ laugh, and we moved off.

We followed the station wagon, driving at a pace we could maintain on bicycles, onto a dark, hardpack dirt road that led off the main drag.  We followed the red dots of the tail lights; there was not a single house, not a light anywhere.  The car turned into a gravel driveway and the headlights gave shape to a house that had been hidden in the night.  An old frame house, ragged from the weather.  The windows were blank. 

If I were going to write a story where two boys disappeared, this is how it would look.  This would be the paragraph where the reader would be screaming at the page. 

“I’m not sure about this.”  I said.  “Where is the family, why is the place so dark?”

Tom felt none of this and smiled at me, barely visible in the half light.  He said:

“What is there to be worried about?  He is the one who should be nervous, bringing home a couple strangers off the road.  Just relax.”

We squeezed into the kitchen, one light switched on over a worn oak table.  The man stepped to a vault-like Kelvinator and unlatched the door and swung it open.  He reached into the crowded shelves and pulled out a plate covered in foil.

“Do you like potato pancakes?” he asked.  Neither of us knew the answer to that question.  We wedged ourselves under the table and the girl piled the cold pancakes on plates and pushed them across to us.  We sat with large, heavy glasses of water and forked the pancakes into our mouths.

Slowly the ice in my chest melted.  Maybe this was just what it seemed, a kind person helping travelers in need.  I wanted to feel that, and I pushed the fear down, swallowed it with potato pancakes.

The man disappeared up a set of stairs and was back in a few minutes to tell us we were welcome to sleep in the attic bedroom.  I watched him in the cramped kitchen, tried to sense if I was letting my imagination overrule reality.  In the end fatigue defeated my unease.  Tom and I rolled into a lumpy bed mounded in quilts, and both of us fell asleep.

I woke disoriented, sleeping in my clothes, tangled in a strange bed.  Someone was talking to me. I panicked for a moment, trying to piece together what was happening.  The man was at our door, the hall light behind him.  It was still dark outside.  He would be going to work shortly, and it was time for us to eat and be going.

Breakfast was more cold potato pancakes.  We sat alone with the man in the kitchen, the house quiet, the day not yet started for anyone else.  He sipped a cup of coffee while we ate and we talked in quiet voices, little notes back and forth about each other.  And I learned the lesson.

We said goodbye and pointed our wheels away from the dark house, bumped along the pocked dirt road.  By the time we were back on pavement it was light enough to see.  We rolled east toward the sunrise, toward the day filled with adventure.

                                                                             

There is danger in the world.  I know even more about that now than I did when I was fourteen.  I have learned to be suspicious, to be cynical, to be critical, to judge and fear.  I know it is healthy to pay attention to the danger, to protect ourselves and those we care for. 

I have also learned that the real danger is often what we bring with us.  The fear we sense of the unknown, of the different, of what we think we know.  The real danger is rarely to us, but to what is poisoned by our fear.

In hundreds upon hundreds of moments where Tom and I knocked on a door, or waited in a park, or stood in the rain, or in the dark on the side of the road, people answered our need with the offer of help.  A patch of grass to sleep on, some food, a bed, a shower, an open door to their life.  The place where fear belongs is the exception, not the norm.

This is one of the lessons I learned on the road and brought into my life for every mile since then.  I’m sharing it this morning as a reminder for both of us.

Hope this finds you fearless,

David