Life in the Countryside

"Father, I uh, I..." my fingers played around, rolling across each other, enjoying their own hidden reality which I would gladly indulge myself in, but Father's questioning glare refused to let me retreat.

The old, worn out house stood swaying in the cool winds that breezed through fields cherished with a love stronger than what any man could bear for gold.

The short walls of the house enclosed us, leaving no space to escape. The sofa brought upon the sticky feeling unique to that of leather, each brush against it dragging it along the hems of cloth that touched it, and I stood standing in the middle of this wooden house, my feet strongly planted on the ground in fear that they would attempt to run if I ever lost myself within a moment of distraction.

With a short black stubble poking out of his chin, a trained old body not yet rusty from years of work it had been wrung through, tanned skin brought by years worth of time spent under the open Sun, calloused hands that could only be wielded by a farmer born and bred by the field and unkempt black hair that had carefully traversed through years of ancestry stood upon his head.

With his feet spread wide open and his arms leaning against his knees, preventing the delicate balance of his back from collapsing, Father sat with his eyes staring at me with the questioning gaze of one who wanted nothing spoken, but wanted that delicate reality we had artificially constructed to strike the embrace of the words that would come.

He wasn't some great hero from the legends nor some malevolent villain feared by all living beings. Father was a simple farmer with a simple life, just like any other man found in Kansas.

Waking up at the crack of dawn, he would tend to the cattle in the barn, seeing the dog out to roam the open fields, and while the Summer Sun poured buckets of heat upon him, his old body would diligently strike each piece of soil, while his hands would gracefully dance over the golden fields of wheat, not leaving a single grain to be born in waste.

It's been like that for 40 years for him and 40 decades for this family, and breaking 400 years worth of time with 4 words brought forth an irresistible pressure leaving me unable to let a single word out of my mouth.

Father was a simple man, he worked hard, he worked long and he's worked every day ever since he was a child. As I said, a simple man but a great one to me.

"Go on boy." His voice slowly prodded me on, forcing me to traverse this reality which would be best of hidden from my sight.

I was never one who could live on a farm, I've lived here for 18 years but each moment was spent yearning for the city which I'd only ever heard of in the books.

People would push through the crowded street, the peaceful chaos pulsating through each man and woman who walked by, while cars honked, and the air riled up in anticipation for the shiny green light to deem that those below may pass.

The places, the people; each and every revelation I received about life in the city only cemented in me the reality that I stood in the middle of nowhere doing nothing while other went upon grand adventures throughout the world hidden beyond.

Years of great journeys, factual and fictional were documented in these small slits of paper, leaving a small boy to regretfully cherish what lay in the world beyond.

I knew it, that I must speak, that those cursed words growing within me must escape, that they desperately stood pressing against the faucet to curse or to bless what remained of my reality. If I sat in silence, bearing this reality that fate wrought upon me, then I too, would be a subject to misery brought upon by a fear of my own words.

My eyes slowly turned to his, and we both understood that it was inevitable.

"Father, I ... I want to go to the city." I hesitated through all the words as they struggled to reach out my throat, but the final word brought me to a peaceful state of embracing the chaos that would inevitably come.

I stood with my eyes staring down at the floor, my mind open to the hurdles of abuses that would soon drown out any thoughts that I could hold within my mind.

...

Nothing,

My brain didn't register any sounds. My first thought was to check my ears to see if they malfunctioned rather then look at father to see if he had spoken.

With no visible defects on my ears, my eyes slowly entered an arduous journey of slowly turning back to father.

He never really had a wide range of expressions, nor was there really a need to attempt to read his face, all that he felt was spoken, not hidden in some deep alley of his mind to foster a secret reality of its own.

He wore an expression of deep conflict- of regret but also one of facing an inevitable reality. His palms gripped tightly against each other as his back arched and his mind struck far away, contemplating over what his words and emotions should be.

I knew what he felt, but knowing everything that would come from either of those words he must say, I knew that I could never understand how he felt, nor did I ever want to be in a situation that I would bear the same feelings.

Each moment of this loud silence cut a hundred years of life from what I had left, his eyes slowly growing muddled while the expression hung upon his face like a painting nailed to a wall.

Stuck to the ground, his eyes refused to budge, the walls of silence built over hundreds of years were struck down by the simple phrase that hoarsely struck out from his mouth,

"Okay"