A HANDFUL OF PEBBLES

 Wade Hunter picked up a handful of flat pebbles off the rocky edge of the pond and skipped the first one five times over the water's surface. Not bad! He thought to himself. I probably haven’t tried skipping stones since I was a teenager here on the farm. He stood for a few moments, basking in memories, skipping stones, and taking one long look over the old farmstead.

 Over the past decade, there had been no time for simple idle pastimes like skipping stones; he had been busy starting his career, building his business, and establishing his empire, and what an empire it was. Real estate, corporations, conglomerates; he had seen his fair share of hostile takeovers and corporate espionage as well. He had taken Toronto by storm and had quickly risen to unparalleled heights for a man his age and humble beginnings.

But now things would be different. A cruel act of fate sometimes captures one's attention, and fate had tragically caught Wade's attention. A drunk driver had done the predictable; crossed that yellow line, and plowed head-on into the truck his grandparents had been driving home from the county fair.

He thought they would live forever. They had been strong and healthy, always busy with things here on the farm. They were well-liked in their small country town, pillars of the community and now… now they were dead.

The funeral was two days ago. There was so much to do, clothes and furniture to donate, family photos, and treasures to pack up. Wade was now about to enter into negotiations with the next-door neighbour and his son Clint. Clint and Wade had gone to high school together. They had spent many summer hours swimming, fishing, and skimming stones in this very pond. Clint had married last year and already had a baby on the way. He and his wife were looking for a farm in the neighbourhood, close to their folks. What could be closer than the farm next door? Clint and his dad approached Wade after the funeral and suggested they talk when Wade was up to it. Wade nodded briefly. He was a savvy businessman who knew the advantages of closing a deal quickly, but he needed time to think and grieve.

  Wade looked around the property, the sturdy farmhouse on the hill, its wraparound porch with freshly painted white railings, and two white rocking chairs. Boston ferns still hung from the roof of the porch. I’d better bring them in, thought Wade idly.  

The red barn was still in good condition. Grandpa hadn’t run cattle on the property for quite a few years. Too much work, he had said, and he wasn't getting any younger. Raising beef was a young man's game. He had still managed the extensive vegetable gardens and had sold his produce at the local farmer's market.

 Wade turned back to the pond and skimmed a few more stones. On the far side of the pond was an old cabin. It wasn't really much to look at but it held a lot of memories. Memories of campfires and bonfires in the makeshift fire pit, memories of the rave he had held when his grandparents went away for the night for their anniversary. What a night that had been, fishing classmates out of the pond, and rescuing Clint from falling into the bonfire. The cabin might make a nice weekend retreat, hidden by a grove of trees, separate from the main house. It even had its own entrance from the road.

 If he sold the farm to Clint and his wife, they would be getting a bargain. He hadn’t the heart for his usual enthusiasm in the twists and turns of selling real estate. He didn’t care that his sale price was well below the market price. He somehow couldn’t bare to make a profit on this deal. This one was personal, painful, and all too real.

 Another stone seemed to bounce across the water. He should have been there… at the fair. He had been asked; asked a dozen times or more. An hour’s drive was all it took. Grandma had sent him a picture of the quilt she had worked on all year and was entering in one of the contests along with her pies and preserves. Grandpa was entering his pumpkins and potatoes; in addition, Grandpa was to be awarded the Farmer of the Year Award. But somehow, then, it had seemed not that important. What had he thought when he had first heard about the honour to be bestowed on his grandfather? Oh yes, that the award was “small potatoes.” He had thought about the prize jokingly and laughed privately at the pun, even as he had done his duty as a good grandson and congratulated his grandfather. He remembered thinking how “hokey” these county fair contests were with their cheap golden plaques and coloured ribbons. Several months ago he had won the “Young Entrepreneur” of the Year Award and had his picture plastered over Forbes magazine, Fortune 500 magazine, and on the front page of the Toronto Star.  The publicity alone was worth millions, and his bank accounts had skyrocketed. Now that was a prize he had thought at the time.

I’ve been such a fool, he thought as he picked out another flat pebble and threw it with all his pent-up anger and pain. He watched as it skimmed over the water repeatedly. I threw it all away, what I really cherished most in life is gone and all I have left are things that I now realize don’t matter at all.  Grandpa used to say, you can’t take it with you,  how right he was.  Man, how he missed the folks, they had always been there for him, every step of the way. They had even sold off one of their hayfields to put him through university, and all he had given them was grief. Oh, he hadn't been a bad kid, just the typical teenager, moody, selfish with zero motivation. He had resented his life on the farm with his grandparents rather than life in the city with his parents.  But they too were dead. He always complained to his Grandparents about chores, but those chores gave him a faultless work ethic later in life. He had hated his job of feeding the hogs night and day come rain, snow, or sleet, but he could now see that it had taught him dependability.   All those chores had taught him how to succeed in the concrete jungle.

 In truth, life on the farm with his grandparents had grounded him. Grounded him … how he hated that analogy. He remembered the day that he and his grandfather had been planting seeds in the dirt. Grandpa was loading the seed into the truck and Wade in typical teenage fashion had been grumbling about the job. Grandpa had reached down and scooped up a handful of dirt and placed it in Wade's hand. This, my boy, is what really matters, the earth, this will always keep you grounded. Get it, grounded, he chuckled and Wade had shook his head and thought, oh there's another Grandpa joke.

 Then there was the time they had been working in the garden, and Grandpa told him, Son, always remember your roots and he had put a root in Wade’s hand. Countless little Grandma and Grandpa jokes had run through his head over the past few days.

 If he closed his eyes he could almost see Grandpa and Grandma sitting in their rockers watching the sun go down in the evening.  Grandpa would be strumming his old guitar while Grandma sat beside him, her knitting in her busy hands. The old adage, You never know a good thing till it's gone, came sharply to mind. Trite but true.

The past few Christmases he’d been too busy to come up to the Folks country dinner. Instead, he and his girlfriend Felicity had eaten at fancy restaurants in the city, dining on expensive white china plates with some French dip artfully decorating the plate, while a pile of expensive food towered in the center. He couldn’t even remember what the food was. It certainly wasn’t Grandma's golden brown turkey, served with cranberry dressing, homemade gravy, mashed potatoes, and an array of vegetables from the family gardens. He remembered with fondness Grandma’s plum puddings and pies that he had tucked away after dinner. Of course, he had sent gifts, expensive gifts, and they had all kinds of computer software so they could Skype back and forth. It wasn’t like he had cut them off…was it? When the old well had gone belly up and Grandpa had asked him to come up for the weekend to give him a hand, he’d done one better and purchased a whole new state-of-the-art system and hired a crew to install it too.

Another stone went sailing into the water. It was hard to get away. Felicity wasn’t a country fan. She hated the bugs and the heat and the smell and old people were creepy and…the list went on. She always had a reason why they shouldn’t go visit the Grandparents on those rare occasions that he might have gotten away. There was always some logical reason for her refusals. Her own apartment across town was being redecorated and she needed to supervise the project as the entire hired staff were totally incompetent. His input would be invaluable as of course, his taste was impeccable.  Or, the Taylors were jetting in from Tahiti or the charity gala was that weekend or she suddenly needed an escort to the social function of the season. There seemed to be endless reasons that she came up with for not visiting the farm. It never seemed apparent to him until now.

 So time passed and somehow the distance from his downtown penthouse condo to the Grandparent's farm grew longer and longer, and less and less traveled.

  Another pebble skimmed the water. Dang, he couldn’t use Felicity as a scapegoat. It was his pride, his selfishness, his…fault that had led to the rift between himself and the Folks. No, not really even a rift. There had been no dramatics, no big scene, just a quiet separation and a gulf between them that grew deeper and deeper and wider and wider as time went by. He knew it was his fault. His inane desire to put the past behind him, to hide those humble beginnings. After his parents had died when he was seven, they had taken him in and loved him like their own. He was their own… their grandson, their only grandson. He had missed his life in the city with his parents but his mum would have understood. She had run off the farm and made a life for herself when she was just eighteen. 

 Another stone skipped across the pond. For years, he had resented those early hours of morning chores, feeding the livestock, mucking out the stables, the endless weekend chores, fixing fences, repairing tractors, fixing wells, and then… when the sun came up the next morning and the rooster crowed… it would all begin again. The endless cycle. He had felt caught in a wheel like a hamster, imprisoned in its small cage, a hamster that couldn’t slow down and get off.

He thought that moving to the city would be his escape. He hurled the next pebble into the water, not even trying to skim it.  Out here…by the water…it all somehow seemed clear to him.  Yes, the city had been his salvation, his escape, but now it was its own type of prison, he had only traded one small hamster wheel in a steel cage for a larger golden wheel and the city was just a gilded cage. But with one of life’s inexplicable foibles, the ever-turning wheel had ground to a halt and the cage door was now wide open. It’s true he thought, “You can take the farm boy off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy.”  With a head full of confusion and difficult decisions, a heart full of grief, and a soul filled with torment, the last pebble left his hand and endlessly skipped across the water into the sunset.