Speaking to Inspire

Daddy,” said the boy, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, “I put the wheelbarrow there because…”

“Have you forgotten what I said about making excuses!” shouted the father.

The young boy at once got out of bed and started dressing. “Daddy, would you please come with me? You know I’m afraid of the dark.” Tears were now running down the soft cheeks and his voice didn’t sound right.

“You left it there, Sissy. Go get it yourself.”

His mother, over-hearing her husband’s voice, went to the closet and took down her son’s windbreaker and a sweater for herself. Then she bent down and pulled out two pairs of rubber boots as there were still puddles everywhere. A driving drenching storm had started in the night and only ended at noon. She handed him his jacket and, noticing the tears on his face, stood by him as she put on her sweater and buttoned it up. He started to explain. “Mommy, you weren’t home and I was going to tell you….” His mother, with a fleeting glance to the living-room, put her finger to her mouth.

“It’s okay, son,” she said, intending to comfort him. Then she went to get the big flashlight. Just before the school-bus had brought their son home, the daughter of her best friend and closest neighbour had come cross-country, asking for help. They had quickly taken the same way, through the fields at the back of their small farm, as it was shorter than walking out the lane-way and taking the road. When she got back home, her boy was already in bed. He was one of those children who obey their parents.

Exhausted but holding the light in one hand and her boy’s hand in the other, she and her boy began walking out the long narrow dirt lane-way. The dark trees whispered mysteriously and thunder grumbled uncertainly in the distance.

When they came to the over-turned wheelbarrow, and just beyond it the small car, they stopped. She was beginning to hand the light to the boy, but he was already bending down and grasping the handles lying in the mud. Small as he was, he didn’t take long to turn it right-side up. Now it was the mother’s turn to cry.

For where the wheelbarrow had been, there was a gaping washed-out hole. She could see in an instant that had the boy not covered this cavity, the front corner of their small car would’ve dropped in and taken serious damage.

Trying to stifle her sobs, she wrapped her free arm around her boy, and pulled him close. Then, with the boy pushing the yellow wheelbarrow and his mother showing the way, they started back home. The thunder had moved off and the trees were friendly.

The young boy went back to bed, and his mother went to the living-room where her husband lay on the couch. He started to say, “What do you want?” but she only motioned to him. Thinking it must’ve been something important, he got up and followed her out of the house and into the narrow drive-way. When they approached the car and his eyes followed the beam of light down into the deep pit, he uttered the sacred name. When he caught himself, he said quietly, “Good grief.”

On their way back home, he was quiet. New feelings were stealing into his heart. Automatically he put his cap on the peg, bent down and pulled off each of his rubber boots, and then immediately – though slowly because he was finding it hard to see – found his way to the narrow hallway and to his son’s bedroom. After a soft knock, he quietly opened the door. Well, what he came her for could wait until morning, for their son was sleeping the sleep of the innocent – the innocent misunderstood – and his father had decided who he wanted to become.

As he was gently closing the door, he noticed tacked on the wall above the boy’s head, at the end of the small cot, a picture of himself and his boy, and the wheelbarrow. It was when he was splitting the wood and his son had insisted on helping him, by wheeling the firewood to the lean-to shed against the side of their house.

That night in the country, in a little house both unpretentious and unremarkable, three people slept ‘the sleep of the just’ – a little boy who used a wheelbarrow to keep his father from having an accident with the car, a tired woman who having just helped bring her best friend’s new son into this world, encouraged her own without one unkind word to her husband, and a man who was inspired to become a better father because his innocent son had done what he believed was best and refused to justify himself.

~~~

[The above story, Murray’s first serious piece of fiction, was written after he drove west from Huntsville across to highway 69 leading north to Parry Sound where he once lived. This connecting route # 141was really fun to drive, with its winding turns and rolling hills. There were many driveways along this highway and the woods came right up to their edges. Near the middle of one of these narrow lane-ways Murray noticed an overturned wheelbarrow.]

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