LITMIR.BIZ

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      He picked up the scythe weakly. The words on the metal leaped up with a sharp glitter.

      WHO WIELDS ME – WIELDS THE WORLD!

      ‘We’ll stay …’

      Next morning he walked to the old man’s grave. There was a single fresh sprout of wheat growing in the center of it. The same sprout, reborn, that the old man had held in his hands weeks before.

      He talked to the old man, getting no answers.

      ‘You worked the field all your life because you had to, and one day you came across your own life growin’ there. You knew it was yours. You cut it. And you went home, put on your grave clothes, and your heart gave out and you died. That’s how it was, wasn’t it? And you passed the land on to me, and when I die, I’m supposed to hand it over to someone else.’

      Drew’s voice had awe in it. ‘How long a time has this been goin’ on? With nobody knowin’ about this field and its use except the man with the scythe … ?’

      Quite suddenly he felt very old. The valley seemed ancient, mummified, secretive, dried and bent and powerful. When the Indians danced on the prairie it had been here, this field. The same sky, the same wind, the same wheat. And, before the Indians? Some Cro-Magnon, gnarled and shag-haired, wielding a crude wooden scythe, perhaps, prowling down through the living wheat …

      Drew returned to work. Up, down. Up, down. Obsessed with the idea of being the wielder of the scythe. He, himself! It burst upon him in a mad, wild surge of strength and horror.

      Up! WHO WIELDS ME! Down! WIELDS THE WORLD!

      He had to accept the job with some sort of philosophy. It was simply his way of getting food and housing for his family. They deserved eating and living decent, he thought, after all these years.

      Up and down. Each grain a life he neatly cut into two pieces. If he planned it carefully – he looked at the wheat – why, he and Molly and the kids could live forever!

      Once he found the place where the grain grew that was Molly and Susie and little Drew he would never cut it.

      And then, like a signal, it came, quietly.

      Right there, before him.

      Another sweep of the scythe and he’d cut them away.

      Molly, Drew, Susie. It was certain. Trembling, he knelt and looked at the few grains of wheat. They glowed at his touch.

      He groaned with relief. What if he had cut them down, never guessing? He blew out his breath and got up and took the scythe and stood back away from the wheat and stood for a long while looking down.

      Molly thought it awfully strange when he came home early and kissed her on the cheek, for no reason at all.

      At dinner, Molly said, ‘You quit early today? Does – does the wheat still spoil when it falls?’

      He nodded and took more meat.

      She said, ‘You ought to write to the Agriculture people and have them come look at it.’

      ‘No,’ he said.

      ‘I was just suggestin’,’ she said.

      His eyes dilated. ‘I got to stay here all my life. Can’t nobody else mess with that wheat; they wouldn’t know where to cut and not to cut. They might cut the wrong parts.’

      ‘What wrong parts?’

      ‘Nothin’,’ he said, chewing slowly. ‘Nothin’ at all.’

      He slapped his fork down, hard. ‘Who knows what they might want to do! Those gover’ment men! They might even – might even want to plow the whole field under!’

      Molly nodded. ‘That’s just what it needs,’ she said. ‘And start all over again, with new seed.’

      He didn’t finish eating. ‘I’m not writin’ any gover’ment, and I’m not handin’ this field over to no stranger to cut, and that’s that!’ he said, and the screen door banged behind him.

      He detoured around that place where the lives of his children and his wife grew up in the sun, and used his scythe on the far end of the field where he knew he would make no mistakes.

      But he no longer liked the work. At the end of an hour he knew he had brought death to three of his old, loved friends in Missouri. He read their names on the cut grain and couldn’t go on.

      He locked the scythe in the cellar and put the key away. He was done with the reaping, done for good and all.

      He smoked his pipe in the evening on the front porch, and told the kids stories to hear them laugh. But they didn’t laugh much. They seemed withdrawn, tired and funny, like they weren’t his children any more.

      Molly complained of a headache, dragged around the house a little, went to bed early, and fell into a deep sleep. That was funny, too. Molly always stayed up late and was full of vinegar.

      The wheat field rippled with moonlight on it, making it into a sea.

      It wanted cutting. Certain parts needed cutting now. Drew Erickson sat, swallowing quietly, trying not to look at it.

      What’d happen to the world if he never went in the field again? What’d happen to people ripe for death, who waited the coming of the scythe?

      He’d wait and see.

      Molly was breathing softly when he blew out the oil lamp and got to bed. He couldn’t sleep. He heard the wind in the wheat, felt the hunger to do the work in his arms and fingers.

      In the middle of the night he found himself walking in the field, the scythe in his hands. Walking like a crazy man, walking and afraid, half-awake. He didn’t remember unlocking the cellar door, getting the scythe, but here he was in the moonlight, walking in the grain.

      Among these grains there were many who were old, weary, wanting so very much to sleep. The long, quiet, moonless sleep.

      The scythe held him, grew into his palms, forced him to walk.

      Somehow, struggling, he got free of it. He threw it down, ran off into the wheat, where he stopped and went down on his knees.

      ‘I don’t want to kill any more,’ he said. ‘If I work with the scythe I’ll have to kill Molly and the kids. Don’t ask me to do that!’

      The stars only sat in the sky, shining.

      Behind him, he heard a dull, thumping sound.

      Something shot up over the hill into the sky. It was like a living thing, with arms of red color, licking at the stars. Sparks fell into his face. The thick, hot odor of fire came with it.

      The house!

      Crying out, he got sluggishly, hopelessly, to his feet, looking at the big fire.

      The little white house with the live oaks was roaring up in one savage bloom of fire. Heat rolled over the hill and he swam in it and went down in it, stumbling, drowning over his head.

      By the time he got down the hill there was not a shingle, bolt or threshold of it that wasn’t alive with flame. It made blistering, crackling, fumbling noises.

      No one screamed inside. No one ran around or shouted.

      He yelled in the yard. ‘Molly! Susie! Drew!’

      He got no answer. He ran close in until his eyebrows withered and his skin crawled hot like paper burning, crisping, curling up in tight little curls.

      ‘Molly! Susie!’

      The fire settled contentedly down to feed. Drew ran around the house a dozen times, all alone, trying to find a way in. Then he sat where the fire roasted his body and waited until all the walls had sunken down with fluttering crashes, until the last ceiling bent, blanketing the floors with molten plaster and scorched lathing. Until the flames died and smoke coughed up, and the new day came slowly; and

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