Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Spring (the season) (07/23/09)
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TITLE: The Cotyledon Sprout | Previous Challenge Entry
By Matt Zink
07/27/09 -
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Spring
Spark of the summer flame
Harbinger of the fall
Most folks in this part of Texas work with one of two things. Cotton or cows. Pa and I are cotton.
I was happy to be out of Lubbock. I rolled down the window. The pickup truck labored to pull the cottonseed-laden trailer. It sputtered, coughed, and soon picked up speed and headed south down the long straight highway, the western sun sinking on the horizon. The spring air rolled off the Texas plains and into my face.
"How do you think it looks this year?" I was really just making conversation. I'd been helping Pa for eight years, but this would be my last planting season. Part of me will miss it; most of me is ready to move on.
"What's that?" He'd been a bit short ever since I told him I planned to leave town for college. He wasn't sure why I couldn't just go to Angelo State, just down the road a couple hours.
"The crop." I hung my arm out the window and made waves in the currents with my hand. I felt a semblance of freedom as the wind pushed my arm up and down, like maybe there was something bigger out there and I could be a part of it.
"Well, it ain't gonna freeze. Worst thing that could happen. Only water it'll get is what we put on it." And that was all he said for the three hours home.
Plough and seed
The broken ground
Sweat upon the brow
I enjoy driving the tractor; it gives me time to think. The rolling furrows rock the cabin and lull me into a workman's trance. Turn after turn, under my direction, the planter spreads seeds across twelve rows at a time. By the end of the day, I feel as if I am floating above the fields.
With Pa in the other tractor, the seeding is finished in a day. I finished first and waited, leaning against my tractor with a smirk across my face, ball cap pulled low over my eyes. He pulled up and leaned his head out the door. "Went kind of fast there, sure you didn't miss anything?"
"Pretty sure I got it all." I laughed, so did he, and I hopped back in my tractor and parked it in the barn.
The diesel fuel weighed heavy in the air. Pa put his arm around me, "That's good work." He directed me to the pickup, "How about Sonic?"
Behold new life
The cotyledon sprout
Born of water and sun
Three weeks later. Pa knelt by the cotton rows. Sprouts of green spread for acres in all directions. He took a pocketknife and cut one off at the stem. He held it up to the sunlight. "Looks good."
"Sure does." I did not know the difference; it looked to me like it always had, but I agreed nonetheless. Something in me felt sad for the sprout, cut off at the roots in the dawn of its life, like living things need a chance to grow. To live to complete their purpose.
"I guess when it comes time for the harvest, you'll be gone." I didn't feel like he said this to make me feel guilty. He just spoke matter of fact, like he wasn't sure he would be able to pull it off without me. He could. He would. He cut open the sprout, looking for disease and infestation.
"I suppose." I would be leaving the week before harvest. I looked out at the emptiness, a single cloud the only blemish on the blue canvas sky. I could wait for hours for a car to pass. Green fields and a dusty wind. I longed for more. For meaning beyond the cotton rows and the smell of cow dung heavy in the air. For more than Sonic and Dairy Queen, and Friday night lights. I longed for growth.
Pa examined the sprout innards in detail, rolling them in his palm, then tossed the remnants aside. He turned to me and held my gaze for a second, then looked out at the fields. "Couple more seasons of growth, should be ready."
Boll to the burr we grow
Work of the Father's hands
Pulled through the gin
Woven into our own
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