The young man pedaled his bicycle past the small farmhouse at least once each week
for months before finally he finally stopped.
There were several trees out front, one dutifully shading a tan, worn-out truck with two bales of hay in its bed. A few neatly placed pieces of farm equipment suggested this was the home of a family that knew how to work. When he spotted the boy, the young man watched curiously and cautiously from the dirt road just thirty yards from the front door of the old farm home.
The boy was leaning against an splintered old fence post as he sat, tinkering with
something in his hands. He occasionally set the item down and looked across the
horizon, then back to his home before picking up the unknown item and fidgeting with
it all over again.
The young man took a heavy breath and decided it was time. He stepped off his
bicycle and slowly walked it beside him as he approached the boy. The child appeared
to be no more than nine years old--just a five years younger than the young man. The
boy's brow was furrowed, lending both worry and an adult-like aura to his dirty face.
He didn't look up from his hands to greet the visitor.
The young man cleared his throat.
"I uh, well, what are you working on?" He asked the boy.
When the boy offered no reply, the young man ventured again.
"Looks like a trailer hitch, huh?"
The boy continued fussing with the old hitch. He appeared to be attempting to remove
a rusted-on pin from the beat-up hitch. It looked like it hadn't been used in years.
The young man wondered over what to say next before the boy finally spoke.
"Agh!" The boy grunted, cussing, surprising the young man and slamming the metal down next to him on the patchy dry grass.
"I'm sorry?" The young man said, almost reflexively. He was surprised by both the
boy's use of a word the young man was never allowed to use at home, and by the
palpable anger with which the boy threw his project aside.
The boy finally peered up, brow still furrowed with a seriousness that seemed to be his
permanent expression.
"What are you sorry for, you just got here!" The boy shot back coldly.
The young man felt a pool of regret rising within himself over his decision to visit the
boy. He looked down at his bike, then to the boy, and closed his eyes, reminding himself
that it was he who was older than the boy and it was he had chosen to stop on this
particular day.
"Pardon me, I'm just wondering why you're so..." he paused, rephrasing his question, "what are you doing with that?"
The boy stared at the young man for a moment more, then to his side at the rusted
hitch.
"I'm tryin' to fix this here trailer hitch 'cause it's my fault it's all rusted up and my dad
said...Well, my brothers..." he stopped his explanation for more than a few seconds,
looking at the ground and appearing to lose the flow of his thoughts entirely before
picking up the hitch once more. He mumbled something inaudible as he collected
himself.
"Listen kid," The young boy began ironically, deepening his voice to sound older than
he was, "You ever gotten rust outta trailer hitches before?"
The young man considered the question as he studied the boy's face. He couldn't
understand why a rusted old hitch was causing the boy so much trouble.
"I've gotten rust off a car battery with soda pop before," the young man offered, "have
you tried that?"
The boy looked incredulously at the young man.
"Really?" he asked, annoyed and impressed all at once, "If I put pop on this pin, it'll
come loose?"
"We could try it," the young man replied, surprised at his use of the word "we".
As the boy picked up the hitch and stood up, they were interrupted by a man's sudden,
angry shouting that rattled the windows inside the farm home. Though it wasn't directed at the boy, the young man felt a sudden tension, as if it crawled across a rope from inside the family's home to where they stood. The young boy appeared less affected, instead directing the attention back to the dilemma he held in his small hands.
The boy cursed, shaking his head, "Kid, I'll try anything," he said eagerly as he stood up and began walking toward toward a weather-worn barn behind the home. The young man laid the bike down on the lawn and followed.
__________
The boy carefully emptied soda from an old coke bottle over the rusted metal, which
lay atop a workbench. The young man observed the boy's face with great interest. His
boyhood features carried a tightness and stress the young man felt a connection to. He
expected it was a strain that matched the feeling he carried with him in his chest from
time to time. Still, for a boy so young and who was seemingly free to roam an old farm
property, the young man wondered what could possibly loom so heavy.
The boy picked up the soaked hitch and picked at the pin as a sticky brown stream,
turning orange from the rust, rolled down his wrists toward his elbows. The young man
looked around at an endless supply of farm equipment, tools, and odds and ends
which surrounded them. He noticed, on an old wooden shelf just about twelve feet
from where they stood, three seemingly-new trailer hitches neatly resting beside some
carefully coiled chains. He looked to the boy's project in his hands, confirming what
he'd already considered before--this rusted mess was not a hitch that would be
needed by the boy's father, or anyone else. He kept the thought to himself.
Using a tattered cloth beside him, the boy wiped hopefully at the rusted pin until he
could see clearly.
He pulled at it firmly. Nothing. Then, desperate to pry it loose, the boy
threw all his strength into it. His hands and arms shook as he pulled with all his might.
The rusted pin remained. The boy's reaction this time surprised the young man in an entirely different way: he slowly set the hitch on the table and he began to cry.
It started softly, the boy careful to turn his back to his visitor. He sniffled, wishing to
suppress the tears which were forming. His shoulders began to shake as the first sob
escaped the boy's lips.
Then he wept.
It wasn't the first time the young man had seen a child cry--he himself having done it
on occasion. But in watching the young boy--a boy he'd meant to visit so many times
before this day--there was something especially troubling about it all. Regret came first for the young man--regret that he couldn't conjure the words to console the sobbing boy. That feeling was replaced with one of worry--worry for what the boy might face when an angry father discovered he'd failed at the useless project.
Worry was then displaced by his own feelings of anger. He couldn't understand how
anyone could make a child live in fear over something so trivial. All the while, the boy continued to wail with his head slumped on his arms atop the table.
The young man's thoughts continued to pinball as he stood uselessly behind the
weeping child, unable to help. His frustration began to rise. The young man's regret,
worry, and anger at the boy's plight was suddenly replaced with something unexpected
and far worse. The young man felt a growing disdain for the boy. He couldn't explain it.
The sensation swelled within him, tightening his throat and causing his fists to clench.
He felt ashamed as he allowed the feeling to overtake his mind, but trying to stop it
was akin to trying to keep an ocean's wave from crashing. The sensation covered him
inside and out. In an unrelenting battering, the worst within him overtook his senses.
He blamed the boy. He blamed him for the rusted hitch and for the useless bawling
that followed. He blamed him for every past, present, and future mistake he knew the
boy would would make. He blamed him for the pain those mistakes would cause. It
was ruthless and hopeless and against what the young man had been taught. Still he
was drowning in it. The unfairness of it all danced mockingly in his mind as the hurt
showered over him like rocks.
The young man slumped to the floor beneath the weight of it all, his fists still clenched
in this unanticipated desperation. He attempted to scream, but it was as if the rage had
gripped his vocal cords and drained the oxygen from him completely. No sound
escaped his mouth. His contempt for the boy was soon matched with a total disappointment and disgust he felt for himself for allowing the feeling to have such a
hold over him.
The hopelessness of it all was overwhelming to the young man, and it
threatened to overtake him. He curled up as tightly as he could on the cool dirt floor.
The two boys' futile cries pounding on the old barn's ceiling and walls.
Just then, the young man heard a woman's voice call to him. He wiped his swollen
eyes with his dusty hands and blurrily looked around to find only the young boy, still
sobbing, but no one else. He closed his eyes in an attempt to steady himself and he
heard the gentle voice again.
"This is not ours to bear."
The barn was suddenly silent. Even the young boy's cries could not be heard.
"This pain is not for you to carry," the voice spoke softly, "Let go."
The boy could suddenly hear himself breathing, his panting slowing to a more gentle
rhythm. He kept his eyes tightly closed and, in obedience and love to her, and in remembering what he already knew, the young man willed his heart to pray.
Suddenly, a gentle, reassuring hand rested on the young man's shoulder. His throat
loosened. His fists fell open. The tightness in his chest released. He opened his eyes,
still blurred from tears, and found a man helping him to his feet. The young man
guessed that the man--dressed neatly in a flannel shirt, jeans, and boots--was a
farmer. Together they walked to the table where the boy remained slumped, still crying
in silence, and the the young man and the visitor sat together. Neither spoke.
The man calmly took a clean white handkerchief from his shirt and a small wire brush.
He gestured for the young man to place the hitch in his hand. The young man studied
the hitch and its seemingly welded-on clumps of rust, almost unchanged from the all
the boy's efforts.
As he held it in his hands, he saw that it was in even worse shape
than he had previously observed. He handed it to the man. The man looked at it for a moment, and smiled softly. He gently scrubbed it with his brush for a few minutes, tenderly wiping with the cloth intermittently. The man's hands cared for the old rusted hitch as if it were his most treasured possession. The boy was surprised to see that, although the man applied very little pressure, the rust fell easily. The man carefully removed the pin and began
wiping it as well. After a few more moments, the man replaced the pin, and wrapped
his handkerchief around the hitch, handing it back to the young man.
As the young man opened the handkerchief, he was startled to hear the distraught
boy's voice.
"Hey, how'd you do that?" The boy asked, wiping his dirty tear-stained cheeks with his
sleeve, his brow serious and furrowed as ever.
"I didn't," the young man said, staring in surprise at what appeared to be a perfectly
clean and fully operational hitch. It was brand new. "I...I didn't... I couldn't."
Without warning, the boy threw his arms around the young man's neck, laying his head
on his shoulder. The boy sniffled, but said nothing. The young man was taken aback for
a moment, then wrapped his arms around the boy and hugged him tightly. The
reassuring words which escaped him earlier suddenly came easily:
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all the fear and worry this problem has caused you."
He laid his head against the boy's.
"And I'm sorry for the trouble and heaviness that you're going through. This will plague
you and take over your mind at times. It will impair your decisions, and this will hurt
others too. This will be the most challenging for you."
He stroked the young boy's hair,
"But you're just a boy. Remember that. When life hurts so much that it chokes you,
remember that you're just a little boy. I forgive you and I love you."
The young boy released his hands from behind the young man's neck, startled by a
care and affection he hadn't known before. The young man saw the tightness in the
boy's face soften, and for the first time, the child's face matched his age--and his eyes
stared looked into the young man's with a pure innocence, devoid of the heaviness he
carried before.
"Thank you," the young boy said earnestly.
And with that, the young man's heart was changed. Anguish and grief, once crippling
in their complexities, gave way to a complete and profoundly simple light.
His soul softened.
And the boys found rest.
Bh
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