Field of Dreams

Theodore Hawkins greatest dream came true one sunny Thursday morning in May. He’d long since dreamt of strawberries, and boysenberries, raspberries, cherries, any kind of red berries. Where he lived the weather and soil was good for grapes and wheat, but nothing else. They had goat too, and some sheep. The village was so isolated it could only be reached by a narrow winding road so risky only Emil, the ancient grocery store owner made the dangerous journey for new wares. Sometimes missionaries came through the town, trying to turn their heads away from their ancient harvest gods, but the townspeople met them with calm smiles and measured explanations. Theodore was in fact the son of one such missionary, who had lived long enough to give the boy a name, before a cholera epidemic wiped him and half the village out. Theodore lived with his mother and stepfather and four stepbrothers and sisters now, but he had his father’s looks, texts, and gift of a vivid imagination. He read books about his father’s home, and recipes, and magazine articles the missionaries brought. He had dreams about rushing into his father’s arms, whose face he only had to half imagine, as his mother owned a picture of Theodore Hawkins Senior. In the dream, his father lived in a picturesque hunting cabin he’d seen in a magazine once, and he had a kitchen filled with wonderful imagined smells, and his mother smiled like before, and his stepfather graciously let his wife move in with Teddy Sr., because Theodore liked his family and wanted them close by. Next, in his dream, the fields sprouted full of red berries, and they all ate until their bellies felt they might pop. Usually, he woke up next, because either his baby sister Marta would begin to cry, or his brother Mahel would begin to snore. He dreamt of the taste of strawberries, which he could fully picture, or he’d desperately try to grasp a raspberries texture, or a cherry’s juice, which would collapse to ash when he was closest to feeling it on the taste buds of his mind. He spent thirteen torture years, tortured, torn between the traditional goat flavored taste of his mother’s world, or the impossible boysenberry or his ghostly father’s. He prayed, half in his mother’s tongue, to her gods, and half in his father’s to his one almighty God. His mother couldn’t fully understand him, but she let him be such a different boy because he was her blessing, the son of the only man she ever loved, gifted with a better grasp on Teddy Sr.’s far off world. His stepfather, Bach, mostly treated him as a friend than a son, because the boy was incomprehensible in his mind, but somehow agreeable. Theodore’s closest sibling, both in regards to age and affection was Mahel, but they didn’t even understand each other, they were friends, and that as good enough for them. So, they let him pray, and so he did, until he prayed into a feverish pitch at the Leah Festival, for the goddess Leah. It was a sunny Thursday in May. He fainted, and when he woke, he found the field in front of the festival was full to bursting with the fruits that so often haunted his dreams. The villagers were so impressed with the power of the prayer of the missionary’s son that he was immediately elected village chief. Ever since, the Leah festival has ended in the villagers wandering out to eat the once-a-year berries to their heart’s content.