Brake lights flared in chained effect, slowing as traffic entered into chaff catching and blowing heavy across the road in strong south wind from drawn into low-pressure front approaching from above. Chaff carried, thick and billowing, like smoke, across the highway as red-light brakes and the scattering of approaching white lights, showing yellow through the haze, burned like wildfire jumping blacktop break.
Ryan observed, the change in the flame and imagined fire as winds shifted and changed the pattern of scattering chaff and light as combine ran into the night racing to finish what could be done before cold front and rains arrived.
Ryan captured the image in his mind, saving away, to write of later when alone with paper, desk, and single light; but in the moment, he observed, a cauldron of human haste concentrated in plume of blowing chaff that seemed as smoke in burning lights—embers catching and flaring as each new brakes hit—and the backdrop of scattering yellow approaching through the far side of false fire.
Ryan would write it, but for now, the scene was only image impressed on mind.
*****
For two days, rain fell slow and steady as grey skies mourned, suspending rain in air more than permitting full teardrops fall, and by its withholding full expression, the mood was slow to pass.
On the third day, sunlight broke, but the stems and soybean pods still held wet and would be days more before ready to run, in harvest, once again.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and in the pause to harvest work, Emma returned to her hometown, the farmhouse where she was raised—spread of sheds, bins, and staged equipment having each their own season of use and need—for a meal and time with family as the rains gave pause to autumn’s urgency; something known in the fields and forgotten by much of the rest of the world, content to view the changing of the leaves and thinking little of all to be reaped and saved from fields.
Emma’s father was in back of the house, preparing a grain truck for harvest that would resume as soon as stalks and pods dried enough to cut and fully shatter, separating from the yield of tan and yellow beans that rose as mountain in combine hopper before emptying into auger wagon or truck for sale and storage.
She smiled when she saw him, as he did to her when eyes met and he saw her walking tall across to him.
“Hey Dad,” Emma spoke with smile that shone like glowing sun in sky.
“Hey there,” her father answered, leaving the truck behind as he made way to give welcoming embrace.
Emma’s boyfriend entered into the house carrying side for coming meal, and it was only Lauren and her father remaining outside beneath blue autumn sky.
“I heard you cut late the other night,” Emma spoke.
“Had to get what I could before the rain, almost finished the field.”
“I heard the wind was blowing your stubble all out across the highway and traffic lit it up like a wildfire blowing across the road.”
“Did you?” her father paused, envisioning description of the scene. “Where would you have heard that?”
“I have my spies…” Emma teased in smile.
“Spies…or suitors?” her father asked.
“Dad…”
“Or maybe they’re the same,” he spoke, reading his daughter’s face that, in saying nothing, spoke to something. He waited, and in Emma’s absence of reply, he spoke more. “It just sounded poetic. That’s all. I don’t know anyone who talks like that, but you do, and if I was ever to say something like that, I’d imagine it as romance, not as simple words.”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“I know,” her father answered, “but does that mean the rest of the world quits trying?”
Emma gave no answer, as her father sought to read her response.
“I just wondered,” he continued as they shared in their time alone. “Would I know him?” her father asked.
“You might…” Emma answered, giving sign to nothing more
“Would I approve?”
“Of him, as you know him, I believe you do. Of us, I don’t know…”
“Are you happy?” he asked.
Emma hesitated, looking away and at the closed door through which she could not see. “I am,” she paused. “I am,” she spoke again in affirmation. “I just don’t know. I’ve never had anyone talk to me like this before, and I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Of what?”
She looked to the sky, the burning orb of light high in the mid-day sky, illuminating and drying all the world as soft cool stirred and blew in a wind.
“…The poetry…” she answered, “The words and the sharing and reason and wondering the why to any, or all, of it.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“I do, but what do I make of it. They’re just words, and I can’t tell what’s fiction and what’s real because so much reads as a dream, and yet there are pieces I feel and believe and am convinced, of him, are real.”
It was Emma’s father’s turn for silence. He listened, not expecting the words and revelations that rose forth. He listened and, as a father, he affirmed his love as well.
“I just want you to be happy,” he spoke. “That is what all father’s want for their daughters—happiness and love and a good man that cares for you even more than ourselves. We want it, and when one comes near, a part of us hesitates to reject because we don’t think that they are good enough four our princess, and we do our best to read your heart, because that is what will make and sustain your happiness through whatever life may give, and that is the one I want for you—the one that burns your heart, not in pain, but something that makes you glow.
I see it come and go, and I don’t know if it is the one you have or side-effect of a spy, but I just want to see you shine and live with a lit heart.
That’s rare. That’s special. Not comfort, not compatibility, not a settling for what seems to make sense.”
Emma felt her face begin to redden. It was not the talk her father normally spoke, but she knew he meant every spoken word.
“You’re my daughter. I love you, and I just want you to be happy. Not in a settled material way, but in your soul. You are a world changer, and you deserve someone that sees and knows you, too, that way. You’re not one in a million, you’re one in a world.”
Her face grew even hotter in effect she strained, and failed, to mask. “You’re just saying that. You’re my dad. You have to say that.”
“I’m your father, but I don’t have to say anything. I say it because I mean it. You’re a world changer. You are my first-born, and you changed mine.”
“What if it doesn’t make sense? What if others judge?”
“People will always judge. Fuck what they think. You have one life. Trust your fire.”
The burning in her cheeks soften as her father’s words gave a comfort to let expression freely show. The burning red of fought restraint lightened into rose and her eyes and smile glowed complete again as rays of sun filtered down in stranded bands through cirrus filter drifting in thin veil across the sun.
“Should we go inside?” her father asked.
“We should,” Emma answered, her spirit and face still lit. “I love you Dad.”
“I love you too,” her father answered as both returned to their private selves speaking no more of the words and spirit they had shared beneath blue sky and open light of drying autumn day.