The Mower

 “Suddenly, in the midst of his toil, without understanding what it was or whence it came, he felt a pleasant sensation of chill on his hot, moist shoulders. He glanced at the sky in the interval for whetting the scythes. A heavy, lowering storm cloud had blown up, and big raindrops were falling.”

-Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

The afternoon sun was ripe upon the grass before him. The gleaming, verdant blades beckoned to him wantonly in the gentle breeze. 

He plucked up his scythe.

He admired the tool, caressing it with his brown hands, the wood of the snath having been worn to the smooth polish of use. The grips, the blade, the whole outfit seemed less a tool and more an apparatus of his own body. He grinned, though he didn’t know it, to feel this old friend back with him again, sharp and wieldy, ready to mow. 

He stepped from the shadow under the eaves of the tool shed and into the waving grass humming and ticking with Summer’s insects. He brought the scythe back, twisting at his waist, and swung it through with an effortlessness of ages of practiced movement. This was the blinking of his eye, the drawing of his breath, the beating of his heart. This was the machinery of his life: a backswing and a following through. 

This first swing, the gentle kiss of the blade through the stalks of grass, for him was like the nervous beginning of any long task. Here, now, his was a life of simplicity. No extra movements, no extra words, just the slow rhythmic swing. After a path was cut, he’d stop to roll a smoke and stone the edge back to keen. He’d glance at the sky, looking, watching, always watching. He'd survey his farm and then get back to his work. 

When he was a young boy, mowing had been hard for him to master. The tool was heavy and ungainly. The weather was hot and buggy, and he wanted nothing more than to be done. Especially since on most days, his brothers were either working on other chores or had been loaned out to other farms for other work. On those days, his father expected him to get no less done than if all of the boys were working together.

He would try to make a good start of it, but he would forget to keen the blade edge, or he would hit a rock, or he would stop to examine some oddity in the wilderness of grass that he hadn’t seen before, and he would become enraptured. His mind was always running some imaginative story; whether he was a knight laying siege to a castle with a beautiful captive damsel or a tough sergeant leading a platoon against an unwavering enemy depended on the day and the book he was reading. 

His distracted mind often got him in trouble. He’d gone to bed many nights, ears ringing from the cuffing he’d gotten from his father for poor or unfinished work.

Once in a while, he did get finished, though, or he finished the previous day’s work early and was then free to go off and find his friends or lose himself in his imaginary worlds.

On those days, he would come home for dinner exhausted, filthy, and often bruised or skinned from his battles. But on those days, the pain was earned in a different way, and he didn’t mind so much.

He swung and swung. The grass fell away. He watched the sky.

One such day, he and his brothers had finished the whole field by just before lunchtime, and their father had given them permission to spend the rest of the day how they chose. He had gone in to a quick lunch of bread and cheese and tea, prepared by his grandmother, and then headed to the woods.

He and the other boys made a fort, of sorts, by an old beech tree near the creek, and that was the meeting place for their forays into the wild impetuosity of youth.

That day, no other boys were there, and he decided to go back to the farm to see what the others were doing. 

He noticed how dark the sky had gotten, and he felt a pang of jealousy that the weather would take a free afternoon so full of promise from him. By the time he topped the first hill and came out from the eaves of the wood, he saw that the sky to the west had become black with storm. And he saw with livid terror a huge whirling cone dip and snake from the belly of the black monstrosity, like a hand feeling around for destruction.

He broke into a mad, full-out run toward the white farmhouse, coming across the hill and reaching the gravel lane that led from the country road to the farm. He flew along as fast as he could, but the terrible swirling horror, he knew, would reach the farm first. The air filled with a sound like millions of bees, huge and furious, and dust whipped by and stung his arms and face. He faltered, wondering whether to proceed. Should he help his family or turn and flee?

Then he saw two white lights, like eyes burning through the dust. Holding his hands to the sides of his face, he strained to see what it could be.

Then he realized what came toward him. His father and brothers, his grandmother and sister, all cowering in the back of the family pickup, as it sped along the lane, away from the raging monster behind.

He stood to the side of the road and jogged along to make pace with the old truck, and his father slowed only enough to let him hop the running board and in through the passenger window to squeeze by his grandmother cowering there. They made the country road and the high hill before they stopped, and looking back, they saw the vicious thing run through their home and their land, destroying blindly as it went.

He had helped to rebuild their home, had helped his father farm, and other work to make up for the loss of that day. His brothers had all gone off to war or to work; his grandmother left them in her sleep. His father had worked hard and was slowing now but would still tend the kitchen garden and walk the old lane. His wife and children lived and grew older.

And still, he mowed when he could, taking up the old tool, slowly making the lines of cuttings up and down the field. The adventurousness of youth had faded, but he still remembered those days and the storm that had nearly ended them.

He swung and sharpened and mowed and lived and breathed. He watched the sky like an eagle. 

He mowed.