I'll Save You

When the kids were young, I used the open windows to monitor their outside activities as I worked in the house. Sometimes I could see them but often I followed their antics by sound. I could hear the dog barking as they ran through the field, hear the sound of the 4-wheeler as they took off for the creek, hear their shouts if the arguments went on too long, or giggles if they were plotting something. You learn to filter "must intervene" sounds from "discuss later" sounds after a while. Although one day they fooled me.

My daughter and her friend, who more or less spent summers with us, showed up in the kitchen one afternoon. They flopped down on the old couch I kept there for guests and confidences. Their mood was mutinous. They had been working with my son at the barn sacking bedding for the state fair. In those days we cut all the corners we could when going to the fair. Instead of buying the ready sacked bedding for the cattle at enormous prices, we had the kids fill old feed sacks with the bedding we used at home and bought in bulk. This was an all day process of one holding the sack while the other forked in the bedding from a huge pile beside the barn.

My son, being older, had appointed himself the boss. This hadn't pleased the girls too much, especially since, according to them, this involved a lot more bossing than working. I suspect they hadn't helped the situation when the friend, in the spirit of "I don't really have to take your orders" pulled a lawn chair to the pile of bedding and proceeded to place it on top and sit and give directions from it! Before the situation came to all out warfare the girls decided it might be wise to take a break at the house.

While we were discussing this over a few cookies, I became conscious of a strange sound coming through the windows. At first I didn't pay much attention to it, then the words slowly sank in. "Help me! Someone, please help me!" The sound was faint and increasingly desperate. Immediately my mother's antenna started quivering. This was serious. The voice was faint and panicked. Immediately I had a vision of my son, trapped under a tractor, his life fading fast. Without a pause I ran from the house, dishcloth flapping madly, yelling "I'm coming! I'm coming!" On feet given speed by terror I flew to the barn and around the corner to the quivering voice. There in front of me was my son, struggling mightily. He had filled a two-wheeled home-made farm cart with bedding and started up the slight incline to the barn. The hill combined with weight had put him into a bind where he couldn't go any further and if he tried to back up it was going to get away from him and roll all the way back down. He was caught but hardly in a life threatening situation.

The look on his face when his mother came tearing around the barn waving her dishcloth and screaming "I' ll save you!!" will stay in my mind forever. Probably his, too.