The Games We Played As Children…
I Grew Up In Farm Country. Smalltown, USA. Amongst Orchards Of Cherry, Pear And Apple, Fields Of Wheat And Corn, Barley And Rye. In The Spring We Raised The Maypole As Daughters Danced To Folk Music. And Every Fall The Harvest Came And I Remember Fireworks.
I Was Never Very Healthy As A Child, Prone To Sickness And Bedridden. In The Summer Months I Remember Having To Make Frequent Trips To The Hospital For Air Treatments To Asthma, Steroid Shots For Allergies To Dust And Pollen. I Looked Forward To Fall. To The Dying Of The Leaves And The Sleeping Of The Trees. And I Would Wait For The Snow And The Cold.
Twice, Sometimes Three Times A Week During The Long Vacation In Summer, Mother Would Keep The Three Of Us (Myself, My Younger Brother And Sister) Inside Most Of The Day Because The Orchard Workers Would Trawl Along The Rows Of Fruited Trees In Tractors Pulling Behind Them Great Air-Driven Contraptions Spraying Noxious Chemicals To Keep Away The Pests And Bugs. The Stuff Would Cling To Every Surface, Making Everything Sticky And Stinky. Mother Would Wash The Windows Inside And Out, Only To Repeat The Process A Day Or So Later.
One Year, For My Birthday, I Received A Chemistry Set And Some Old Textbooks. I Never Graduated Very Far From Explosives And Crystals. But, The Allure Of Scientific Inquiry Lingered With Me Into School The Following Year When I Made A Few Friends Who All Were As Interested In The Sciences As I. We Formed A Club Of Sorts And Submitted Displays And Demonstrations To Our Teacher Who Hailed Us As The Best And Brightest Of Her Students.
One Afternoon A Few Of Us Were Playing Where We Probably Ought Not To Have Been. We Found A Storehouse Just Off The Grounds Of The School Where Giant Barrels Had Been Stowed With Strange Markings And Numbers And Ominous Symbols Had Been Affixed To Their Hulls. One Of My Friends Remarked That The Suspicious Looking White Powder Coming From One Barrel Smelled A Lot Like The Stuff Her Father Would Spray On The Apple Trees Outside Her House. It Took The Six Of Us To Pull It Away From The Wall And There The Word -POISON- Was, Staring Us In The Face Along With The Skull And Crossed Thighbones.
What -IS- This Stuff? The Oldest And Smartest Of Us, Our Leader Asked. What Is It Used For? And What Does It Do When Administered? We Had To Know. We Had To Find Out. So We Took Samples And Brought It Back With Us For Research. A Week Later The First Grade Class’s Pet Rat Died From Lethal Food Poisoning. One Of My Friends Admitted To Having Killed It Himself As A Result Of His Research. And So The Game Was Up. We Were All Called Into The Principal’s Office For Questioning. Where Had We Obtained These Chemicals. What Were We Doing With Them. How Many Other Samples Had Been Taken. And So On.
The Girl Had Said To Me If Such Chemicals Were Capable Of Killing So Small A Creature Outright, Then Surely They Must Be Doing Something As Sinister To Us. She Remarked That Maybe The Reason I Had So Hard A Time Breathing Had Something To Do With The Chemicals They Were Using In The Orchard. And, She Said, There Is Something Else. Something I Had To See For Myself. Late One Afternoon Before The Bus Came She Took My Hand And Led Me To A Place Where The Playground Overlooked The River. She Pointed To A Certain Bend Where The Road Met The Bank And She Told Me To Go There After Dark On A Day The Orchards Had Been Sprayed. And I Did. I Had To Wait A Week. I Snuck Out The Back Window When I Was Sure Everyone Was Asleep.
It Took Me Almost An Hour To Get There, Running Through Trees And Reeling From Lack Of Air, But I Pushed On To Where I Saw Lights And Heard The Roar Of Machinery. I Climbed Down The Bank Almost To The Level Of The Water And I Saw What She Had Told Me. Her Father And Several Dozen Of His Hired Hands Were Dumping The Excess Chemicals From Their Spraying Right Into The River From The Backs Of Their Trucks And Ploughing It Into The Bank With Earthmoving Machinery. I Was Horrified. And Then My Footing Gave Way And I Fell Into The River. I Was Swept Up By The Current And Carried To Them By The Waters. I Was Delivered By Them To My Parents A Sopping, Shivering Wreck. But More Than That, I Had Learned Something. In My Brush With Death I Learned Something Sinister Waited In The Shadows. In The Food We Ate And The Air We Breathed.
Z.
ledger of time 