The Flowers Farm
Same Day, Early Morning
MISS MINNIE FLOWERS FELT a little under the weather, but at eighty-two felt entitled to a few aches and pains. She had been awake since four-thirty, but no amount of coaxing could convince her body to leave the comfort of her feather bed before six a.m.
She remembered she had promised Frank Starling she would send her farm hand, Jeddah, over this morning to help him load his combine on a flat bed trailer. Jeddah always gets here about seven. Plenty of time for him to scoot over to Frank’s and be back in time to do his chores.
So she lay there, mulling over things and watching for the first hint of light through her bedroom window, trying to figure out how to deal with an itch that since last Christmas she had been unable to scratch.
Seeing Ruth Starling last Sunday night in the church library reading that book again brought the matter to a head in Minnie’s mind. I really should talk to Diana about her daughter and that book, she had thought.
Several months before last year’s Christmas program, Ruth discovered it in the adventure section. It was an old book passed along with a number of others by a retired preacher as a gift to the library.
To Minnie it seemed the child hadn’t put it down since; she was either checking it out or pulling it from the shelf and reading it at the library table on Sunday evenings before church.
She had intended to give in to her inclination Sunday when she met Ruth’s mother in the church hallway, but got sidetracked when Diana began going on about how excited Ruth was about getting to ride her horse in the Lubbock parade.
She was almost sure Diana could be trusted with what she wanted to tell her…but…if the story ever got out…Well, it would not be good for folks to think I am getting senile, she reflected.
Maybe it’s time for someone else to take over the library anyway, she mumbled to herself as she moved her considerable bulk to a less indented spot on the mattress. After all, just because it was my idea to have a church library doesn’t mean it belongs to me…doesn’t mean others can’t take on the responsibility of managing things.
Well maybe not my idea exactly, she thought, remembering the day at Gladys Haggard’s funeral, more like a revelation.
Minnie had been the bookkeeper at her brother’s grain elevator until her retirement twenty years ago. But being in her eighties had not dulled her brain a bit as she glanced around the funeral parlor calculating the cost of all the floral tributes to her friend.
What a waste. Once placed on the grave, they’ll just dry up and blow away.
That was when she had her revelation. Why not start a church library and ask folks to give books in memory of the departed instead of sending flowers?
Minnie was on the phone to Pastor Duncan the next morning. He loved the idea and so did the deacons. The rest was history. The church converted a storeroom into a library and elected Minnie its librarian. In the ten years since, it had grown from a few books on temporary shelves to a large room stocked with volumes on topics ranging from theology to adventure.
It was a particular title, Beyond the Far Horizon, that drew Ruth’s interest like iron filings to a magnet last December on the night of the children’s Christmas program.
She had discovered the book several months before, so it seemed then by accident, though in retrospect she wasn’t so sure, Her dad was in a committee meeting at the church and had left her in the office reception area. Seeing her sitting, obviously bored, the church secretary suggested she might like her to open the library so that she could browse the books while she waited.
She was a regular visitor to the children’s books arranged on low shelves in the corner of the library. She especially liked the books of Bible stories that Miss Flowers, the librarian, described as “dressed up in modern clothes.”
However, that afternoon she skirted around the children’s books and headed for the adventure section, an area she had never visited before. She had no idea what it was she was looking for, but strangely felt she recognized it was when she spotted it even though its plain brown cover made it indistinguishable from all the other travel books pressing in around it.
But for whatever reason, though the same size as the others, it was not aligned with the other books, but extended out beyond them on the shelf as if to say, so Ruth imagined, “here I am take me.” And she did. And stranger still, the book was warm to her touch as though someone had held it tightly for some time and only just now put it down.
And when she opened it, there, tucked away toward the book’s middle, as if waiting just for her…her fingers found him, his dark eyes seeking hers…the Shaman.
That night at church she was aware Miss Flowers, the librarian, had walked over and was looking over her shoulder as she began thumbing through the book. It chronicled the travels of a globetrotting photographer in the early nineteen thirties. Written by his wife, it recounted their journeys through Africa, up crocodile-infested rivers in New Guinea, and deep into the Amazon rain forest. It also contained a large number of photographs of the strange people they encountered along the way. She felt her eyes strangely drawn to one of them, that of an Amazonian tribesman. With small sticks protruding from his lips and a halo of bird feathers crowning his head, he seemed to stare directly at her. A black stone hung from a cord around his neck, and he was very nearly naked. He sat regally on a long stool with strange symbols carved along its edges. A caption beneath the picture read: “Amazonian Shaman, seated on his jaguar bench.”
“Honey, it’s time to close up and go to church,” she heard Minnie say as she tapped her on the shoulder. Ruth could hear the organ in the church auditorium down the hall begin the prelude announcing the beginning of the Christmas program as she began tracing the design pictured on the bench with her finger.
Her chin rested in her hands, her gaze fixed on the picture of the tribesman, but she raised her head when Minnie tapped her.
“Miss Flowers, why is the man so unhappy?” she asked, turning to Minnie who adjusted her bifocals to look more closely at the picture.
“Maybe he’s lost and is looking for the way back,” Ruth heard Minnie say, and wondered why she had said such a thing just as the room slowly dissolved and vanished: The books, racks, tables, floors, walls, ceiling—everything but Minnie!
Ruth’s question and her own oblique answer ignited in Minnie’s mind the memory of the terrifying vision. The grip of it had been too strong to break. Even the organ music, loud moments before, faded away and, except for seeing Ruth’s questioning eyes staring into hers, she felt suspended in emptiness and surrounded by silence.
I had to have imagined it, she told herself for the umpteenth time as she remembered the vision. Feeling a sudden chill, she pulled the covers more tightly around her shoulders. But she couldn’t shake Ruth’s question as to why the man appeared so sad or her curious answer that perhaps it was because he was lost and looking for a way back. Back to where?
All she knew for sure was that as Ruth suddenly closed the book, the spell was broken, the building, library, and furnishings reappeared, and she could hear the surge of the organ signal the program had started.
As if awaking from a nap and unaware of what had happened, Ruth pushed back her chair and started for the door. “You’d better hurry,” she said teasingly to Minnie as she exited, “or you’ll be late for the Christmas program.”
Minnie heaved herself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and tried to drive the unsettling memories of the night of the Christmas program from her mind. She assured herself the whole library episode had just been a case of an overactive imagination. Still, she remembered checking the library card for Beyond the Far Horizon, and not being surprised to find that Ruth had checked the book out no fewer than seven times, not including this past Sunday. She should not procrastinate any longer. Even if all she did were to mention the book to Ruth’s mother…Even if she didn’t bring up her strange flight of fancy last Christmas…at least she’d feel as if she’d done her duty.
She looked out her sparkling windows to the sunlight shining on the dawn of spring. Not today, she mused. Why spoil such a beautiful morning with thoughts of dark visions? Willing her body out of bed, she put on her robe and house shoes and shuffled into the kitchen.
After putting on the coffee, she got out a mixing bowl and the ingredients for the cake she wanted to make for the upcoming church dinner. Through the window above the sink, she saw the crocuses beginning to push their yellow heads through the soil in her flower box.
“Get goin’,” she murmured to herself. “This is no time to be feeling poorly.”
She rubbed absently at her chest, telling the dull pain in there to go away.
She smiled at the crocuses. She always planted them for early blooming, her wake-up call for spring. Resurrection time, she’d always called it. She added sugar to the shortening in the bowl and reached for a mixing spoon to cream them together.
“Resurrection time,” Minnie said aloud to the nodding heads of the yellow crocuses as the spoon dropped from her hand. Slowly she slumped to the floor, the warmth of her smile never fading.