Everything Happens for a Reason

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The siren sounded for the shift change. Jonah groaned and grunted as he rolled over in his sleeping bag. His back was sore and his muscles were stiff and his joints popped and creek as they moved from sleeping on the ground for the past six months, but this was his job and it was no use complaining about it. He was told that what they were working on was going to benefit the entire community when it was all said and done. Just that was enough to keep him motivated enough to keep going. He looked over at the picture hanging in a frame of twigs on a rope from the ceiling of the tent. It was his family. His wife had sent it to him in her last care package. The smudges of grease and dirty fingerprints made the photograph almost unrecognizable, but he still knew what the blurry photograph represented, and he knew that there were just a few days left until he could go home and see them again. Half asleep, he reached for his boots and fumbled around in the dim light of the tent to get them on his feet. As he grabbed his sketchbook, he realized he only had about half an hour to make it to his perch before sunset.

Jonah was part of a research party, the purpose of which was to map the sun as it traveled across the sky each day. His responsibility was to make drawings of the sunset every day from the same spot and same position for six months. He was to map out all of the terrains and show where the sun went down each day. The place that Jonah had chosen to make his perch was a sort of natural seat on the northwest side of the cliff. He liked it. It was comfortable for him. Looking back through his drawings, Jonah could see that the sun's point of descent had shifted several degrees to the west, showing the researchers exactly what they needed to know.

Three other men were working on the same shift as Jonah. They watched the sun from the north, south, and east, and their drawings all showed the same degree of shift for the sun. Eight other guys were doing the same as Jonah and the guys on his shift. Four of them worked on the sunrise shift, and the other four worked during the day to map out the sun at the top of each hour. This information was going to help the designers when they decided upon the final layout of the monument they were all working on. No one knew what they were doing. The whole thing was clouded in mystery.

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Jonah surveyed the site that had once been the cliff where he had watched the sun every night for six months without ever seeing his family. The perch where he sat for all of that time was gone now, as the men quarrying the stones for the monument had already chiseled the canyon walls away past the point where he had sat. A messenger had come by Jonah's house the day before, with his assignment for the next part of the project. He was to be a stonecutter. He would be a part of Team 5. The overseers had divided the men into five groups consisting of five men each, plus one more to be the foreman.

Jonah heard a scream. "Look out!" He turned around just in time to see a piece of rock break loose and fall far before it was supposed. After the dust cleared and the engineers were sure that the area was secure again, the men went out to survey the damage. The rock had fallen and shattered into three pieces. Amidst the noise of falling rock and shouting there had been a terrifying scream suddenly silenced by the crash. All of the men turned around to see that one of the pieces was on top of a man whom nobody could recognize at first. Blood was spilling out all over the place and had even spattered onto the walls of the quarry. It was a gruesome sight.

But when Jonah arrived at the scene, he knew who it was right away. It was his mentor and it was the man who taught him everything he knew about masonry and stonecutting.

"That's Moses," Jonah said as he reached where the men were standing. He could only turn around and walk away.

Jonah sat by himself under a tree. All he could think about was how Moses had been his mentor as a youth, working on his farm. Jonah's father had died when he was just a boy and his mom lost the farm shortly after. So he worked at Moses' place to earn money so he could take care of his mom and younger brother. In the process, Moses taught Jonah everything he knew about everything and he and his family did everything they could to help out Jonah and his family. Now with Moses dead and his mother having passed a few years ago, he knew it was time to pay Moses back, and take care of his widow.

The overseers decided to take a week off from the project. Moses was not only a good friend to everybody, but he was also the only casualty they had had so far on the entire project and they wanted to give the workers a chance to get some rest so that nothing like happened again. They also had to decide who would be given the job of foreman for Team 5.

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Jonah walked down the road from the village where he lived to the monument he was helping build. This was a big day for him. He had just been made foreman of one of the crews working there. Just yesterday he had been a stonecutter like the men on his crew. He was good at it, one of the best. Everyone always seemed to look for him when they needed someone's assistance.

"I guess that's why they made me foreman," he thought to himself as he neared the end of his two-mile walk.

When he reached the top of the hill, he could see that the sight had already changed from the day before. The surveyors had been out early that morning to lay out the markers for the vertical pieces of rock. One of the crews had finished one of the vertical pieces and had already stood it up in place.

"We'll be there today too," he thought on the way down the hill.

Walking over to where his crew was he remembered the days when he was a part of the research party. They would take shifts watching the position of the sun at different times of the year. The goal was to locate the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, so they would know exactly how to position the structure.

He gathered his men around him. "Today we will be the second crew to get one of our rocks standing in place," he said.

The men cheered around him. After the cheering died down they got back to work. Each of the pieces of rock was to be about eleven feet tall and a few feet across. Moving these rocks around wasn't easy for them, so they were sure to work closely to their markers. One of their pieces was almost finished; it just needed a little finishing around the edges. Three of the five men got started on that piece, chiseling away at it, giving it a rectangular shape, getting it ready for placing. The other two men worked on a second piece that wasn't quite as far along. They used their picks and hammers and chisels to chip away the roundness of the rock, leaving behind an almost perfect rectangle. Both men agreed that if they worked hard enough, the crew could maybe, just maybe get their second vertical piece of rock in place almost right after the first one went up. Jonah worked on a third piece. It had to be perfect, and there was an unspoken agreement among the men that he was the best stonecutter on Team 5. His pick and his hammer fell truer than any of the other guys. This piece would rest horizontally on top of the other two. If it wasn't completely perfectly square, it would roll off of its perch on top of the other two and fall to the ground, running the risk of it cracking and breaking.

"Jonah! We're ready," one of the men yelled to him.

Jonah went to help lift the rock into place. They first rolled it onto a special device made of thick leather. The four men picked up the leather handles and carried it twenty feet to their markers. They set the rock down with the bottom against the marker, so when it went up it was exactly where it should be.

With a feeling of accomplishment, they gazed around the grassy field and saw that a few more of the pillars had been in place. They could see the circle coming together and began to picture how it would look when it was completed. They walked back over to the other men in their crew and saw that their piece was nearly complete. They jumped in to help smooth it out and when it was ready they rolled it onto the leather carrier and hauled it over to the other marker, placing it just as they had the first one.

Looking on at their accomplishments Jonah said, "Well guys, we got a lot done today. Let's go ahead and call it a day."

The men gathered up their tools and placed them all next to the last piece of rock they would have to work on for tomorrow, covering them with their leather carrier to protect them from the elements. Then they began to walk over the top of the hill and back down the dirt road to the village.

That night the overseers sent messengers into the villages to let everyone know that because of their extra efforts out at the job site, they were more than a week ahead of schedule. The decision had been made to give the weary workers a few days off to rest and to be with family. Jonah's wife and kids decided to have a party to celebrate his new promotion. They invited all of their friends and neighbors and even Moses' widow. The barbecue was going and everybody was having a good time sharing stories about the days when the research phase was in full swing and when the job site was still just a grassy field outside the village. Moses' widow wasn't quite ready to be a social person again, but she came anyway thinking it would be good for her. Friends would stop by her table now and then to give their condolences and to see if there was anything they could do to help.

People began to wonder what it was going to be like when they had to go back to being farmers again and leave the lives that they were getting used to as stonecutters. Stonecutters made quite a bit more than farmers, and they had all gotten used to having things a bit nicer than they had been before.

Jonah walked around the yard thanking everyone for coming and making sure they were all having a good time. People were congratulating him on his promotion, saying that it was a good thing for him and that he was the right man for the job and that this could mean a future with the company for him. Jonah uneasily accepted their praises, even though he felt it was too soon after Moses' death to be saying such things. Jonah kept on walking until he saw Moses' widow sitting at a table by herself. He went over to say hello and to see how she was holding up.

"You know Jonah," Moses' wife said to him as her eyes glistened with the tears she was trying to hold back. "If there was anybody that Moses would have wanted to take his place, it would have been you."

"Thanks, Mary," Jonah replied as he tried to hold back tears of his own. "I always looked up to Moses as a father." They got up from their seats to go join the others at the party and enjoy the evening.

By that time, things had begun to wind down around the house. The food and drinks were beginning to run low. Jonah and Mary got up and hugged each other, saying that everything would be okay and that everything happens for a reason and that they were there for each other. Joseph, one of the men on Jonah's crew, was there going around making sure that he at least got to say hello to everyone at the party. Jonah and Joseph had known each other since childhood and were still best friends now when they were both in their late thirties.

"Been looking for you two," Joseph said. "What was that all about?"

"Nothing Joseph," Mary told him. "Jonah was just helping me understand that everything happens for a reason."

"It's true," Jonah said. "Even this party is happening for a reason. Now let's go enjoy what is left of it."

The three friends went off to enjoy the rest of the party and try to avoid thinking about work. The next day, the overseers were holding a memorial service for Moses. He was one of the visionaries of the project and they wanted his friends and family to come out and remember him in their own ways, by seeing his vision finally coming to pass. They wanted them all to gather and share stories of Moses and how he had touched their lives. The day after that, was the last of their days off. All of the men tried not to think about the tools they had left by the stones under those sheets of leather, but it was no good. They knew that as much as they tried to avoid it, for one reason or another, they too would have to go back to work.

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