Wichita Gold

Even from a very young age, Abigail dreamed in shades of shimmers and gold. The way the sun shimmered through the trees upon her closed eyelids as she lay her head on the passenger window of her family’s Ford LTD station wagon always made her soul hunger for those dreams. Everyone always told her that if she worked hard and studied even harder, she’d see those dreams come to reality. Her dreams didn’t derive from books and working at her father’s diner in her hometown of Wichita Falls, though.

As young teenage girls often do, Abigail sat awake late at night thinking of how many children she’d like to have, the kind of man she’d like to marry someday and the sort of career she’d like to have when she’s done exploring the world and ready to settle down. She and her friends would explore magazines of what society said should be important to young girls. When her friends all went home, Abigail’s mind was able to wander to the depths of where she hid her true dreams. Night after night, she dreamt of being a grown woman walking through an endless field of tall grass that had lost its color from weeks of dry climate. She ran her fingers across the top of the grass as her feet pressed into the soil beneath it. Hundreds of grass blades collided making a “hush” sound as she tipped her large-brimmed cowboy hat to block her eyes from that big Texas sun as it set low amidst the shimmers of red and gold that lit up the sky. As she made her way to the middle of the field, there was her little piece of heaven—a patch of marigold flowers that surrounded her small shanty house just big enough for two. That had been her dream for as long as she could remember. She wouldn’t make money at it. She wouldn’t rush to it every morning and rush to it every night. She would live among the marigolds and know the peace that they brought.

Flash forward fifteen years and just as every morning started, she awoke from her slumber in her small Chicago apartment and shivered as she pressed her bare feet on the hard wooden floor of her studio apartment. She slept right through her alarm again and now had about thirteen minutes to get dressed, catch her subway train that carried her eighteen blocks and climb several flights of stairs to get to her desk. It was a small gray desk just outside of a large office surrounded by windows on all four sides. She was an assistant to a stock trader. Honestly, she had no idea what that even meant most days, but it paid her enough to not have to eat Ramen noodles for dinner every night and she had an ample amount of vacation days. Though she never took them because she had nowhere to go… Abigail knew what it meant to suffer in this life but still, she awaited the day she would break free. She was no “spring chicken” anymore and felt like every day she was just hoping tomorrow would be the day she had something glorious happen to her.

Abigail got a call one morning that her aunt Pat back in Wichita had passed away and her presence was requested at the funeral. She hardly remembered Pat as they weren’t a close family after her parents had been killed when she was in her early 20’s. Still, she wanted to pay her respects to the deceased so she caught a red-eye flight from Chicago to Dallas the next night and landed in Dallas the morning of the funeral. She peered at people as they said hello trying to collect clues as to who this person and that person were and whether she’d met them before. Pat never married and never had any children so she’d apparently left everything to Abigail.

After the service was over and Pat’s attorney had broken the news to her that she now owned fifty acres, she went to visit the property to see what it might be worth. What she found was that it was acres and acres of tilled soil and not much else. There was a small shed on the edge of the property at the end of a long, dusty driveway. It looked like no one had been there in years. Pat pried the door of the shed open and knocked over some plant pots that were filled with wilted flowers. A small brown bird flew out of the shed and scared the daylights out of her. She saw that it must have gotten in through the broken window on the side. “This place would need a fortune to be worth anything” she thought to herself, “and I have less than nothing to pay towards fixing it up.” She flopped her tired body down in a chair in the shed and let out a big sigh of frustration. “Just my luck to always get stuck with everyone else’s junk I have to deal with” she said under her breath. Outside, she caught a glimpse of a fluffy yellow cat rubbing it’s back on a shrub and knew it must belong to someone. That, it did.

“Don’t look so enthused” said a man’s voice who had obviously overheard her conversation with herself a few seconds earlier. Abigail jumped to her feet.

“Who are you and why are you on my property?” she shouted with her fist in the air.

“Woah! Easy slugger!” the man said. “I live just across that field over there and when I saw the dust stirred up in the driveway just wanted to see who you were. I’ve been keeping an eye on the place for Pat for some time” he said.

“Oh good, so she didn’t live here? I was starting to worry that my aunt was a freak!” Abigail said. The man chuckled under his breath and shook his head no.

“After she lost all of her crops a few years back to a big hail storm, she lost interest in this piece of land and left it for the buzzards. I’m assuming you’re her niece, Abby?” he asked.

“Abigail. My name is Abigail. And yes, I’m her niece. She apparently left this God-forsaken bit of dirt to me for some reason.” Abigail said with discernment in her voice looking at the horizon of nothing but dust and debris.

The man, who Abigail learned was named John, volunteered to help her get the property back into shape. At first, she was reluctant but knowing nothing about farming or anything else involving that property, she finally accepted and offered him an acre on the edge of the property that lined his as payment. She went back to Chicago a few days after her encounter with John in the understanding that he’d keep chipping away at fixing things in his spare time. She called ever so often to check in and honestly, got used to the sound of his voice on the other end of the line. He had one of those voices that seemed to calm her fears about whatever was to come, yet made her hopeful at the same time. One day, she called John and let him know that she’d be coming back down to Wichita for a few days to partake in the rest of her vacation days from work. John agreed to meet her there to talk to her about all that he’d done.

When Abigail arrived at the end of the driveway, she drove right past it looking for the bare fields she’d remembered from several months back. As she reached the edge of town, she was certain she must’ve missed it. She approached a small cemetery on the edge of the road that she remembered from her visit before and knew that she had found the driveway but it looked so different. The fields had been planted with grasses and were actually, quite beautiful. As she drove towards the shed, where John had agreed to meet her, she saw that it was no longer a shed but a small cabin that now had another room built onto the side. It even had windows in the front now. She couldn’t deny that it made her smile as she approached John standing there beside his truck with his tanned, muscular bicep laying across the truck bed.

“I literally passed the driveway twice!” Abigail said as she got out of the car. “The place looks amazing, John! How did you…” she started to add.

“Just a little seed and sweat” he replied. She looked around the edge of a clearing by the cabin and noticed that there were flowers planted all along the edge that acted as a border between the fields and what she considered the lawn to the cabin. This was it. This was the moment when her heart exploded. It wasn’t exactly like her dreams of youth but it was even better because she had someone she’d grown to love attached to the cabin and fields now.

As the sun set high in that Texas heat that evening, she sat in the middle of the field with John, closed her eyes and felt what she’d been missing all those years—the sun dancing on her eyelids as the breeze swayed grasses in between the sun beams and her face. What started out as a burden for her became her biggest blessing. Abigail was finally home in the place where her dreams sored and her heart was at peace breathing deeply amidst the golden grass and marigolds of the small town she’d left behind.