Fields of the Disappeared

The little girl started reading to me on the hay ground. I remember how she sat, legs crossed in a way I could never get mine, intent to tell me this story about a red barn and three chickens who happily lived there, with no one to chase after their eggs, but not happy forever, because soon the men with crates would come.

I remember her long smooth shiny brown hair and how the sun gleamed against it like polished stone. She had lots of freckles on both cheeks. I remember too that her voice was like a small violin I could listen to all day. But I got hungry sometimes and had to go back to Mom in the middle of it and get full. I would always hurry back to the entryway, afraid the little girl had left, but there she sat with her legs crossed, book open in her lap, ready to start where she left off with a wide-as-sky smile on her face.

Myra

That’s how I began to learn my words, one at a time first, then two in a row, then whole sentences.

Myra had lots of stories about princesses and castles, beaches and forests, and places all packed with people called cities. They always had something dangerous and worrisome happening in them, but something in Myra’s eyes said don’t be scared, and so I told myself, don’t be scared, and sure enough in the end it was always okay. The princess got away from the bad people who wanted to keep her in the castle. The boy in the city found his parents again. The turtle grew up strong in the sea and found lots of turtle friends. I loved to hear all the different words, like “fence” and “meadow” and “birds” and “sidewalks” and “stores” and “knights” and “river.” When Myra saw how excited I got, she got happy too. My eyes must have looked like big white saucers to her.

Mom didn’t seem to care that I spent so much time in the entryway with Myra as long as I came back to eat when I needed to, and I always did, because the last thing I wanted was Mom to worry. She might not let me back to see my friend and then I wouldn’t be able to hear these amazing sounds and see the colorful pictures that went with them and go to the big worlds in my head that I had never seen.

Myra kept calling me Tilia. I guess that was my name. It felt better than not having one. I loved it because Myra gave it to me. She said her dad had the work of the farm keeping him busy most days, but he talked a lot over their dinners about iron machines in the sea from long ago that tried to hurt some people and keep others safe. He called it the flotilla. That’s where she got my name from, but it was nicer the way she made it sound.

She would say, with that happy look in her eyes, Tilia listen to this and Tilia I bet you would have a great time at the beach and Tilia one day we will go away together to see more of the countryside. It made my heart thump fast, so fast, and I wanted to hear even more stories and more about our plans to go away together. I wanted to ask Myra if Mom would come with us. I thought she would, but I wasn’t sure. If she couldn’t go, Mom would get very sad and even angry with me and maybe not let me back to feed. But I forgot to ask Myra about it, or maybe I was afraid to, and she never said when or how we would all go. She just said some day soon. Some day soon.

Mirror

One morning Myra showed me a mirror. She set it down beside the stack of books and I couldn’t wait to see what it was. But when she brought the shiny surface close to me, I felt a big pit open in my stomach. This big white crooked streak ran down my head and my eyes sat at the edges of two blotchy patches of black, like someone dropped them there by accident. My nose looked like a gigantic pig’s foot and pink as a pig’s would be. My ears were two different sizes, one with white and black blotches and the other all black. One had the shape of a fence hole. The other looked like a leaf with a small bite taken out of it.

I think Myra could see how upset I was and she just kept saying Tilia don’t you see how beautiful you are, you are the most beautiful calf in all the world, no calf ever born could be prettier than you. Myra always knew how to make me feel better. She left the mirror with me and I got used to seeing myself, so it wasn’t so bad after a while. I don’t think Mom had any interest in the mirror and so I didn’t show her. Her hard look at me said all things are meant to be as they are, not seen to themselves, so I nudged the mirror under some hay at the corner of our home so no one would come along and take it from me.

Myra must have read a hundred books to me by summer and I listened with my ears forward to every one. I would put my foot on the cover to tell her that I wanted her to read it again, sometimes three or four times in a row, and she would always go okay sure without any questions. I liked the one about the red barn and the three chickens the best, because the chickens were such good friends and had the whole barn to themselves. The only part I didn’t like was the end when the men came with the crate.

Every day Myra would touch my nose and say, I know you can’t say things Tilia but I think you really understand all this, I can tell you do! You would have lots of great things to say if you could speak. I wish you could Tilia because then we could talk back and forth and wouldn’t it be great if all the animals on the farm gathered round to listen to you? They should because they would learn so much. I’m sure they would and they would find out how special you are, Tilia. I can see it in your eyes, how much you like going with me to the castles and cities and beaches and forests.

I tilted my head up and gave her a lick on the cheek, my way of saying Myra I love you too and yes, let’s go to all those places in the world together as soon as we can, with Mom of course, but no I don’t need all the others here to come around because I would feel a little funny and probably wouldn’t know what to say or how to say it. Myra hugged me and set her head against mine. Then the dinner bell rang and she had to go.

Salem

Summer was ending and it was almost time for me not to feed from Mom anymore. One of the farm people, an older skinny boy who always seemed to wear a straw bowl hat and white shirt with no sleeves, started bringing hay for me. He didn’t speak much and always seemed a little sad in his eyes. At first I was nervous about eating it, but when I tried some it was delicious. Myra told me what all the different kinds of hay were and I loved knowing the names: timothy, orchard grass, alfalfa. Alfalfa was my favorite because it tasted sweet and smelled the best.

One afternoon, something seemed different. Myra brought only a couple books instead of the usual stack. After finishing the second one, a true book about how they make things called airplanes that flew in the sky, Myra began to cry. I nuzzled against her because I didn’t want her to be so sad. She said she had to go to a place where she could learn things, even though she didn’t want to, and this place was far away from where we were. She was going to live with her Mom, and I thought it was a good thing because I couldn’t imagine being away from mine for very long and being happy. But it meant Myra couldn’t come to see me much at all because the place called Salem where her Mom lived was far from here and she couldn’t get back on her own.

Myra had brought a picture to show me, a funny-looking rectangle that had the word “Oregon” on it. We are here. She pointed to a little dot on the right side and said this is Baker City. Then she pointed to a bigger dot near the left side. This is Salem, where I’ll be. Tilia, will you think of me always?

I nudged her hand to say yes, of course. Then Myra gave me the biggest hug I ever got from her. I could tell she did not want to let me go, and that this was a goodbye. If I was big enough, I would have gone in front of the entryway so she couldn’t leave. But the dinner bell rang and Myra got up, wiped her eyes, and walked slowly out the entryway to the big house. She left the two books with me and I quickly nudged them under the hay in the corner of our home, near where I kept the mirror so no one would take them. I would look at the books every day and think of Myra and imagine her reading me the stories.

It rained something terrible that night. The rain pattered on the tin roof so loud I couldn’t sleep. But even if it was quiet with stars out and no wind or rain, I would not have slept. I thought about Myra and how much I’d miss her and how my days would not be the same without her visits. Mom seemed to have trouble sleeping as well and she kept her foot against mine as if to say it will be okay. I think Mom was sad for me because she knew how much I liked seeing Myra and how good the little girl made me feel. Mom had a hard way about her, that was just who she was, and in the morning she gave me one of her hard looks to tell me here’s another day and we will go on just the same as before.

Grazing

Not long after Myra left, I got to go out into the wide open field with Mom for the first time. I didn’t feel like going, but she nudged me along and we ate some delicious orchard grass together and watched the clouds float across the sky. All I could think of was Myra and what she might be doing and if she was playing with new friends or feeling lonely looking out a window and missing me.

I spotted a long blue building at the far edge of the open field and tapped on Mom’s foot to show her. Mom got quiet and turned away, starting back toward the entryway of our home. I was about to turn around too to follow her when I saw some others roaming close to the building, wagging their tails, munching on the grass. A fence split up the two parts of the field, one where our home was and the other with the blue building. It seemed the grass was better over there and the others all looked so happy to be eating it.

When I woke in the morning, something was different. I pushed up from the hay floor and saw that Mom was gone. I guessed they had taken her out for an early morning feed and would come back for me soon since Mom did not like to be away from me for very long. But no one came to take me out. I started to worry.

That afternoon, the older boy with the sad eyes brought a small pile of alfalfa hay, dropped it in front of me, and left. As day turned into night, Mom had still not come back. I got even more worried. I began to pace our home and felt for the first time how small and cramped it was. If only Myra was here, she would help me find Mom and bring her back.

But Mom never came back and Myra was in Salem, going to a place to learn things and maybe thinking about me, but maybe not. I moved some hay off one of the books she had left me, the one with a big airplane on the front, but I could not bring myself to open it because it would make me remember her violin voice and her happy laugh and I would be too sad.

I laid down and rested my head on the book instead and imagined Myra reading it to me, telling me about the men in the factory who brought in huge wings on trucks to put the plane together. They had lots of people from nearby towns working on it, so it would be ready soon, and sure enough, the day came when they brought it out onto what looked like a giant road and the plane was white and blue and twice as big as it was in the book, so big that it could hold me, Mom, and Myra in it all at once and we would go zooming down the road inside the plane, looking out the windows together, seeing the fields and the buildings and trees racing past, and then we would lift up into the air, going higher and higher, off to a faraway city, or to a forest with knights and princesses, or to a beach by a blue-green sea full of turtles.

Sleep tugged at me, this way, it said, this way, and after a while I couldn’t say no and that was okay, because I thought for sure I would wake up and Mom would have her foot next to mine and Myra would bounce in with the sun coming up as she always did with her big pile of books and we would have another day, as Mom liked to say, just the same as the one before. But when I woke up the next morning, it was only me laying on the hay floor in the cramped square room, the pigs next door grunting in their soft way, and the buzz of the occasional fly that landed on my nose.

August

Seven summers came and went, and before each one, I told myself this is the summer it will happen. I will meet Mom in the open field again, on the side with the sweetest and longest orchard grass, back from her long trip to another farm, which is where they take some of us when we grow up. The older boy would lead me through the fence opening into that half of the field, closest to the long blue building. I would join the others and we would swipe happily with our tails, not minding the biting flies, because the grass was delicious. I would spend my nights in the field and the stars above would shine like a million fireflies pinned in place and I could go down on my front legs, roll over onto my back on the cool wet grass and look as long as I wanted at them.

I would like to get to that one, one day, and that one. Mom would be back and we could do it together, and Myra too, visiting from Salem finally, and I would ask the stars for all of us: Dear stars, may we live among you?

But the older boy, who seemed a lot less sad than he used to, never brought me to the other part of the field. I watched many others go. Most were happy and sang a little as they crossed. A few did not like the idea at all. They ran from the boy when he came to bring them. The boy always caught up though, and sometimes brought a friend to help, and they learned that they had to go anyway.

One hot afternoon, I saw a black-and-white like me, only much bigger and quite a bit older, being led into the blue building. Hours passed and he did not come out. As day began to turn to night, I went back thinking he must have gone to bed early in the blue building, his new home, tired because he was older, but the next day I walked up and down our side of the fence, counting and looking. He was not there. He had not come out. And then a terrible feeling filled my stomach, that the long blue building was not a good place, not at all, and that we should do whatever we could to stay away from it. Grazing on the other side of the fence meant we would have to go inside one day and maybe not come out.

Then a sharp deep pain like none I have ever felt flashed from my legs to my head. I felt sick and my head so light that I thought I might fall over. I understood what happened. That building is where they took Mom while I slept that night. The older boy with the torn overalls and straw hat, or his friend, or both of them, took her there. She went in and did not come out. She did not come back to me. Because she couldn’t. Just like Myra couldn’t come back to Baker City, even though I was sure she wanted to.

Crickets

Days went by, many of them, and I did not want to go anywhere. I dug my feet into the hay floor when the older boy tried to lead me out. He gave up and left. I didn’t want the alfalfa he dropped in front of me. I let the books stay under the hay, their covers now ripped a little.

Later, he came back with his friend and I could not dig my feet into the floor strong enough to stop them from leading me into the open field. This time, they took me through the gate onto the side closest to the long blue building.

All the times I dreamed of munching on the tall sweet grass and rolling on my back, and now it was here, and all I could think about was how I could get back over to the other side. I only saw two others in this part—a brown-and-white and one that looked like me, only much older. I laid down on the warm grass and rested my chin there, staring back at my home, missing the place I had spent for all those summers.

I thought about Myra, how big she might have gotten, was her hair still a shiny brown, what she might be doing this afternoon, maybe learning how to play an instrument, a violin maybe. Then came a thought that made my stomach so heavy I didn’t think I could ever get up again: Myra has forgotten me.

Her exciting life has taken her to many corners of the world and she doesn’t have a moment to rest or think back about her Tilia. I could have sunk through the entire earth and come to the bottom, but then I said to myself she is happy somewhere, playing a game with her friends or going to a store with her Mom to buy something, and doesn’t that make you glad, because don’t you want your Myra to be happy always—even if it’s without you? And I did.

But I also knew they would bring me into the long blue building the next morning, I was sure of it, and so that night, my first in the field beside the building, I barely looked up at the stars. I drifted off to sleep with the crickets chirping, as if they were singing me a goodbye song. So-long, so-long, so-long. I never liked crickets much or the sound of rain, but I wished it was raining now, that I could fall into the sound of drops pattering on the ground and know that dark clouds were covering up the stars so I wouldn’t have to see their small specks of faraway light.

Lights

I had a dream I was floating up from the warm deep blue waters of the sea. As I got close to the surface, the sunlight hit the water and it exploded into a thousand tiny flashes of sharp white light, those flashes swirling all around me, like bits of stars, falling from the sky and leaping out of the sea, carrying me with them, sending me upward.

In a story Myra read to me once, a boy swam in a sea like this and the sun lit up a gigantic pile of treasure beneath him—diamonds and blue gems and gold—not too far from the edge of the beach. The boy dove down to get the jewels but he couldn’t reach them. But he tried and he tried and he tried again. He tried until he was too tired to try anymore. So he turned onto his back and let the current take him. He thought it would bring him back to shore, but it took him out to sea instead.

But soon I knew this was not a dream. I was floating up, in the dark, in the middle of the night, over the field closest to the long blue building, now just a small block of darkness below me. The full moon shone down in a single wide beam as I drifted up into it, no weight in my body, legs hanging in the air. I smelled smoke from burning orchard grass or alfalfa and felt a strange kind of heat from inside. I looked up and the moon beam had become a bright waterfall of white, yellow, and red light, not like a moon at all, but a sun, and I was going up into it. I could not stop myself. Like the boy on his back in the current, I let myself go. I closed my eyes so the light wouldn’t hurt them. I hoped the heat blooming in my belly would cool.

And then the white light vanished, replaced by a dim blue glow, like the real moon had come back. I felt a smooth floor under my feet. I was standing in a circular room with a square silver table in the middle. I thought they’ve taken me inside the long blue building and this is what it looks like. But nothing about the room seemed like it fit. Nothing was made of wood. There was no dirt or big entryway.

That’s when I saw three small children standing against the far wall, looking at me. I got excited, thinking maybe it’s Myra and her new friends, that somehow they found their way back to Baker City for a visit. Two of the children moved a little closer, stepping into the soft blue light shining down on the table. I could see that their eyes were big and dark. They had no noses and their skin was very pale, almost gray. One of them held what looked like a long stick with a sharp point. I heard him say Don’t be afraid. Get on the table please. His mouth didn’t move. He talked to me in my head. It’s okay, he said. What we need to do won’t take long.

Table

I did not want to get onto the table. I was afraid. I didn’t believe him that it would be okay. I said this in my head because I knew that was how they could hear me. Get on the table please. And if I won’t? We will have to put you on the table. Why? You have something we need. To continue on. What are you going to do? They didn’t answer and so I knew it could not be good, something to do with the sharp stick. I will do as you ask, but first can you take me to see my friend Myra? Just for a little?

The one with the long stick looked at the other beside him. It seemed like they were talking it over with each other. The one behind them, a bit taller than the other two, came around the side of the table toward me. This one’s voice was warmer, softer, like Myra’s. She touched my nose as Myra had so often done, with gentleness and care. You are different from the others we’ve taken, she said. You have much of your world in you. This is from your friend. I said yes, yes it is. She is very special and I miss her. Tell us, what is needed? The question felt like a test of some sort. I thought long and hard because my answer would probably mean the difference between seeing Myra and not.

What is needed . . . is to get rid of the long blue buildings. For all of us to live together in a place where there are as many books as we ever could read in a lifetime, or be read to from. If we could have a hundred thousand stories, we could live in them and no one would ever be sad. And at night we could sleep in wide open fields under the stars and imagine what it would be like to live among them while we dream. We would wake in the morning to find more books and more stories all around, and so it would go on like this day in and day out for the rest of time. And the earth would give us more of what we would need because it would feel happier too, since we were happier and more friendly to it because we were happier. Maybe then you could live with us too, or come visit without needing to use the table for whatever you use it for. Somehow we could give you what you need without it.

She stared into me a bit with her big dark eyes and then went to the wall behind me, touching something there. The dim blue light above the table faded out and I felt the room begin to move. A high-pitched whirring came up through the floor. It hurt my ears a little. Then she was beside me again, reaching into my head to find out where to go, so I pictured the map Myra had shown me that day on the hay ground, as clearly as I could remember it.

West, I said. Toward the sea. To Salem.

Tilia

Even at night in the dark, I could tell Myra’s room was pink and frilly and warm, with books stacked everywhere. There was almost no room for me to stand. On the little white table by her bed, she had a picture of her and another girl with long red hair on a swing, I’m guessing her best friend. They were laughing. Myra wore glasses now, maybe from all the reading. I saw some papers spread out on her desk and when I looked closer, I could tell they were part of a story. That’s when I saw one page lying over the others with a single word on it, my name, and the greatest happiness and sadness I’ve ever felt rushed up in me all at once, in a wild twisting whirl of feeling.

Myra stirred and sat up in her bed. She looked around a little confused, maybe trying to figure out why she was awake in the middle of the night. Her eyes met mine and her mouth dropped open. That wide-as-sky smile broke across her face and I went up to her bedside so she could touch my nose and I could rest my head against hers one last time.

Arcadia

We had billions of miles to go, although the small ones told me they would go by fast and that we would even start moving backward in time. They let me look out through the thinnest part of the wall, a window. I never thought I would find myself among so many beautiful collections of stars, millions of them, swirling in spirals, some spinning around black pools they called the dark places. We wouldn’t be going into any of them, thankfully.

When I asked where we were going, the tall one told me Arcadia, a world much like where I was from, only a lot bigger and greener and filled with living things like myself, as well as so many other kinds I had never seen before. I asked if one day we could bring Myra with us, if she wanted to come.

They did not answer, but seemed content to let my dreams and stories keep me company as we raced through the wide field of the universe. I felt time loosening its embrace, opening the way for all memories and places and the life that lived in those places to exist together again, as if for the first time. This, I learned, is the beauty and secret of becoming light. This is how I hoped things would be in Arcadia.