• The hot sun shines down on me. It is bright, almost smiling its warmth oppressively across my back like the fiery whip of an elated overseer. I have seen all kinds of men pass through the amber fields. I have seen bad men who work their hands raw and good men burn the daylight hours with idle talk while work needs to be done. Then there are the men like me. These fields, golden and warm in the summer heat, are mine. The golden sea lying ahead of me that gently flows with a rare gust of wind was born on top of my sins. The soil was watered with the blood of men who didn’t deserve what I was told to do to them, but like roots of the past beneath the soil of time such thoughts and memories remain buried...until they are yanked above ground, exposed like a raw nerve, and vulnerable to harshness of the world around them.

    “John? Sweetheart there’s a telegram just got here for you wash up so you can read before dinner, okay?” chimes a voice more refreshing than the smell of lavender in the warm August air.
    I can’t seem to do anything but smile, even as she places a hand on her hip impatiently waiting for acknowledgement. Even annoyed, Leila’s cocoa brown eyes comfort me with warmth in the endless winter that my life had become. That is what she is to me, hot chocolate on a cold night, with her deep mahogany skin and lustrous black hair.

    By comparison I find myself pale and uninteresting. I am the average white man between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty five that you see everywhere; nothing special as far as I’m concerned, but she is different. She calls me her “favorite pasty white boy”. Tells me that the most beautiful thing in her world is how good I’ve been to her. That’s just how we say “I love you”.

    “I’m comin’ baby.” I tell her as I trudge from those golden fields, grown on land bought with blood money into a home built with hands that have destroyed so much. I revel in the grand juxtaposition of my life as I take the folded telegram from her, receiving a swat on my behind for keeping her waiting. I stopped as I read the lines aloud. It was a simple rhyme and nothing more.

    Scared, you run to and fro
    Nowhere to hide
    Now reap what you sow


    “Baby what’s that mean?” Leila asks as I struggle to find its meaning myself. Suddenly its meaning comes to life in my mind even as a loud roar assaults my ears and my feet are lifted up.
    Black. Everything has gone black. I hear a persistent screaming... or is it my ears ringing? Soon even that sound fades and there is nothing for what seems like an eternity that feels almost instantaneous, if such a thing even exists. When I open my eyes next I can only see a piece of the sky torn from the heavens and plastered to my ceiling. No. Is my ceiling attached to the sky then? No... There embers along the edges, like dying stars. That means it’s a hole from an explo- Oh god...

    It’s surprising how hard it is to stand and panic at the same time, but I can ponder that later.

    “Leila!” I call out, though my voice is sore, ragged, and horse. My chest hurts and I can feel uncomfortable warmth on the left side of my face though whether its blood or swelling is irrelevant to me now.

    “Leila!” I call out again with more success. It is night time and I am surprised at how well I can see. I look up, confused at this source of light, to see that the moon is full casting a calm gentle glow over the wheat fields. Even with the light of the moon, there was still nothing in the field that I could see save for a lone scarecrow, which seemed oddly different in the moonlit field.

    “Leila! Baby where are you!” I call out, straining, as I try to ignore the pain in my chest from ribs that must at the very least be cracked. The metallic flavor seeping in through the corner of my mouth tells me that the warmth on the side of my face was indeed blood.

    I’m losing blood from other places. I can tell by the gradual blurring of my vision that consciousness is a temporary luxury at this point, and it is one I won’t have for much longer. I seem to be stumbling toward the scarecrow. Why does it look so much different during the day?
    As I approach the scarecrow, looking at it, I am suddenly reminded of a crucial and in this instant terrifying fact: We never had a scarecrow. As if to punctuate my moment of catharsis I feel a sudden and sharp pain in my lower back followed by a weakness in my legs and then numbness from the waist down. Though I don’t feel it I know that I’m on my knees now looking up at this scarecrow... looking up at Leila.

    I want to be horrified and grief stricken, but I think she was always my scarecrow. She was the comfort against the crows of my past, reminding me that I had changed. I can feel my hands drop lower and slide to the ground beside me as my body begins to sag. I can feel wetness in the soil beneath me but I can still smell sun warmed lavender in the night air. Is this my blood that soaks the wheat? No. This soil was always damp with the blood of the people I’ve hurt. I can see a man behind my scarecrow. I can see a man behind my Leila. Poor, poor Leila.

    “I took from you what you took from me and now I’ll take the only thing you have left.” comes a deep voice. It radiates pain and rage in equal measure. I hear it and I feel it. I can only see the silhouette of the man now. As I look up at his outline, the light of the full moon seems to radiate from around him. He raises an arm, he’s armed. I can see the glint of a gun barrel in his right hand and a bloody machete in his left. I hear the “click” as he pulls the hammer back.
    In my mind, I kneel before death itself and he has come to reap fall’s harvest: Seeds sown in the blood of the innocent.