The wheat field
Fiction by Joe Sweeney

June in the Midwest is usually a busy time for the farming community. There isn't a lot of time for pleasures, as the wheat starts to head out and turn from green to gold. It was just such a June day many years ago that I happened upon a sight that still takes my breath away when I recall it.

I had been working a field about 5 miles from our house when suddenly the tractor started smoking and just stopped. I couldn't get it started again and since I had driven it out to the field, I had no other transportation to go for help. I figured my Dad would be really upset about the tractor dying anyway, and since I had to walk back to the house, I decided to walk slow so that I could put off the hollering for a little while longer.

The quickest way home was across the field I had been working, through a grove of trees and then across a wheat field. The wheat was about thigh high, and was just starting to turn from deep to light green. The heads were fully formed, but the kernels hadn't started filling yet. It would be easy enough to walk through it without worrying about shattering the grain.

After walking a while I was getting a little tired and the summer sun was making the sweat roll off of me. As I reached a tree line, I decided to walk between the tree rows to take advantage of the shade as long as I could.

About half way down the row of trees, I saw something in the wheat field. As I walked closer I noticed it was a girl. At first I thought that the heat had gotten to me because the way the sun was reflecting off of her, she almost seemed to glow. She was just standing there at a right angle to the tree line looking at a head of wheat she was holding in her hand. As I reached a spot opposite her, the light changed and suddenly I noticed she wasn't wearing any clothes. I shook my head to try to clear my vision and really thought the heat was getting to me. When I looked again, I saw I was not hallucinating. She was real, and she was beautiful. I had never seen a naked female before, but somehow I recognized beauty as I looked at her.

As I stood transfixed by her, I began to study the curves and lines of her body. Her breasts were not large, and her nipples were pointed and small. Her skin was a light brown with no sign of swimsuit lines, so either she was naturally that color or else she tanned in the nude. I imagined the latter and smiled at the picture I had in my mind of that. Her hair was down to the middle of her back and the light breeze would blow it around her torso.

I moved a step closer and froze when I stepped on a twig and heard it snap under my foot. She looked up and saw me, but only smiled and waved a little half wave. Then she reached down and grabbed handfuls of wheat and turning towards me, threw them in the air and spun around laughing as they fell down against her body. She danced, she spun, she jumped, and not once did she seem to care that I watched her merriment with a pleasure I could have never imagined. Suddenly she stopped and looked me straight in the eye. She put both hands over her mouth to hide a giggle, then sank down onto her knees in the wheat. All that was showing was her head and then that was gone. I heard the wheat rustling and I waited for a minute or two to see what she was going to do. When she didn't come back up, I walked out to where she had been dancing. Not only did I not find her, but I couldn't find any trace that she had been there. No wheat was broken or trampled down. No stalks with missing heads. No prints in the dirt. I thought for sure that I must be looking in the wrong place, so I searched the whole area and found the same no trace of what I had seen.

Dumbfounded, I continued my walk across the field to the house, thinking of what I had seen or thought I had seen. The more I thought about it, the more I relaxed and enjoyed the picture of her dancing and frolicking in the wheat. As I neared the edge of the wheat field, I imagined (or did I) that I heard a familiar giggle, only to see nothing when I looked around. I must have still had a smile on my face when I strode into the farmyard. My dad saw me coming and immediately started to get that 'What did you do now' look when he saw my face. He stopped in mid sentence, smiled himself and seemed to mellow. It was as if he knew why I was so happy. He walked over to me, reached up into my hair and picked a head of wheat from it. He twirled it in his fingers and from the far away look in his eyes I knew an image of a beautiful naked wheat field sprite was going through his mind. He sighed, winked at me and then asked me how bad the tractor was smoking when it died. I asked how he knew that's what happened. He said it happened to him once, but when he got back with his dad to fix it, it started right up. He said he bet that it would be the same this time. Sure enough, when he took me back to the tractor, it started without a problem.

Since that day, my dad and I have had a special bond. We had each seen beauty in the fields and though we never talked about it, we both knew it had been real. Someday, I hope my son will see the same beauty in the waving grain on a summer day as the wheat starts turning the golden color of her skin.

The end