Happy Sunday morning!

It's foggy here, again, and a bit on the dreary side because of it - no blue skies or sun yet.  Instead of doing same-old-same-old, I thought I would post one of my Flash Fiction pieces.  It's a personal favorite:

Chet

The man came to Barton County in June.  Chet didn't know he was there, but the man knew Chet was.  He had heard of him, even back in New York.

A friend had talked to him about the man who lived outside Great Bend.  The friend had heard about Chet from another friend who had a cousin.  Naturally, the friend of the cousin laughed off the idea that a 'discovery' was waiting inside a combine in the dusty fields of Kansas.

"No, really." She flipped on the CD player.

The voice, deep and rich, perfectly pitched and full soared into the room, effortlessly lifting Nessun Dorma to the ceiling.

The CD passed hand-to-hand until it reached the very skeptical man with the New York Metropolitan Opera.

"He's untrained!  He's probably got all sorts of problems, and he's too old to work with to solve them, Mel."

"Just listen, huh?  Whaddaya got ta lose if ya just listen." Mel didn't plead, but this was close.

Lloyd relented. Shaking his head, with doubt creating an aura around him, he slid the CD into the machine. Chills danced through him. The hairs on his wrists and neck stood to sharp attention and the ripples in the nerves across his back denied his doubt.

Reverent silence spread to seconds after the last note faded into the dull gray light that filled the room. Still he stood there, staring at the machine as if to bring the owner of the voice from inside.

"See?"

A week later he landed in Topeka, rented a car and drove southwest through the open spaces that made him nervous. The sky was too big. The sun too bright and nothing but an ocean of gold and brown punctuated by silos, water towers, houses, barns and windmills swept away on all sides after he left the last of dubious civilization behind.

He arrived in Hoisington late in the afternoon when the sun was sliding down toward the horizon.  The light was pink and lavender, glinting and slashing off the windows when he drove down Main Street.

After the hustle, bustle and urgency of New York, this was foreign.  Almost as if he was a castaway in the middle of the ocean with only a village of natives for company.  He was uncomfortable among the tiny cluster of buildings.  They were too small, too far apart.

On Sunday, he sidled into the clapboard Church of Christ, paying no attention to the smiles, nods and whispered 'hellos' and 'welcomes'.  He tried to pick Chet out of the crowd but all the men with the self-consciously slicked back hair, the awkward set of the shoulders under their Sunday-best jackets, looked the same.

The congregation settled into their seats, leaving the anxious stranger almost alone in the back pew.  The service began and Lloyd waiting anxiously for the singing.  Almost more than ever he was convinced he was on a fool's errand.

"Please rise for the singing of 'How Great Our God'."

Rustles, thumps and shuffles filled the space when the crowd rose to its feet.  Fingers came down on the unseen organ and a hundred or more voices, some on key and pitch, most not, some strong, most uncertain, lifted above the serrated sea of heads. And then, through it all, came the voice.

It was stronger, deeper and more powerful than the CD had made him believe.  The prickling sensation of a moment swept through him, as it had in New York.  Lloyd held his breath, waiting for ... something.  A flaw, a stumble or uncertain note, but none came.

The song ended, leaving an aching pit in Lloyd's chest.  He didn't want it to end.  Leaning over, he asked the elderly lady with the carefully curled silver white hair and eyes the color of the sky outside, "Who was that?" 

"Why that was Chet Matthews. Doesn't he have a lovely voice? Like an angel, he sings." She nodded and smiled as if there could be no dispute.

"Er... uh... yes, yes he does."

After the service, Lloyd didn't wait.  He wouldn't talk to the 'angel' there, among his peers.  He wanted Chet to be comfortable, at home, where he would be relaxed and more open.

Two hours later, amid a rooster tail of dust that followed him up the long road to the Matthews farmhouse, Lloyd was deciding on how to approach the next star performer who would grace the New York stage.  The brakes squealed in protest when he stopped on the gravel and grass next to the battered looking house.

Lloyd stepped out into the heat inside the shade of the tree that stroked high over his head, topping the porch roof and stroking the siding with its branches.  The paint was faded and peeling.  Lloyd shook his head, strode to the steps and paused in front of the ratty screen door where he knocked.

Disbelief still raged inside him as he drove northeast toward Topeka.  Chet had sat across the faded plastic red and white checkered tablecloth, looking calmly at the man from the City.

"No, sir." He had said quietly with only the barest hint of his great gift in his words. He lifted a callused hand, ingrained with the dirt and grease of hard work to point to the flowing ocean of gold beyond the windows. "That’s my world, where I’m happy."

The next morning, under indigo sky, Chet threw a prayer to Heaven as he always did before beginning his work, climbed into his combine and started the engine.  Sailing across the golden sea of wheat, he offered his voice to the swallows and blackbirds that followed his ship as he answered the symphony of their song with a complementary refrain of his own.

 ******

Have a wonderful day!

Best~

Philippa

Follow me on Twitter.com:  https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Check out my other writings on www.authonomy.com (it's free and spam-free!)