The Hidden Things

Prologue:

Eli

Being the youngest and scrawniest of the family was never easy for me. Being the only son left at home on the farm was even more challenging. Ben, the oldest and the biggest of the Scott children, flew the nest for the army—never to return. His parting gift was his portion of the chores. When Thomas, the tallest of the clan, ventured off for college, my duties on the farm increased exponentially in my eyes because I became the proud owner of them all.

Meanwhile, I had nothing much going for me, neither bulk nor height. But that didn't matter much when there was work to be done. My father had a full-time job in town but ran the small farm in the evenings and on the weekends, which left me to "step up" in his absence. And that's how it was—period.

My long and arduous day would begin early in the hay barn, filling up the feed bins for the milk cows, leaving me just enough time to grab my stuff and walk out to the main highway to catch the bus. After a full day at school, I spent my evenings knee-deep in various types of muck. It's no wonder I possessed not one, but two pairs of gumboot—not every person can lay claim to that! But it was the weekends that got me riled: from sunup to sundown, a never-ending list of things to do. I was never fond of school, but, needless to say, when Monday morning came, I was more than ready to go, so eager that sometimes I didn't take time to change my footwear. To my dismay, the ladies shunned me those days. However, the guys patted me on the back for my audacity to go against the norm.

Not to say I didn't have loving parents; we just had different ideas of what "fun" was. I didn't consider it "fun" to work in the garden or prepare vegetables for canning to set the record straight. But my parents enjoyed it with a "whistle as you work" kind of joy. It was what they defined as a hobby. However, I didn't take much delight in peeling tomatoes or shucking corn all day. No one asked me, but if they wanted to stock up on food for the winter, they should have just sent me fishing in Buck Creek. The Scott property conveniently ran down to its edge. I never knew Buck or how he came into the possession of a creek, but it was a mighty fine place to cast a line.

My impending departure for college was a stress-filled time. There would be no one upon whom I could bestow my chores except my parents. And even I had enough sense to feel guilty about that. There would be no "gotcha" moment for me because I was at the end of the line. Somehow I felt cheated.

When my final day on the farm arrived, Dad presented me with an unexpected gift. Robert Eli Scott had been a collector of old coins for as long as I could remember. He would inspect every coin he found, searching for the rare and unusual. Many times my father showed me his growing cache and talked about what made each one special. Imagine my surprise when he gave me my own starter set.

"Eli," he said, "be diligent in the pursuit of the hidden things of life."

"The hidden things of life? What do you mean by that?" I questioned.

"Ah, my son, that's for you to figure out.

"

With those parting words, as clearly as you can chart anyone's life in retrospect, all things in my life shifted at that moment. And little did I know the significance that gift would have in my life, as well as in someone else's life yet to be born.