To New Beginnings

There was a Midwestern girl named Cassie who grew up on her family’s farmland. She loved running around outside, playing with her brothers in the dirt. The Critchell property wasn’t much, a couple chickens, a couple horses, an old barn, a farmhouse, and a few acres of land. It was simple, but it made life good for the Critchell’s. Family always gathered at their farm for 4th of July and Thanksgiving. They stayed up late, drank, and talked while the kids played barefoot into the night. It brought everyone together for a good time. For this reason, it was Mr. Critchell’s pride and joy, and he did everything he could to be able to pay for it and keep it in the family. This meant working long hours and putting in almost all the labor on the farm himself.

Every summer, though, he would hire a few farmhands to help with the workload. These were always the drifter types, hard workers. The summer of ’97 was hot and humid, and Mr. Critchell had more work than he could handle. Horses lived in the barn and a farmhand named Mason was hired to care for them, groom them, and clean their stalls. He loved this job and did every part of it with passion, even shoveling the shit, he didn’t mind. The horses were beautiful to him and he felt like they could see his true self when they looked into his eyes, and that was comforting.

He became friends with Cassie Critchell that summer. She started helping him with some of his work because she liked being around him. He was quiet, though, very thoughtful about what he said and very respectful of her. She was 16 years old and he didn’t want to jeopardize his job with her father by being friends with her, so he kept a respectful distance, but enjoyed being around her and let her help with the horses. He was only 20, but seemed older than his age from having been independent for years. Cassie was a spitfire and could talk about any subject for hours, so she complimented him well, and he loved listening to her voice and being around her energy. When she talked, he lit up to see what she had to say.

Their friendship grew close over the months of that hot Missouri summer, but tension hung in the air between them every time they were together. They felt a magnetism to each other that scared them both. Cassie was not a patient girl and decided to pursue Mason as a by asking him to have lunch with her. They hadn’t ever made plans, so this would be the first time. He said yes, and she told him to meet her in the old barn at 11am, before the heat of the day got too strong.

The next day they had lunch with the horses. Cassie laid out a big, barn blanket on some hay for a picnic and set out the food that she had prepared during the morning, with her mother’s help. She made them both turkey and cheese sandwiches and soft, chewy chocolate chip cookies. It was simple, but wonderful. When Cassie looked at Mason, she felt how he felt looking into the horses’ eyes: like he saw her for who she truly was. She didn’t have to try to be anything for him, and that effortlessness made them grow closer.

The picnic in the barn became their time together every day for lunch. Mr. Critchell didn’t know about it because he was at his job in the city working long hours to pay the bills. Mrs. Critchell worked every day too, and warned her daughter not to spend so much time with the farmhand who was older, but still helped her when she wanted to try to cook something nice once and awhile for their lunches together. This went on for weeks. The two were best friends, but they could feel a romantic connection pulling them.

One day, Cassie asked, almost angrily, “Well, are you ever going to kiss me?” Mason was startled, because he wanted to every time he looked at her, but would never dare. She’s younger and his boss’s daughter. “Cassie, you know I think you’re beautiful and would like to kiss you but you’re much younger than I am and I could get in a lot of trouble.” “But I’m almost 17 and you’re barely older than me!” She contested, but she couldn’t stay mad because of the way he looked, like she wounded him. He was embarrassed, she was sexually frustrated, and it was the most awkward lunch date they’d had in the barn. “Look, I love spending time with you, but I’ve only got a couple weeks left helping your dad out and then I don’t know where I’m going from there,” he told her. “We’ll stay in touch, though, won’t we? I mean we’ll stay friends when you’re done with the summer work here, right?” She said with desperate sadness coming over her at the thought of losing him from her life.

“Sure, we will, I don’t know what will happen but we can stay friends,” he assured her, without much confidence in his words. She could feel that it was the first time he lied to her. She got up abruptly and ran back to her house, she couldn’t let him see her cry. He picked up the remnants of their mostly uneaten picnic lunch and wrapped it up for later. He folded up their barn blanket for another day. He fed the horses, brushed them, and continued on with the day’s work.

The next day, Cassie brought lunch again, as she did every day now, but she dressed herself up. She curled her hair, put some makeup on, and wore a floral sundress that hugged her body in all the right places. Mason’s eyes got real big when he saw how stunning she looked, and then he looked down at his dirty hands and old, torn clothing for work. “I didn’t know we were getting fancy for lunch today, I’m sorry,” he said, still embarrassed from the fight they’d had the day before. “No need to be sorry,” she told them, “I just figured if you’re leaving soon, there’s no reason to be coy forever and I wanted to look nice for you.” “Cassie, you always look nice. It’s not like that, I’m not just going to run off and you’ll never see me again,” he promised her as he opened up the picnic blanket they always use and laid it out.

She set down the food. Once he sat down on the blanket, she sat down very close to him. With their faces close together and him taken by her beauty, she said, almost in a whisper, “I’m sorry for yesterday, Mason. I ruined lunch and acted foolish, I hope you won’t hold it against me.”

He looked into her soft blue eyes and was lost in them. He pushed a strand of blonde hair aside and leaned in to kiss her. He felt the warmth of her lips and her smell came over him, too, like she was a drug that intoxicated him. She lost herself in his kiss and felt like she completely melted away from the earth in that moment. The sun was shining and time stopped. She knew from the way he kissed her that she didn’t need to apologize, she could sense that he felt the same way about her. She was intoxicated by him too, and every kiss and every touch made her want more. They kissed and touched and caressed each other until they were breathless. They both wanted more, but had to stop, the day’s work beckoned and they feared someone else would come into the barn.

Their next two lunches went the same, until her father found out she’d been kissing his farmhand. He wasn’t mad at Mason, but he did fire him, with only a few weeks left in the summer. He reminded Mason that his daughter is 16 and he urged him to stop seeing her. Mason knew he had to stop, he cared about her greatly, but she still had school and life to figure out for herself. He couldn’t face seeing her blue eyes well up with tears on his account and he couldn’t imagine saying goodbye, so he just left. He did exactly what he promised her he wouldn’t do.

Cassie showed up for lunch the next day to find only the horses in the barn. She ran back to the house and her mother gently told her what her father did and how it was for the best. Cassie didn’t see it that way and was a mess of angry tears. She ran back to the barn and threw herself onto the hay, sobbing. Her heart was broken and it felt like it was torn right out of her body.

She tried to find where Mason went and asked around in town if anyone knew where he was working. She did some digging for a few weeks after he left, but couldn’t find out anything. It was hard for her to accept. Even as she grew older, there was always a thought in the back of her head wondering why he left her without a goodbye and if she would ever find him again. At some point she gave up on the hopes that they would one day meet again.

Her brothers all grew up and moved away to pursue their own passions. They each took jobs, and one by one started caring more about their careers than the farm. It started to get neglected and family rarely gathered there anymore like they used to when the Critchell’s were kids. Cassie and her brothers all had other things to focus on now that they were adults. They moved away and built their own lives.

Mrs. Critchell started developing dementia and couldn’t remember much of anything. This was a hard state for the kids to see her in when they visited home and although they should’ve visited more, it caused them to actually visit less. It was heart-breaking to see the woman they looked up to deteriorate so much so that they couldn’t have a conversation with her. After talking for 30 seconds, their mother would forget and repeat the same questions. This would go on all day.

“Cass, my beautiful girl, how you doin’ hun? You got a boyfriend these days?” She would ask Cassie this a couple hundred times a day when she was home. Cassie felt compassion for her mother’s condition, but it was hard on her, too, to keep hearing this question – like a constant reminder of what she lost in her teenage years when she lunched every day in the barn with a boy she loved.

Cassie was lonely and decided to go sit in the old barn one last time before returning to her place in the city. No horses had lived in the barn for years, it just sat empty and decaying. Symbolic of the family’s decline, it only made Cassie lonelier. In a sad whim, she decided to light a candle and say goodbye to all the memories the barn held, to let it all go. She didn’t mean to burn the good old barn down, but it caught fire and she enjoyed watching it burn to the ground.

Cassie’s dad wasn’t mad about the barn. The Critchell family all felt ready to say goodbye to the Triple C Farm that brought so much joy in the younger years and only pain in the later ones. One by one, the Critchells moved to Colorado. One of Cassie’s brothers bought a plot of land with a farmhouse. Cassie and her brothers played cards with her mom while their dad cooked dinner and a couple Critchell grandkids played in the yard.

Life goes on.