A mid summer night

Jed never was much for talking and he had found out early in his life, that if you waste your words, no one listens to them. Over the years, he found that his observing people and things was more interesting than actually interacting with them.

Jed always liked being outside. The woods and fields were a place that he felt comfortable in. he was always one to be found out in the middle of his fields, drinking a beer and staring out at the stars. As far as farmers go, Jed was a quiet soul. Or at least that’s what his friends always said about him after a few beers. Only his wife Ellie ever said he was anything but quiet. She just said his jokes were always bad and he never took anything too serious.

Sitting in his fields, Jed felt like he was in another world. He felt the wind blow across the Midwestern plains and he could feel the weather weeks ahead. He watched the Deer scatter in and out of the wood blind at the edge of the fields. He listened to the rustle of small animals scatter in and out of the crops and he could tell what kind of yield he would get the next time he harvested.

The one thing he was not able to really observe was the way the bugs worked. The fire flies in particular puzzled him. Most flies and mosquitos are predictable. The birds and animals all were predictable. The fields and even the weather. Those things were all predictable.

Nothing he had seen ever explained what fireflies did. The randomness of them; never the same direction twice. The lights never in a pattern, always blinking with no rhythm. It was an almost purposeful chaos, but nothing that ever seemed natural. Sometimes there were a few, sometimes hundreds. Tonight there were more than he thought possible. The firefly light lit up the field and surrounded him in the woods. The trees and grass glowed green with the light.

Jed stood up in wonder. The fireflies seemed to be massing around the corner of his Cabbage field. The chaos of blinking green lights slowly started to shift into a swirl of green lights. more and more of the small bugs floated towards the swirling bugs. They came from the woods, and across other fields. at this point, Jed wasn’t really sure what to think, so he just watched.

Now the swirling had sped up and the bugs were blinking with a rhythm. The swirling formed patterns like he had seen in the old Celtic Drawings his grandmother had painted. The complex swirling of lines came from more bugs than he could count. the light from the field glowed eerily green. and still the small fireflies poured in from the field.

Now a second ring formed, this one going the opposite direction from the first one. The patterns appeared much faster this time. The rhythm of the circle beat steadily as more and more of the fireflies came into the pattern.

Finally the incoming fireflies tapered off. the circles danced with patterns and light and the swelled numbers rose the inner circle up well past Jed’s head. Jed wasn’t sure why he was so close to the circle, but he wasn’t going to miss something like this. The swelling stopped and slowly Jed realized the circle was expanding outward making the patterns dance in three dimensions. loops and spirals from once circle to the next spun out and into each other. Watching it from what Jed figured was not a safe distance, he still couldn’t believe the light show in front of him.

and then it was done. The dance rhythm peaked and stopped. then it was gone. no lights, no bugs. just empty.

But not empty. On the ground in the cabbage field Jed realized there was a lump that wasn’t cabbage. As he neared the area the lights had danced he realized the ground held the patterns of the dance. They were the Celtic knots but more intricate than anything he had ever seen painted or shown. When he stopped at the edge of them he realized the lump had moved. Before he could even guess, and baby cry cut the silence.

As soon as Jed’s foot hit the pattern on the ground a pressure released and the pattern exploded into a cloud of dust. Jed covered his eyes, but as quickly as the dirt flew up, it also fell straight back down. When Jed looked around now, he only saw a flat perfectly round area with no signs of his cabbage or the lines. Only the silent child.

The child was half buried in the loose dirt and stared at Jed innocently. No clothes or diapers, but it was clearly a boy when he picked it up. Not quite a newborn, but if it hadn’t been buried, there was no way it could have been sitting up by itself.

When he got home, he found his wife sitting on the porch waiting for him.

“Found this in the cabbage patch, I think we should keep him.” he grinned at his wife. Eye contact between the two said everything.

Ellie just shook her head, took the baby boy and went inside to get him some milk. “That man always makes a joke of everything.”