NOTE: This story is based on an actual happening as told to me. Names have been changed at the request of the subject.
Not everyone grows up in a family with fourteen siblings. But I did. We filled up the old weathered farmhouse on the South Dakota prairie with its four rooms and a hallway on the first floor and the same on the second. Sixth in line, I arrived shortly before the end of the Second World War.
My siblings and I definitely had our differences but we knew how to have fun together. My brothers and I tormented our sisters with endless practical jokes. And there was a steady supply of fresh air and wide-open spaces in which to play and explore. By the time the trees showcased their new line of spring fashions, our bare feet had developed more than a nodding acquaintance with tender green grass and earth left damp by the snows of winter.
My father had constructed a flatbed trailer from the undercarriage of an old car and its four tires. He covered it with boards and erected sides for it with several two by twelve lengths of wood. It was used for hauling a variety of things around the farm including our trash which was usually a motley assortment of tin cans, rocks, tree branches, and parts of any broken down equipment.
This conveyance would prove to be my nemesis one pleasantly warm afternoon in June the year I was seven.
“Eddie!” My father called out. “Trailer’s full. Needs dumpin’. Billy and Buster are already hitched. Sam—you help too.”
“Sure Dad,” Eddie answered.
Sam said nothing but nodded.
“Hey…I’m comin’ too!” I yelled.
Dad frowned at me. “Ain’t you got the chickens to feed, Timothy?”
“Done it already. They’re gobblin’ it up. I can help with the trash. Get’s done faster that way.”
Dad shrugged and then nodded. I scrambled eagerly up onto the trailer after my two older brothers.
We lurched into motion and started down the gopher hole infested lane towards the heap where all Pierson trash goes to die. Eddie was driving.
It was a beautiful day. Yellow sulfur butterflies drank from a mud puddle left by the previous night’s showers. Dusty brown sparrows eager for a bath joined them while a robin regaled us from a nearby cottonwood. The sky held few clouds and the season was too new to bake the prairie grass of summer.
Because the trailer was brimming over with castoffs, my brothers and I needed to sit on the edges with our legs dangling out over. It was tricky business to hang on and keep our balance as the horses pulled the wagon over the ruts and potholes.
We whooped and hollered and picked on each other. Once, Sam pulled out a stone from the pile of trash on the wagon and flung it after a fleeing rabbit. We sang songs at the top of our lungs and teased Eddie about being sweet on Mildred the pretty, fifteen-year-old two farms away who could wrestle a full-grown hog to the ground.
Then Sam leaned over and jabbed me in the ear with a slobbery index finger. He knew how I hated that!
Events then transpired towards their painful conclusion.
It began with such grace. One hand came off the edge of the trailer to smack my brother good. My arm swept into the air toward his face. At the same time, one of the tires lurched through a particularly deep gopher hole.
The next thing I knew I lay on my back in the dust, staring up at a cloud. I remember making the odd observation that its shape resembled a coffin.
I realized that the trailer had stopped and my brothers, white-faced, hovered over me. I stared back at them, unblinking, wondering vaguely why it hurt to breathe.
“Oh, my gosh, Timothy. You just got run over by the back wheel of the trailer!” Eddie’s voice cracked with anxiety. “You ain’t dead, are you?”
I attempted to answer but only a mouse-like squeak emerged. Apparently, this provided no reassurance as I saw Eddie’s lower lip begin to quiver.
“Go get Dad.” He shoved Sam towards the barn. My brother’s feet pounded the dusty ground as he raced away.
I tried to sit up and immediately regretted the decision.
“No! Don’t!” Eddie pushed me back down as I gasped with pain, only too happy to lie there. My only hope was that I wasn’t crippled for life or doomed to die a slow agonizing death.
I don’t remember the next hour or two very well. They say Dad and Eddie eased me onto a wooden plank and carried me carefully back to the house. I was told that my older sisters, who hadn’t yet learned that hysterical tears solved nothing, were banished upstairs until my parents could determine the severity of my injuries. In those days, the doctor was summoned only if death’s door had cracked opened and the poor soul placed at its threshold.
My mother diagnosed several broken ribs. She tightly bound my chest, prayed over me and put me to bed. For the next week, I was confined to the house.
I think I would have been happier had I been more seriously injured. I could then have languished in the hospital and been fed chocolate ice cream by young, pretty nurses. The drama would have made it worthwhile and I would have probably been hailed as a hero. After all, the act that led to the accident was one of pure self-defense.
After the fifth day or so, I became restless and made sure my poor mother knew it. I was tired of lying in bed. My suppressed energy screamed to be expended. Chicken soup had worn out its welcome. I
feared my legs might atrophy. The walls were closing in. And the day the new cement floor was poured for our chicken house, I was fit to be tied. I was missing one of the most exciting events on the Pierson farm in years
Finally, my mother got sick of it. “Timothy” she addressed me crisply as she wiped her flour-covered hands on her apron with deliberate motions. “I don’t want to hear another word from you unless it’s one of gratitude. You are a very fortunate boy. You got off with a few broken ribs. But think of poor little Benny Harper crushed by a tractor last year. You could be dead.” At that point, my usually stoic mother burst into tears.
I was speechless. I’d never seen my mother cry and it truly disturbed me. The rest of the day was a rather quiet one and my mother got her wish. She never heard another complaint from my mouth in regards to my invalid state.
I did get to watch the cement floor being poured. Time passed and life returned to normal. But I will always remember my brush with death and how blessed I was to be alive.
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