A Hill of Beans

Jess put a bean in earth and watched it sprout. Leaves burst from stem and beans dropped under them in little sacks. She plucked off hordes of beans from their sleeping bags and popped each of them in new beds around their Mother. Each bean became sapling became adult within a minute. Jess gathered up all the beans from the grove she’d created. Staring at them all, huddled in the hem of her dress, she sighed. Her work wasn’t done.

She started for the summit. The hill wasn’t tall but it was long and steep, a ramp to the heavens. Sun whipping her, Jess trudged on. On the crest Jess gazed at the townspeople below her. They weeded. They plowed. They planted.

Nothing grew.

Dead brown dominated their fields, some of it born from withered leaves, some from baked earth ever bare, all of it with no signs of changing green. They knew nothing would grow, nothing ever had.

They were the first generation to take up residence here, their ancestors having died off in far off lands. Why they had settled here, Jess didn’t know, but she saw they loved Earth as she did. She saw it when they took breaks from working, when they spread their arms wide above their heads and let their tears free, barefoot and beaming, the lone time their grins touched their eyes. Life was hard for them here. For survival, they attempted anyway. For survival, they suffered.

Jess watched moments more. She could grant the people her coveted miracle soil. She could end their harbors so that they could harvest fruits plump and ripe, roots, and sprouts of their own. But, surely, the day she did that would be their end.

She smiled on them, men and boys huffing, kicking up dust clouds that clung back on their clothes and feet. Women threading their fingers in dirt, sweat beading and rolling into their dazed eyes, daughters by their sides for sake of outspoken incentive through snarling stomachs. Jess smiled, and began tossing beans.

At first, people were unfazed, missing the confetti striking about them. When a bean or two strayed ground and tapped shoulder, arm, forehead, there was a pause filled with silent open mouths, and then came cheers. Jess continued to throw down beans, laughing with the now prancing people. They couldn’t see her for the girth of their joy. Once a handful of beans were collected, some ran back to their homes to put them on the stove; others got busy right on the ground they were on, digging trenches to build a fire, their children running further downhill to assemble wood and dry leaves, eager for earth’s flavor to play on their tongues.

Jess stopped on the last bean, rolled it between her fingers, and headed back down her side of the hill. She’d provided enough hope for today, enough to keep the people driving for tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow. They never saw her dishing beans from the tip of the hill. For all they knew, beans were falling in rain’s stead, their strife having birthed a miracle. Jess continued rolling her solitary bean and prayed for her own.

At the plot of miracle soil, Mother and Children bean plants had vanished. She took her last bean and stuffed it underground. There grew a new bean plant, as before, lusher than its parent and siblings. From it she gathered more beans and planted, gathered and planted. With each ordinary green bean, she sighed. With blues and reds and yellows, she held her breath.

One bean had brought her here; a fruit of paradise lost its way. And only one could take her home. It had to be a bean elongated, born of a parent royal purple with dog-eared leaves. Only when she had that bean’s twin would the plant she bred stretch and break through cloud. It seemed improbable that she’d ever create a new magic bean, but the first magic bean had grown here and its magic remained. It was all a game, breeding and selecting, stock and demand. And every game had a winner.

A prick disturbed her finger. She left her thoughts and witnessed a beetle parading from a mark on her knuckle where blood welled. Reflexes made her flick her hand and send the creature flying. Pests were her constant neighbors and bites came like greetings, but none before had left her so numb. She curled onto the soil and let a bout of cold shivers take her to a restless slumber. Through waves of vertigo and teeth-bracing pain, she gripped the fact that, yes, this was a game, but one like none other.

She was playing without rules. Her life was delicate as these spouts with their tender roots. If she were to stay on the ground too long, a crippled bird allergic to flight, she would soon expire. Her skin would thin; her bones would brittle, crumple like rock to sand, sediment. She worried she was ending now.

But, no, seconds or hours later, the cold sweat ceased and, weary as she was, Jess got herself back up, got to work.

Hour past, she sat, hands caked and cracked, listening to her newborn plants whisper, she figured she may create a talking sprout faster than the tall-and-taller growing specimen she needed. Tired, disheartened, she decided to give it a rest, a momentary pause.

A rest was all it took.

Once she’d slept peaceful and awoke anew two days later, she smiled and got busy again. Improbable wasn’t impossible. With magic soil, it wouldn’t be long. If she didn’t find it today, she’d be giving the persistent people on the other face of the hill their tomorrow, beseeching that someone grant her ailing parents the same. She could hear her father’s dry cough, her mother’s wheeze. Tears overwhelmed her eyes. Her trembling hands kept working.

For survival, she attempted anyway. For survival, she endured.