Free The Kingdom Land by Bart Tuma Page B

efforts.
First of all there was the matter of the land and farmhouse that he
lived in with his dad. Uncle Henry got it when his dad died. His
dad’s farm was always too small to be profitable. He tried leasing
land, but the lease was too costly and drove him deeper into
debt.
    When he died the bills were more than the land was
worth. Henry agreed with the bank to pay the bills and take the
land. His plan was to one day give that land and all of his land to
Erik. Henry never told Erik his plans. He wanted to wait until Erik
had learned to love the farm as he did. Later Erik found out Henry
struggled for years to pay those bills, but he got more land, and
land was king to a farmer.
    And the farmhouse he and his dad lived in. The house
was a wreck and it never kept up once his mother left. The sheds
around the house were even worse, but they sat on five acres of
futile farm land. They sat empty for seven years, falling apart
even further, and doing no one any good. No one told Erik. No one
asked Erik, it was just one of many things hidden from Erik. One
day Uncle Henry hired workers to tear down the house and sheds. The
workers got the lumber from the house and Henry plowed the land
into crops. No one would even have known there was a house there
after the crops took over. Erik dreams were the only place that
house would be found.
    It was only by chance years later that Erik drove by
the place and found out what happened. That was the day he moved
out to the bunkhouse.
    Erik knew they hadn’t taken him in for the land. Erik
rationalized they had little choice but to take him. Land or no
land Erik had no place else to go, and his aunt and uncle had to
take him.
    Erik thought back to the early years with his aunt
and uncle. He had felt as if he were a stranger in their house, no
matter what they did to make him feel included. He remembered as a
kid he would sneak away as if he were a runaway. It’s hard to be a
runaway when you were twenty-five miles from town and too young to
drive. He would go down to an old tin culvert on the road to
Fairfield. The culvert was big enough for him to sit in and escape.
The culvert was only yards away from the farmhouse, but in its
closed space Erik felt far away.
    It was in this culvert that he began his dream life.
The feel of cold tin against his back took him far away from the
farm. In the culvert he couldn’t see the land except the hole of
light at both ends. The ribbed metal looked as if it were a
different world of an exotic vehicle. The different world of this
place allowed him to dream.
    Erik would dream for hours. He would fall into
self-pity as he thought of how unfair the world was to him. When
the self-pity turned to a cloud of depression, he turned to his
dreams. The dreams were of his dad and his love for Erik. In the
culvert he could almost feel the cool breezes by the mountain
beaver dams. His dreams never contained the amount of fish he
caught or the big one that he landed. The only figure he could see
was his dad. In the culvert his dad hadn’t left him, and he was
almost close enough to touch.
    His dreams took him to another world, a much better
land.
    He was surprised when he came back to the farmhouse
after his attempts of “running away”. The Coopers seemed as if they
had never even realized he had left. Erik never knew how long he
stayed in the culvert. A watch was not necessary for a kid on the
farm. To him, his dreams were so enveloping he imaged himself gone
for days. He didn’t know if he should feel hurt that they didn’t
miss him or hurt that his world was so different from theirs.
    It was these dreams that he would carry into his
teens and then early twenties. That culvert was his escape, and he
remembered those times as he drove to the farm now. It was time to
move beyond a hollow dream in a hollow tube. It was time for him to
talk to the Coopers as if they were his family. They were the only
family he had and he knew he had hurt