MR. WHEATSTRAW'S TWO GIFTS

To me he was Mr. Magic Wheatstraw. Everyone else called this neighborhood farmer by his real name, Fritz Henrich, or just plain Fred Henry. I was a barefoot girl with years of 10 when I gave him that new name, and it wasn't because his hair looked like a thatch of straw, sticking out every which way, or that he was slender and straight as a stem of ripe wheat.

Nearly everyone in our early farming community had some gift for which he or she was known. Mr. Probst could carve a chain from a piece of hickory limb, each link separate but connected to the other. Old Man Adams could make the famous Black Salve that cured everything. Beulah Fleming, who couldn't read a note of music, nevertheless could sit at the piano and play any song she'd ever heard only once. Poor plain Fred Henry wasn't known to be especially good at anything. This nonmalicious, notional lack of a particular talent was somehow sensed, perhaps by local innuendoes, even by kids like me, although a creed that we all lived by was that everyone had been given some sort of special gift.

Some, perhaps thinking of Mr. Fred, vaguely but kindly suggested that a person's gift might be delayed, or even one of those rare kind that you couldn't see or touch or hear, or possibly not even recognize during one's lifetime.

Couldn't see? Delayed? Never recognized? This seemed sad to me, and I often wondered if that was going to be the category of my gift for, along with Mr. Fred, I didn't feel myself especially good at anything. I could run fast and make a small stone skip four times on the river's surface before sinking, but what was that? I felt that I had somehow been passed over in this matter of special gifts, especially when every new preacher who came to our little country church pointed out the many Bible verses that spoke of these gifts we had been given and that we were not to neglect them.

Mr. Fred just plowed, planted and harvested, worked out his poll tax on the roads, went to church and sat on his porch at day's end -- sat by himself since he was a widower or bachelor. I didn't know the difference then.

Sometimes Mama sent me over to Mr. Fred's with a dozen eggs since he didn't have chickens and we had lots of them.

"Nice of you, lass," Mr. Fred would say in acknowledgement, smile-induced crow's feet coming into play around his eyes which were the same color as his washed-out blue overalls.

One day when I arrived, Mr. Fred was sitting on the edge of his porch sharpening his pocket knife on a whetstone. Several wheat straws and a spool of thread were lying nearby.

I thought he was getting ready to weave a little mat like some of us did to put under water glasses or coffee cups. We made those in the first grade.

I must have asked, "Whatcha doin?" since that was a common way of starting a conversation. He probably said, "Watch." Neither of us was very talkative and didn't waste time with extraneous words.

Mr. Fred picked up a couple of long, hollow straws, eye-inspected them and invited me to look them over. The rest of our conversation and actions went something like this:

"Same size?" he asked, referring to the straws.

"This one is bigger around," I replied.

"Soil," he said. I knew what he meant.

"Think one'll fit into the other?" he asked.

Our talk moved in slow motion while his cat curled around our legs at the same tempo and the grass-hidden crickets fiddled slow, summer songs.

I allowed that one would, indeed, fit into the other, although one was much longer. He handed them to me for testing. It was a snug fit.

Mr. Fred picked up the smaller, longer straw, stuffed an even smaller straw into it which I later learned was for temporary ballast while he performed what could only be called gifted artistry on the outer straw.

About an inch from the top of this outer straw he tied a length of thread around it, tight enough so that when he removed it, there was a distinct indentation. About two inches farther down the straw he repeated this procedure. Then with his knife he began to make tiny, precise, perpendicular slits in the space between the indentations.

"Whatsit gonna be?" I asked.

Mr. Fred didn't answer for a while, but after the last slit was made, he said, "Ever hear of something being trapped inside of something and couldn't get out 'til someone came along to help it?"

I couldn't see what that had to do with my question. After studying it and nestling the cat which had jumped into my lap, I continued our unhurried conversation, "You mean like princes trapped inside frogs until something sets them free?" I was good at the old fairy tales too.

"Something like that," Mr. Fred said. He tapped the straw he was working on, "Something's trapped in here that wants to come out, and I'm going to help it."

I thought it was something that was going to come out between the sits. A bug or piece of chaff. Though why couldn't it come out either hollow end?

Mr. Fred tied another thread around the middle of the slits, again tight enough to make an indentation, cut the thread away and pulled out the ballast straw.

Thinking back on the following moment, there should have been some sort of drum roll. The crickets should have hushed, the cat stilled its tail. Mr. Fred inserted the straw he'd been working on into the larger straw. He held them down close so that I could see. Slowly, gently he pushed the inner straw upward.

I had no idea what to expect, and it is still hard for me to express my surprise and joy when the smaller straw emerged at the top. The indentations made by the threads caused the tiny perpendicular strips of straw between the slits to separate and bend outward from the middle, creating the most perfect, miniature Japanese lantern I'd ever seen. We had made such lanterns at school out of tablet paper, but they were coarse, had to be pasted together and easily collapsed. Here was crisp perfection -- and on a "lamp post!" Timidly I put out a finger to touch it. Mr. Fred pulled the inner straw back down and the little lantern closed like an umbrella and disappeared, then he pushed it into view again and let me do it.

I opened and closed the lantern, laughing, thrilling, giggling until I was afraid I might break it and handed it back to him, saying, with childish exuberance and guilelessness what I should never have said, "Mr. Fred, you do have a gift!"

In that one little accented word, "do," I could tell by Mr. Fred's expression that it conveyed to him what he probably already knew about the neighbors' notions that he was outside the circle of those with a special gift. Maybe he hadn't expected a kid to express it. His brow furrowed a little, but he straightened his shoulders as one does when confronting a new situation.

I don't think I'd ever felt so bad and ashamed of my words. I hurriedly tried to mend my thoughtlessness, but, as usual, words didn't come. All I could stammer out was, "I mean ... ." I turned my face away because I felt tears coming. Surreptitiously, I used the cat's tail to wipe them away. My whole body was in a silent, hot upheaval.

Mr. Fred sat very still while my storm passed, pretending not to notice, although I knew he did. He didn't say a thing, for which I was enormously glad, else I may have sobbed out loud and felt the need to explain why, and I knew that I couldn't.

In retrospect, I now know that Mr. Fred sharpened his already sharp knife, untied his shoe lace and tied it again. He folded his knife and put it into his pocket, tossed the wheatstraw lantern away. The cat chased after it and began to play with it. I saw it coming apart, finally evoking a word from me. "No!"

"There're more," Mr. Fred said. He disappeared into his house and came back with an old sugar bowl full of them, arranged like a bouquet. Some stems had two or three "lanterns" on them.

"Here, take some," he offered, smiling.

I ran, fast, all the way home to show Mama what Mr. Fred had made. She laughingly opened and closed the "lanterns" much as I had.

News got around of what Fred Henry could do. Once, when Mrs. Probst was visiting us and Mama was showing her the "lantern flowers," Mrs. Probst said, "So this is Fred's gift."

"Only one of them!" I said, astonishing myself at my quick assuredness.

"I bet no one else around here can do anything like this," Mrs. Probst continued admiringly, seemingly not interested at all in what I might have considered Mr. Fred's second gift. She and Mama busied themselves with the wheatstraw lanterns, not pressing me to explain what I mean by "only one of them."

I ran outside, not giving them a chance to question when, or if, they did start wondering. I'd have to grow into more words before I could describe Mr. Fred's gift as being one of those rare ones they sometimes talked about.

I sat in the shade of a cherry tree and, seemingly from out of nowhere, a thought was born in my mind and a little sense of well being began to rise up in me. Suppose my gift was that of understanding someone else's gift as being the kind you couldn't see, or feel, or touch. Yes, yes! I had done that. The little sense of well-being grew and grew until all worry of being ungifted went quietly away. I thrilled at having such a grown-up gift even though I couldn't yet put it into understandable words. Had I been called in to explain what I'd said about Mr. Fred's second gift, I might have stammered out, making no sense to them, "He just sat right there by me pretending not to notice, yet I know he did. Just sat there like a dry sponge soaking up my hurt, making me feel better without saying a word and the cat tore up one of his gifts."

Had I managed those perplexing words, Mama might have felt of my forehead for any feverish symptoms. And I might have further alarmed them, having found a few words, by declaring, "I hope my special gift turns out to be just like Mr. Fred's silent one and that it isn't trapped inside me." This would have sent Mama for the sulfur and molasses -- or at least the legendary Black Salve.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.