Part One: Seedlings of the Beginning
Strawberries are the most provocative fruit. They are an elongated heart and a reddish flush of blood when the juices squirt. They are bitter and delicate like some lovers can be, but most of all they are terribly sweet to the core and must be taken care of in an old-fashioned and doting way.
It was only towards the end of May and the sun was already beating mercilessly down on Alex and the other strawberry pickers. Alex wiped his forearm across his brow. Is it really worth all this? he asked himself. The schoolyear had just ended and, at age 26, he was wondering how many of these summers he could take in the heat; and the heat wasn't the only oppressive factor in his life, there was his father to contend with as well.
Despite the trouble his father often was to him, he cherished his summers. It would not be long before he graduated from his law studies and found a place and career of his own. During the schoolyear he lived in the dorms and worked as a waiter to help support himself. In the summers, however, he lived at his father's strawberry farm, staying with him, and picking fruit, his only work-free weeks of the year being July to mid-August, and then it was back to the grind of schoolbooks, exams, and cranky professors. But the college girls - oh my - they had a way of raising his mood in the midst of the meanness. They were sweet and gentle and willing, and he usually sought out the prettiest one in the chaos of a college party and necked with her in the corner. But, for the most part, that's as far as they went with him; they were puritanical and boring, and often on those nights, in private, Alex took matters into his own hands and squirted his ivory desire down a gurgling, circling drain.
But back to the trouble of his father, Patrick. Alex knew, deep down in his heart, that his father meant no harm to him, not in any intentional way. A decade before, Alex's mother had passed and since then Patrick had become an overbearing and possessive father. Alex was all he had left, and he wanted to make sure he had an iron grip on the boy, even if it meant smothering him and leaving him nearly empty of his independence. But the young man, who was now plucking the strawberries like a quick machine, knew his phase of rebelliousness was long overdue and that something needed to be done.
Patrick was incredibly straitlaced, stern, and old-fashioned in his approach to women and sex. He had not dated anyone since his wife died and did not intend to. Alex knew his father still suffered from the loss of his mother but could not shake the feeling to
get away
from his dad and become free of him. It was his father's suffering that brought out Alex's empathetic side and felt he could not defy his father for fear of hurting him further or fear of perhaps Patrick thinking that his son had turned on him, just as his wife had.
In spite of himself, Alex had turned out very much like how Patrick was now. Stern. Straitlaced. When dating a girl, Alex had always chosen "the good girl," the one who behaved, the one who bowed down and was subservient to her man. But in his solitary moments, Alex knew that these things did not please him, and often longed for a different type of woman, someone who would blow him out of the water with her spunk and vivaciousness, someone who lived for the moment, and most of all, who lived for laughter and good times. There was only so much purity a man could take.
Now, bending over the rows of strawberry plants, snapping each one off above the cap and storing it away, Alex felt a kinship with his fellow man. There they were, dozens of fruit pickers, hunched over, suffering in the sun, backs aching, legs starting to buckle, drops of sweat tickling the strands of hair on their heads. Most of them were young people, but a few were long in the tooth, just as hardworking as any of them, if not more so. The sun seemed to blaze so much that it hummed a steady buzz throughout the land, taking place of the chitchat that had once been so plentiful when the day began at dawn.
Alex found a rather diseased-looking strawberry: it was puny and red-faced, kind of shriveled and unhealthy looking. It reminded him of his father. The young man enjoyed this little inner joke, smiled, and disposed of the strawberry. There. Out of sight, out of mind. At least for now.
Part Two: She is Ripe
Later that morning, the clock approached 9:30 and it was time for a much needed and well-deserved break for the fruit pickers. The workers flocked to the farmhouse, some in a hurry, some heavy-limbed and tired. Each day usually wrapped up between noon and one o'clock. It was important to stay hydrated and well-fed in conditions such as these. There were several picnic tables lined up on the lawn at which to sit while others liked to sit in the cool grass beneath the extended tree branches and eat and drink there. It was a solace that afforded them time to gossip and
breathe
. These breaktimes were started and stopped by Patrick with the blow of a whistle and a wave of the hand, urgent and rushed. Farming Fascist, one might say.
Alex plopped down at one of the picnic tables and opened his lunch bag that he packed every morning, taking a giant bite out of his peanut butter sandwich and guzzling the Gatorade that awaited him like water in the desert. He knew he looked like a complete pig, eating and drinking like there was no tomorrow, but this didn't bother him: everybody there looked like they had been through the ringer.
There were many worn workers scattered at the tables and on the lawn and Alex had to admit to himself that he didn't know a lot of them. There were dozens of them; some were quiet and kept to themselves and others were rambunctious and loud, happy for the time to relax and rest their bodies.
He bit into a large, juicy apple and twisted off the stem like his mother had taught him to do when he was a child. A noise caught his attention from one of the adjoining tables. It was a twinkle of laughter, something feminine and foreign to him. He looked in the direction of the giggle: there, sitting at the one of the connecting picnic tables, was a young woman. He did not know her name, but she looked slightly familiar to him. She looked to still be in her late teens, maybe 18 or 19, and Alex wondered if she was one of the graduates who had just finished her senior year in high school. He remembered reading in the paper that the kids had been dismissed for summer several days earlier - could she be one of them?
The girl was sitting diagonally across from him, several feet away and she was
lively
. She talked animatedly to the boy sitting next to her, gesticulating, and gesturing as if it were a dying art form. Her energy almost outshone that of the sun. Alex unconsciously ran his fingers through his blondish mop of hair and watched her. She was beautiful, she was young, she was hot.
The first thing he noticed about her was her hair: it was a dark brown color and very long and shining, down to her elbows. And she had bright, sparkling blue eyes, full but natural lips. She tossed her head back and laughed, exposing her two solid rows of white teeth between pink lips; her face glittered under the natural light and Alex admired this wet dream that had come to life. Even though all the workers had been out in the fields since the early dawn, she looked surprisingly fresh and vibrant, as if she could spend another several hours doing this backbreaking toil.
Being that he could not see below her waist, his eyes feasted on what he could see. Her neck was delicate and smooth, and her bared arms were already tanned by the sunlight. But from what he could see at this point - the main focus of his eyesight - were her breasts. They strained against her white cotton t-shirt, and they were full and round and large, though not outrageously so. There was a subtle hint of hardened nipples showing through the fabric and he could feel himself in his shorts, excited and growing. He already liked her.
For some strange reason, Alex did not ask the guy next to him what this girl's name was. Perhaps this man would've known? The young man chuckled to himself: here he was, 26, a grown man - though still young - and fawning over this young lady like he was still an adolescent himself. Though not yet 30, Alex thought he would surely be seen as "a dirty old man" chasing after this vibrant teen. Do men ever grow old? Again, he laughed at his own quip.
Alex, being somewhat of the shy, reserved type, did not do anything to try and grab her attention. He figured she must have so many men lined up to take her out that just a good old farm boy like himself must look awfully drab. He glanced at her again. She laughed at a joke told to her, her mouth slightly open, and out from within peeked a sweet, pink tongue that sent his imagination over the edge.
No, there was no chance he would likely ever talk to this girl, let alone take her out. Still, something was so enchanting, so charming about her; and yet he looked down at his clothes, dull and dirty from the farmwork, and thought his chances slim, if they were even there at all. He rested his elbow up on the picnic table and covered part of his face with his hand and grinned at her. Unbeknownst to her, he smiled and glanced in her direction and hoped - sincerely hoped - that this girl would be the welcome trouble he so wanted in his life.
Part Three: Wet T-Shirt (in the Garden of Eden)
Mary drank from the garden hose. Normally this was a habit she did at her home, usually after mowing the lawn for her parents, but this day she could not wait; her thirst needed to be quenched and how! The end of the day had just announced itself with an obnoxious blow of the whistle and while the other farmhands were propelling their bodies into cars and the waiting bus, anxious to grab a hearty meal and a nap, Mary helped herself (and her mouth) to the hose that tempted her. True, it was the farmer's property, and she didn't have his permission to just help herself, but she took it upon herself to do so anyway.
The crystal water flowed steadily from the green, rubber rope. Her beautiful, pink lips were perched forward, gulping greedily the water that was offered to her. On either side of her were two friends, Gus and James. They were not boyfriends, they were simply guy friends. Both were ugly as sin with pockmarked faces and Gus, with his cap tilted upwards like Gomer Pyle, and James with a giant scar along one side of his neck. James said it was from a farming accident two years ago, but Mary knew his amorous inclinations and suspected something of a sexual nature had gone awry.
She looked up from her watering fountain and saw a young man walking towards her. He was extremely tall with a sloppy head of blonde hair and glimmering blue eyes. Mary recognized him as the boy who had been looking in her direction during the mid-morning break at the picnic tables. He had shyly hid behind a hand upon his face and grinned at her sweetly, almost embarrassed. This boy - whatever his name was - had fancied her from the get-go and she knew that, though she coyly did not let on. She grinned at his long strides coming towards her. She glanced at Gus and James with only mischief in her mind. She had turned in her Girl Scouts' badge a long time ago.
Approaching shyly and unable to find anything interesting to say, Alex spoke to his new crush. "What d'you think you're doing there?" he grinned. He had created an opening line.
