This is a story my mom used to tell me when I was a child. She told in her inimitable south Georgia dialect.
You
know, I found that you can learn something most anytime.
One of the most important lessons I ever learned in my whole life I
learned when I was six years old.
One morning I was a sittin’ at the table eating breakfast when Pa came in from the high field where he had already been plowin’ and he said, “Louise, how would you like to help me today?” And I looked up at him because I ain’t never helped Pa before. Why, I’d helped Ma around the house. But mostly it was things like dustin’ the chair legs or looking after the baby or sweeping the front steps-----I ain’t never helped Pa before. And I was ten feet tall. I said, “Yes, sir.”
Well, we started off after breakfast across the backyard
over the fields to the high field. I was
havin’ to step pretty lively to keep up with him. We got over there and there
was all these nice rows that Pa had already planted. And he said, “today I’m a
gonna show you how to plant beans.” And then he took a bag that he’d been
carrying on his back, and put it over on my shoulder. And it was full of beans.
He said,” Now I want you to take five beans, and drop ‘em right there in that
row, pat it down with your hands, and step on it.” I done that.
And he said,”
move over about a foot and take five more beans and put them down in the hole
and do the same thing.” So I took about five more beans out, down ‘em down in
the hole, And I patted it down with my hands, and I stepped on it, and he said,
“That’s good. Now do it again.” So I done the same thing again, and he said,
“You got it just right. Now you just keep on until you plant all these beans.”
And then he turned around and started back toward the
house. I looked at him and said, “You not gonna stay here with me?” and he
said, “No, why I need to stay here with you for? You know how to do it.” He
went right on back. Lord! I ain’t never been so proud in my life! Why whenever
I helped Ma, she was right there with me all the time. And she’d say, “Now just
look at that living room that I asked you to dust! You ain’t done nothing
except wipe the tops of things. Squat down and look at the rungs of that chair
and see all that dust!” Or she’d say, “ Louise, I told you to sweep the whole
yard and all you’ve done is just sweep right there in the middle. Now go back
out there and sweep in the corners so it looks like something.” Or she’d say,
“Stop pinchin’ that baby! I know good and well you’re doing that just so you
don’t have to look after him.”
But here was Pa a telling me that I knew how to do
something just as good as he did. And I was on cloud nine. Well, I went along like he told me---I took
five beans, put ‘em in the hole, patted
‘em down, and I stepped on it---and I moved over about a foot----took five more
beans, put ‘em down in the hole, and I patted it down and I stepped on it---And
then I took five more beans, put ‘em in a hole, patted ‘em down and then I
stepped on it----And that went on for about a half a row.
And then the sun had begun to shine down and it was hot
and I was a beginnin’ to sweat and that bag was a cuttin’ in to my shoulder
where the dirt was a getting between the strap and my skin. And the dirt was
getting on my face. And it was running down all to the sweat on to my
clothes. And that bag was getting
heavier, heavier, and heavier.
And I started puttin’ six little beans in a hole, and
pattin ‘em down, and a little farther down, I stared puttin’ seven and eight little
beans in a hole and pattin’ them down. And by the end of that row I was puttin’
half a hand full of beans in a hole and pattin’ them down. And by the time I got the end of that third
row, I just took that whole bag full of beans and emptied them all in that row,
And I patted ‘em down and I stomped on ‘em just like that and then I turned and
went back to the house.
Well,
Pa was a sittin’ on the porch smokin’ his pipe, and he took his pipe out of his
mouth and he said, “You all done plantin’?” And I said, “Yes, sir” There was a
sort of a hard lump down in the bottom of my stomach and I thought that he was
a gonna ask me about it, But he didn’t say no more. That hard lump of guilt
stayed there a few days—kind of bothered me, but then I began to forget all
about it and it went away.
And
I hadn’t thought no more about them beans until about three weeks later. One day Pa came a stomppin’ up on the porch
at lunchtime and I could tell by the way he hit that porch that he was mad at
somebody. He come in and sat down, and when he started sayin the blessing I
thought that he was a mad at the Lord. But when lunch was over, he said, “Come
here, Louise” And I knowed it wasn’t the Lord he was mad at.
He
said, “Come with me” And we started back over toward that high field so fast I
was a havin’ to run. When we got there,
he just pointed. Well, it was easy
enough to see what he was talking about. Cause right there at the beginnin’ of
the row, there was five of the nicest bean plants on every hill. And we went on
a little bit farther down and it was six bean plants on a hill, a little
farther down it was seven or eight beans on hill, and then it got to be a dozen
or so beans in a hill, and when you got over to the end of that third row,
there was a whole jungle of bean plants.
And
all of a sudden, that guilt that I thought had already dissolved and gone away,
begun to come back, And it started growin’
and swellin’ and it got all mixed up with a little self pity and a little re-morse and a little bit of what else
it found down there and all of a sudden it just come a bustin’ out of my eyes
and you ain’t never heard so much squallin’ in all the days of your life.
Well,
Pa he didn’t say anything, he just reached over and pulled me up against that
big old farmer leg of his, and he let me squall it out till he could talk some
sense to me, Then he said, “Louise, there’s just one thing I want you to learn
from this. No matter where you go, or what you do, the beans will always come
up.” And do you know I found out later that he got that from the greatest
teacher who ever lived. Because it was Jesus Christ himself who said,” What you
sow, you gonna reap” The beans is gonna come up.
