After nearly three hours at work, Brax had begun to question why he took the job. He'd taken several breaks, but was still aching all over. His arms and legs felt deflated and his mouth was drier than the dirt his shoes were caked in. He'd drank all the water in his water bottle by now, and was seriously considering making himself cry just so he can drink that. Brax just wished this grueling task would end. Joel had looked in the rear-view mirror and noticed Brax was lagging behind.
"C'mon little man! We're almost done for the day! Just another two hours!"
"Can't we take another break?", groaned Brax.
"Aw, you had one fifteen minutes ago!"
Brax sighed and continued stumbling on. He picked up one bale after the other. he came across one, picked it up, threw it into the truck, and moved on. This repeated until the truck was full. Then Brax hopped on and Joel drove it to the stack, where Brax would toss them in and make sure they stayed tightly packed together. Then the cycle continued. Brax knew it would be boring, but not this boring. And when you mix boredom with pain, that doesn't make anything better.
"Hey, how many bales have we even-"
Thud!
Brax was paying more attention to the ground than Joel, and was stopped mid-sentence as he walked right into the back of the truck. He pulled himself back up onto his feet and peeked around the side of the truck. In front of him was the tractor they were following, and Mark. Curious, Brax jogged up to Mark and tugged his arm.
"Mr.Hutchins, why did we stop?",he asked.
As Joel approached, Mark put his hand up to stop him from moving any further. Keeping his hand up, he inches forward a bit more. There was a large dip in the ground in front of them. Brax looked up, and a steady stream of smoke was seen coming out of the hole and fading into the air. There was too much dust (kicked up by the breeze and the tractors) to see what was in the center of the crater. Mark had a mix of solid focus and confusion on his face. He backed up and turned to the tractor, which had waited behind him for instructions.
"Turn around and head back. We're done for the day."
The tractor obeyed. It backed up, turned around, and headed back to where it was originally parked. Mark turned to the boys.
"I'm not sure what's down there, but I don't wanna lose any farm equipment to a ditch. I'll talk the boys down at town hall into granting me some dirt to fix this. Until then I guess you're off the hook.",he sighed, scratching the back of his neck.
On one hand, Brax was relieved. On the other, he was slightly unnerved. He didn't know what it was, but something told him this wasn't quite right. He'd heard of crop circles appearing over night, but never random holes on the ground. Suddenly, he recalled the bright orange meteor from last night. The one that came a little closer than the others. Could this be from that?
Brax didn't speak up about it, for he worried he might've just been seeing things. When he originally saw it, his mom gave no reaction. If he brought it up to his new friends, they might think he's crazy. He started to peddle away on his bike, but stopped himself at another thought. He glanced back toward the hole. Just to be sure I'm not crazy. He thought. Would it really hurt to come back and check?
"You coming or no?",Mark shouted from the driver's seat.
"Oh, uh, yeah!"
Brax climbed into the back of the truck, and soon enough it was off. He watched as the distance between him and the hole grew larger, until they took a turn and it disappeared behind a row of trees. Brax thought that if his theory about the meteor making that hole was right, then how come the other boys didn't see it? If they did, then how come they didn't say anything about it. Brax couldn't have been the only one. Maybe he actually was crazy. Or maybe someone else saw it, but didn't want to deal with it. Maybe it's not such a big deal. Or what if it wasn't a meteor?
These were some rather scary thoughts, but Brax couldn't shut them up like he normally would. What if it's aliens? Like in my comic books? Or what if it was the police that dug that hole while looking for a body? This was the dangerous thought process of a young boy with a vivid imagination and a short attention span.
"Oh. Brax? You're home early.",his mother said as he shuffled into the house. She then looked him up and down.
"And you're covered in dirt. Nice."
Brax went to the kitchen and flung open the door to the fridge.
"I had a long day."
"Hmm, wanna talk about it?"
"No thanks.", huffed Brax, pulling out some cheese.
His mom shrugged.
"Okay then. Suit yourself."
Brax made his usual ham and cheese sandwich and took it to his room. He kicked off his shoes and grabbed his beat up sketchbook. In school, he would pull out that sketchbook and make it look like he was taking notes. In reality, he was just going to town with all kinds of drawings of the most left-field stuff. From soda cans, to cartoon characters, to his math teacher as a chicken. He'd drawn that one on several pages. Brax picked up a pencil and let his imagination get to work. He doodled this and that all over the page, then turned to the next one. Heaps of different scenarios found their way into the sketchbook.
After what seemed like an eternity, Brax sat back and admired/feared his work. The two pages he'd spent his afternoon on depicted small goblin-like aliens going around town and destroying various things. A car, his school, the convince store, a neighbor's yard. If the creatures weren't dismantling something, they were crawling out of the hole in Mr.Hutchins' field. Since they were small, Brax thought it was entirely possible they could fit into a ship disguised as a meteor. Ok, so if it were actually aliens he was dealing with here, then how would he fix the problem? He'd seen many horror movies where the aliens had a specific weakness, so he just had to find out what that was. If the hole was even created by aliens in the first place.
Brax ran through the different scenes on the pages, pondering what actions he'd take if they occurred.
"Braxton! Dinner time!", his mom called.
"Coming!", he returned.
Brax grabbing his sketchbook and brought it with him to the table. As he sat down his mom set a plate of mashed potatoes and chicken in front of him.
"What do you got there?", his mom asked.
Brax pulled his sketchbook closer.
"Drawings."
"Really? I didn't know you were an artist."
"Maybe, maybe not.", Brax mumbled.
"Alright, keep your secrets."
Brax scarfed down his dinner while running through his plans, combing over every factor.
"Done. I'm going to bed, goodnight!"
His mom watched as he dropped his plate in the sink and rushed to his room. Brax had everything planned. He threw a flashlight, his sketchbook, a bag of chips from his stash, and his dad's old pocket knife into his backpack. Once he was sure his mom was in her room, he would slide out of his window and bike back to Mr.Hutchins' field. Easy as pie. Brax pulled on his shoes and jacket, then waited.
