Clovers

An old, slightly tattered cardboard box sits upside down in a large field, propped up on one end by a large stick. Although it is mostly surrounded by snow, small handfuls of clovers surround it, scattered by the wind. The field surrounding it is filled with small gouges of dirt, mixed with snow and old, upturned clovers.

             A young girl of about ten years old has been patiently waiting in the bushes for hours, since dawn, staring at the box with promises of the future and imagination lighting up her eyes. For her, this box was no ordinary box. The clovers? Magic clovers. It was St. Patrick’s day after all, and this year she was fiercely determined to catch a leprechaun.

             It was a tradition she and her father had joined in since she had been a little girl. The first time she remembered it, she was four and her father had sat her on his lap and told her the story of how he had caught a leprechaun on St. Patrick’s Day when he had been a boy. Even though the story changed a little bit every year, the end was always the same. She never forgot the impish grin on his face as he smiled while telling the story of the year he caught the leprechaun.

             “You know, Melissa,” he would say, “that if you catch a leprechaun on St. Patrick’s Day, then they have to grant you one wish”.

             “Just one wish daddy?” she always replied.

             “Yep. Just one.”

             “What did you wish for?” Melissa always pretended to forget, it was her favorite part of the story.

             “I wished for a beautiful little girl named Melissa.” he always said as he hugged her tight and kissed the top of her head.

             He always told her the story the day before St. Patrick’s Day, and every year they grabbed an old box from the basement and snuck out to the field behind their yard to build their leprechaun trap for the year. Every year, the trap was slightly improved from the year before, as her father was always coming up with ways to fool the leprechaun again.

             Once the trap was made, Melissa and her father would creep out the back door, climb down the stone steps that her father had run up and down as a boy, and sneak out to the field where they set their trap. They would throw bait in the trap and hide in the bushes where her father would tell her wonderful stories about his childhood until Melissa fell asleep. He brought her home and tucked her in and they never caught a single leprechaun. But Melissa still believed.

             This year was especially important. Her father wished for her, and Melissa knew that now she had to wish for him. But she had to catch a leprechaun first. This year, she couldn’t fall asleep.

             A few months before this, just after her ninth birthday, a police officer had come to her house. He spoke to her mother for a few moments and then came in and told Melissa to get dressed and put her shoes on because they had to go somewhere. Her mother cried hysterically as Melissa did as she was told and rode with her mother to the police station. The cops took Melissa’s mother away from her as he sat on the cold chairs pretending to accept the forced smiles of the other officers in the station. But all she remembered really was hearing her mother cry. And she knew, no matter how hard everyone tried to hide it, she knew why they were there. Her father was dead.

             The holidays passed, Thanksgiving, Christmas...but it was so soon after her father’s death that Melissa barely knew what was happening. The funeral had passed by in a blur, and Melissa was never able to shed a tear. Friends and family whispered their concerns to each other, but no one ever brought it up to Melissa’s mother, who was in her own mixed up world of grief. No one understood why Melissa and her other held their grief so closed and everyone assumed they were talking to each other about it. But Melissa and her mother barely spoke, they had never been close and it often felt as though each one blamed the other for his death. When Melissa wasn’t blaming her mother, she felt she had to pretend to be strong and support her mother. Unfortunately her mother felt the same way and they quickly fell into a nasty cycle of blame and artificial support.

             Melissa had always had a special bond with her father, and she got through each day by pretending he was on a long business trip, due back any day. The holidays came so soon after the funeral that Melissa and her mother missed them. They were so busy supporting each other that they completely forgot. Until St. Patrick’s Day. Unfortunately, Melissa and her father held their leprechaun tradition so dear that Melissa’s mother never knew, she never understood its importance. That morning, Melissa woke up missing her father more than she ever had before. She sat in her father’s old chair, pretending he was holding her in his and she told herself the old familiar story of how he caught a leprechaun and wished for her. Suddenly, she had an idea. She tiptoed down to the basement to avoid disturbing her distraught mother, determined to make everything right. She got an old box and went outside to the field out back. She dug through several patches of snow until she found a few handfuls of clover. Melissa set her trap and settled in the bushes to wait.

             If she caught a leprechaun, she thought, she would be able to wish for her father to come home. Just as he wished for her, she would wish for him and then everything would be okay. In her excitement, she forgot to put on her jacket and warm clothes, so she huddled in the bushes in pajamas and slippers in the snow, waiting on the leprechaun. She quickly fell asleep.

             Melissa’s mother awoke a few hours later and was unable to find her daughter. Knowing Melissa had a tendency to run off, she didn’t worry at first. But her daughter had left no signs of eating breakfast in the kitchen and by lunch time she became worried. She went outside calling Melissa’s name, and looked in all of the usual hiding spots. She had tried to leave Melissa alone since her father’s death, the doctors told her that Melissa needed to work through it on her own. But something about today wasn’t right.

           Melissa’s mother began to call out for her, and it briefly woke her up. But Melissa was dreaming about catching a leprechaun and seeing her father again. She ignored her mother’s calls as she quickly fell into her dream again. She couldn’t give up her hiding place anyway, if she didn’t catch a leprechaun this year then she knew she would never see her father again.

             The sun went down and the decrease in temperature woke Melissa back up. She had been asleep all day in the snow, but she refused to budge. She sat staring at the leprechaun trap in a daze, willing something to happen.

             Her mother was panicked at this point. The police wouldn’t do anything, but every neighbor who knew Melissa was out in snow gear with flashlights looking for her. Everyone knew that a girl of her size couldn’t possibly last long in the snow. And Melissa’s mother was the picture of loss, fairylike due to her struggle to stay ahead of her grief and the toll her daughter’s disappearance was taking on that effort. The house was a chaotic mess as people came to offer help and then became torn between their urge to offer help to Melissa’s mother and their knowledge that they had to find the girl fast if she was to survive. Some had already given up on Melissa’s survival and were already doing what they could to support the girl’s mother, making the situation worse.

             As it got later, Melissa began to cry, tears streaming down her face and turning to ice halfway, sobs alternating with shivers wracking her small body. And yet, as the night wore on she held on to the hope that she may still catch a leprechaun and get her father back. She refused to give up her hiding place, believing that it was her only chance of getting her father back. Eventually she grew extremely tired and gave in to the sleep that overcame her entire being. She curled up into a ball, overcome with the realization that she would never see her father again, and she allowed sleep to take over and the snow to cover her small body as dozens of people called out her name into the night sky surrounding her.

             Melissa dreamt of her father. He was holding her in his arms, stroking her gently and rocking back and forth. “Did I catch a leprechaun daddy?” she wondered, “is that why you’re here holding me?” She didn’t remember catching a leprechaun, or wishing to have her father back, yet here he was holding her close just like he used to. She didn’t know what else to think.

             “Daddy?” she asked while turning her head to look up at him. He didn’t say anything, but Melissa saw he was crying as he held her closer to him.

             “Why are you crying Daddy? What’s wrong?” Still no response. “Daddy, why won’t you talk to me?”

             Melissa began to panic. Suddenly she realized something wasn’t right. She was colder than she had ever been in her life, and her father was drifting away. She heard voices calling her name, lots of voices, but none of them belonged to her father.

           “Daddy! Daddy, I don’t want to leave! Don’t leave me Daddy!” I don’t want to go without you!” Melissa was crying and panicked, she was kicking and screaming in spite of the attempts of the paramedics who had found her. The other voices got louder and Melissa heard her mother sobbing above them all. But Melissa’s father was no longer holding her. She was wrapped in blankets in her mother’s arms.

             They were in the neighbor’s car, speeding towards the hospital as quickly as they could considering the massive downpour of snow. Melissa had been found hiding under a bush, asleep and barely breathing. Everyone in the neighborhood had rushed to give up their scarves and blankets in the hopes that they would help and the warmest and safest car was quickly chosen for the rush to the hospital. Everyone decided quickly and without argument once they saw the girl and realized what was at stake. They all tried so hard, but at that point there was almost nothing that could have been done.

             Melissa’s mother spent the entire ride to the hospital holding her daughter tightly, begging her to hold on. She couldn’t lose her daughter as well, she needed Melissa to be strong for her. She tried every angle she could to make her daughter fight on that ride to the hospital. But the weather was really bad, and it ended up taking about 45 minutes. 5 minutes longer than Melissa was able to hold on. Her mother showed up at the doors of the hospital with the dead weight of her daughter in her arms and the look of a woman who has lost everything.

             The nurses and doctors could only look upon her with a look of guarded sadness that those in the medical profession have to portray. And her neighbors pretended to be sad, but they could never know what she was going through. Melissa’s mom knew that no one would ever go through what she had gone through and what she was going through now. Her only chance for happiness was Melissa and her father and they were both dead. Everyone she got close to died.

             Someone brought her a cup of coffee. She stared at it in despair, realizing that she couldn’t cry. She knew what had happened, that her daughter was dead, but she couldn’t cry. After her husband’s death there wasn’t a person in the world who could stop her from crying. But losing Melissa was different. It sent her over the edge, she was numb. She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t believe it. Eventually, the doctors, nurses and neighbors had other things to attend to. They felt guilty leaving Melissa’s mother alone, but her complete unresponsiveness wore everyone down.

             Melissa’s mother started drinking, more and more every day. Friends and neighbors would stop in to see how she was doing but they didn’t know how to console her and make things better. She had lost everyone, she was alone in the world. Most of her neighbor’s didn’t know that she had lost her parent’s when she was just a small child, and that Melissa’s father had been her knight in shining armor, rescuing her from a life of hell and bringing her into his world of happiness and sunshine. They also didn’t know that she had been told she would never be able to have a child due to the abuse that had been inflicted upon her in some of her foster homes. Melissa had been a gift, a sweet wonderful gift that she never could have imagined receiving. Only Melissa’s father had known the truth about her past and how much her life meant to her.

All the neighbor’s saw was a woman who could not work her way past her grief. They saw her drown her feelings in alcohol, and after a while they couldn’t help but start to make judgments. These judgments and the fact that they all had their own lives to attend to meant that they began to visit her less and less until eventually no one came anymore.

The next year, on St. Patrick’s day, Melissa’s mom dreamt that her daughter had never died; that instead the little girl had shared the story of the leprechaun with her mother and they had gone out to set a trap together.

“Mommy, come here! Come down to the basement! That’s where all the good traps are!”

Melissa led her mother down the stairs into the basement where they picked out a box together.

“No, Mommy, not that one! It’s too small! And we have to paint it green,” she said, matter-of-factly. “That way the leprechaun won’t see it.”

Melissa’s mom painted the box green as per her daughter’s instructions.

“Come Mommy, we have to hurry! We have to get the trap set up before the sun comes up!” She grabbed her mother’s hand and led her back up the stairs and out to the backyard, through the forest and into the field where they had found her daughter’s body a year before.

Melissa’s mother set up the trap and sat in the bushes to wait, with a bottle of whiskey at her side.



A week later a neighbor decided to pay Melissa’s mother a visit, to make sure she was okay. Nobody answered the door and the lights weren’t on. The neighbor realized that he hadn’t seen any lights on for a few days, and something didn’t seem right. He walked around to the back of the house and saw that the back door had been left open and about a foot of snow had piled up inside the house. He called the police, and once again the property was covered with people searching for a lost person. They found her in a silk nightgown that barely covered her body, frozen in the same bush her daughter had been found in a year before.