The Long Walk

It was summer and I was bored and desperate to earn money. I found an ad in the paper looking for strawberry pickers and convinced my sister, one year younger than myself, that it was a brilliant idea to go picking and that we would be rolling in money from the job. She reluctantly conceded to my awesome plan. It didn’t take as much talking to get mom to agree, she thought it’d be good for us to gain a little work ethic and probably wanted us out of her hair for the day. Dad drove us over to the fields, about a thirty minute drive out into the country, and left us to our day of labor.

It didn’t take long before sis and I realized the job wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be. We started off strong but as our legs grew tired from crouching and picking and the sweat dripped down our faces, we became more and more lazy. We stopped picking, wiping off red-stained fingers on our pants, and sat in the shade to rest.

“I think I’m done,” I told sis. “But I don’t want to wait for dad to come back and get us. We could save him a trip and surprise him by walking home.”

Sis was not thrilled with the idea. I pressed, trying to activate her adventurous spirit. Being the big sister I was able, again, to force my way. We abandoned the scant amount of berries we’d picked and started walking.

“If it took thirty minutes to drive out here,” I mused as we kicked rocks along the road. “It should only take about an hour to get home.”

Ah, young, stupid me. I had zero sense of how long it would take to walk. I also had zero sense of direction. It was only by God’s grace that we managed to walk the correct way, toward our town. Even then, we got sidetracked after a couple of hours.

The sun was beating down on us, frying our skin. Sis started to complain she was tired and thirsty and had to go to the bathroom. She eventually plopped down to the ground along the side of the busy road and refused to move.

“Get up!” I demanded. “We’ve got to get home. If we stop walking we won’t want to get up again!”

But sis refused and I wasn’t strong enough to yank her to her feet or carry her.

“Fine! Just stay there, then!” I yelled, and stomped away. But I couldn’t leave her. I was the eldest and was responsible for her. With a sigh and much grumbling, I turned around and forced my weary legs back to where she stubbornly sat.

“We’ll rest for awhile and then we’ll walk again, okay?”

She agreed.

We eventually began to walk again and a truck slowed. The driver called out, asking if we wanted a ride. Sis wanted to jump in the back but my spidey senses were screaming at me. I waved and smiled and told him we were fine. I’ve often wondered, looking back, if that truck driver was truly wanting to help or if God had saved us from a potentially dangerous situation.

I was starting to worry we were lost when I saw the sign pointing to a town I recognized. Not our hometown, but near enough that I was suddenly more confident in leading our ridiculous expedition. At this point we’d been walking about three or four hours.

We got off the highway and made it into a neighborhood. I picked a random house and knocked on the door. My plan was to ask to use the phone and call our mom but the old lady that answered refused to let us in. I guess we looked suspicious somehow. She offered to call mom for us and I gladly gave her our phone number but hope sank when the lady said mom wasn’t answering. This was back when dial-up computers kept the phone from ringing. Mom must have been on the internet.

I was so frustrated. And thirsty! And my bladder felt like it was about to explode. The old lady let us drink from her hose, eyeing us the whole time as if she feared for her very life. Sis and I continued on into town and I found a payphone to call home. This time mom answered and boy was she mad! Apparently dad had gone back to the strawberry fields to pick us up and couldn’t find us. He’d been out searching but we’d gone the wrong way, away from home, so he never spotted us on the road.

Dad came to get us and we got the biggest lecture of our lives...and the most spectacular sunburns a redhead could ever get! I was afraid we’d be grounded or punished for our foolishness — my foolishness — but mom said our sunburns were punishment enough. Sis and I looked like lobsters for a few weeks and the pain of those burns were a constant reminder that we never, ever wanted to go strawberry picking again.

And I never have.



Fruity Notes ▼

859 words
Written for: The Writer's Cramp
Prompt: Using the words brilliant, lazy, spectacular, adventurous, write something based on your own life. Include the genre "personal".
This is a true story. I was about 14, sis was 13. Old enough to know better!!