Our Children's Children

8

The village had known hunger, but now the hunger ended. For, sometime in the night, a miracle had happened. High up in the sky, just beyond the village, a hole had opened up and out of the hole poured a steady stream of wheat. The foolish boy with the crippled leg, who belonged to no one, who had simply wandered into the village, who was crippled in his mind as well as in his body, had been the first to see it. Skulking through the night, skulking as well as he could with one leg that dragged, unable to sleep, looking for the slightest husk that he could steal and chew upon, he had seen the grain plunging from the sky in the bright moonlight. He had been frightened and had turned about to run, but his twisting hunger would not let him run. He had not known what it was to start with, but it was something new and it might be something he could eat and he could not run away. So, frightened still, he had crept upon it and finally, seeing what it was, had rushed upon it and thrown himself upon the pile that had accumulated. He had stuffed his mouth, chewing and gasping, gulping to swallow the half-chewed grain, strangling and coughing, but stuffing his mouth again as soon as he managed to clear his throat. The overloaded stomach, unaccustomed to such quantities of food, revolted, and he rolled down off the pile and lay upon the ground, weakly vomiting.

It was there that others found him later and kicked him out of the way, for with this wondrous thing that had happened and that had been spotted by a man of the village who had happened to go out to relieve himself, they had no time for a foolish, crippled boy who had merely attached himself to the village and did not belong there.

The village was aroused immediately and everyone came with baskets and with jars to carry off the wheat, but there was far more than enough to fill all the receptacles that the village had, so the headmen got together and made plans. Holes were dug in which the grain was dumped, which was no way to treat good wheat, but it must be hidden, if possible, from the sight of others and it was the only thing they could think of to do immediately. With the dryness and the drought upon the land there was no moisture in the ground to spoil the wheat and it could be safely buried until the time when something else could be devised to store it.

But the grain kept pouring from the sky and the ground was baked and hard to dig and they could not dispose of the pile, which kept growing faster than they could dispose of it.

And in the morning soldiers came and, thrusting the villagers to one side, began hauling the wheat away in trucks.

The miracle kept on happening, the wheat pouring from the sky, but now it was a less precious miracle, not for the village alone, but for a lot of other people.