Marshall Ramsey

He sat in his recliner watching his wife sleep on the couch.  Her mouth was wide open and her snoring rattled the blinds.  He even thought he saw drool.  If he had his phone, he would have taken a picture. “Nah,” he thought.  Lord knows she could find a plethora of ways to embarrass him.   They were nestled in the den watching the big game —  It was the third quarter and his team was behind by three points. Out of nervousness, he began to eat yet another chicken wing.

But his eyes couldn’t keep from going back to his wife. They were in the third quarter of their marriage, too. (It was definitely in the second half.)  The kids were now grown-up enough to be out of the house with friends during the big game.  So it was just them in the dark room in the empty house. The TV’s flickering picture illuminated her pale skin with a blue light, shaving years off her face.

They were teammates.  And like a team, they had gone through good and bad together.  There were the moments it seemed like their marriage was against their own goal line.  But he knew that they were like the defense that would bend but not break.  Back them up against the goal line and they’d come together and fight. They had had several goal-line stands. Cancer. Trust. Anger. Careers. Trouble with their kids.

For better or worse.

The TV erupted in joy. His team scored a touchdown — and he had the urge to jump up and yell. But he looked over at his snoring wife and decided he’d just enjoy the moment to himself.  A younger version of him would have woken her up just to be a jerk. The younger version of himself wasn’t a very good team player.

He thought about the day when he had popped the question.  He called it Signing Day because that’s what it was like –She was his five-star recruit. He had done his homework: She was nothing short of amazing.  So he knew their relationship had potential.  But as his coach used to say, “Potential is a little French word that means that you’re not worth a dam’ yet.”  A promising recruit must work hard to become a successful athlete.  The same went for their marriage.  They really had to work at it. They didn’t want to be like so many recruits that just wash out.  So many of their friends’ marriages had ended in failure.  Not them. They had struggled together. And now they were about to enter the fourth quarter.

He looked again over at her.  He didn’t know if others saw in her what he did, but he really didn’t care.  What was on the outside didn’t matter. Sure, she was beautiful, but her heart was stunning. She had proved over and over that she had the will to win — she was tough.  And like a blindside offensive lineman, she always had his back.

Her own snore woke her up, causing the dog to jump off the couch and flee.  She looked around stunned and said, “Did I miss much?”

He looked at her with a smile, “Nope. We’re winning — the trophy is as good as ours.”

She smiled sleepily and started to fade back off to sleep.  A light snore began to fill the room.

He looked at his wife’s beautiful face and was so thankful he had made the right choice on that Signing Day so many years ago.

The broken gray clouds created a soft blanket over the Mississippi Delta.  His work for the morning was half done — the field was nearly planted and now it was time to take a break. He put down his truck’s tailgate and patted it a couple of times.  An older yellow lab jumped up and dutifully sat down  in the bed of the truck.  “Good boy,” he said to his longtime friend as he handed him a treat out of his overall’s front pocket. He then pulled a black, leather-bound book out of  his satchel. He sat down next to his dog and began to read it aloud:

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1

As much as he loved Sundays, when he wanted to really get close to God, he worked on the farm.  Sun-up to sun-down you could find him on his family’s land in the South Delta trying to get closer to the Lord.  Now it was time for another season, another crop.  He just hoped that it didn’t have quite the drama of last year’s backwater flooding. That had been closer to Hell than Heaven, that’s for sure.

Farming was all he knew.  Well, that and literature.  When he wasn’t farming, he was reading.  His mind was as fertile as the Delta soil and he felt obligated to grow a good crop between his ears, too.  The other farmers down at the diner made fun of him for always having a book in his hand.  He just smiled and kept reading.

His dog scratched a flea, turned four times and laid back down.  The sun broke through the clouds, changing the dark brown of the soil to a warmer brown.  And soon the cold steel of the truck’s bed began to warm (much to the dog’s pleasure).  He knew the warmth would soon make the seeds began to grow. Then the battle against insects and weeds would begin.

A crop duster buzzed the truck, wagging its wings as it passed overhead. It was his son, an Air Force Captain just back from Afghanistan, where he had flown attack missions in his A-10 Warthog. Dropping insecticide was much more fun than dropping bombs.  But the kid had loved to fly since his grandfather had taken him up the first time.  It was good to have the family back home again.  It was good to have his son back safe in the loving arms of the farm.

He looked at his watch, put the Good Book back into the bag and looked out at the field.

“Well, pal, we have work to do.”

He scratched the head of his old dog,  jumped off the truck and hopped back on his giant tractor.  It was time to go see God again. It was time to put his faith in practice.  The dog drifted off to sleep until his master returned.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” He looked out at his field and said,  “Amen.”