I went to live with my granddaddy when I was twelve years old, after my folks were taken by the Lord in a car wreck. Granddaddy Silas was my mother’s father and the only relation I had.

The people from the state welfare office pulled into the yard of his farm on a cold, early spring night. They had me stay in the back of the car while they whispered with Granddaddy on the porch. I heard them say, "Traumatic experience," and "you must be patient." I had on my Sunday dress since this was a special occasion. I’d only met him once before, and that was a couple of years ago. He'd scared me with his eagle eyes and a face that never showed a smile.

Granddaddy never attended the funeral.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and prayed this was a dream. How could I live with someone I didn't know? I was so scared, my stomach ached and I felt the blood drain out of my face. Don't leave me here, please God...take me back, I prayed in silence.

"Kerri, come here and give your Granddaddy Silas a hug and kiss," the welfare woman ordered in a syrupy, sweet voice. Granddaddy had piercing blue eyes, a long sad face that scowled all the time, and if Abraham Lincoln had had gray hair, people would have thought my granddaddy and he were twins.

"Hello, sir," I said, turning my head away. He bent down and looked me in the eye.

"You can call me Granddaddy, or Silas, or Sir. You can go get your things and put them on the back porch, I put a bed out there, that’ll be your room."

There was no hug, no kiss, no comforting words about being a family.

The beat up suitcase was half my size, and I lugged it up the steps and into the house, dragging the end on the ground.

"Don’t get dirt on the floor from that," he told me.

After the welfare people left, he came in and sat on the bed. "We need to go over some rules, Kerri. I work hard on the farm and you’ll have to help me. Won’t be much time for toys and dolls and such. We get up at sunrise and do our chores. Yours will be to feed the chickens first off, then... you know how to cook?" I nodded yes.

"Good, then after the chickens, you can cook breakfast, then clean the kitchen. We’ll go over the rest tomorrow, no need to go into everything tonight; it's getting late. Time to get to bed and I’ll see you in the morning." The bedsprings creaked as he got up. Some of the harshness left his face.

"This will be hard on both of us. I’m not good around young people and you’re going to miss your folks, but there ain't nothing I can do about that." The door closed. I cracked it open and watched him go into the small living room where he sat down and lit his pipe.

I didn’t tell him there weren’t any dolls, toys, or such. Just my stories, lots of them. My head was filled with ideas and wonderful tales I'd write down someday. That’s all I wanted to do. There were five lead pencils and three spiral notebooks in my suitcase.

The light for the porch was one bulb hanging down from the middle of the ceiling, giving the room a stark, brutal, reality. A gunnysack was tacked over the single window for privacy. It was cold, but not so cold where I could see my breath. I put my pajamas on and climbed into bed, then pulled the heavy blankets over me, up to my chin. The pillow was filled with straw, and rustled and snapped with every turn of my head. Welcome home, Kerri.

* * *

"Wake up girl, we’re burning daylight." A hand shook my shoulder. The first rays of the sun had just crept over the horizon and into my room. The gunnysack curtain was off the window. I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

"Why so early?" I whined. "I’m still tired, can’t I sleep a bit longer?"

"Get up little girl. Put some pants on and wash your face. I’ll meet you at the chicken coop over there." He pointed out the window to the outline of a building, a little ways from the back porch.

The bucket of grain was heavy but danged if I was going to say anything as I took it from him. If he wanted a hired hand rather than a granddaughter, then by god, I'd do the work without asking him for anything. We went inside the fence surrounding the coop and he took a handful of grain and showed me how to scatter it on the ground. When the bucket was empty and the chickens pecked at themselves and whatever was still on the ground, he took me inside the coop. "Pick up the eggs and put them in the gunny sack. Don’t break none."

After breakfast, I scrubbed and cleaned the kitchen, then we went to the fields. Riding on the tractor, Granddaddy harrowed and nurtured the fields twelve to fourteen hours a day. My job was to learn to drive the tractor then prepare and deliver the meals. We did this every day, six days a week. Sundays, we slept in until seven, then did the chores and went to church. Old women would come up and cluck how sorry they were that my parents were dead and I was lucky Granddaddy Silas took me in. On Sunday afternoons I’d stay in my room and write. I had filled one notebook and started on another when Granddaddy came in one Sunday and saw me writing.

"What do you think you’re doing, young lady?"

"I’m writing stories. See? I’ve already filled one notebook." I proudly held the notebook up and showed him the written pages.

"You’re wasting time," he said as he grabbed a piece of my life up and rolled the notebook into a tube. "Instead of doing this foolish thing you can do our laundry, you're behind."

The sound of the notebook slapping against his leg when he left brought a cold fury to my heart. From that moment on, I hated him, I hated the farm. All I did was work, from morning till dark. Someday, I was getting out. I’d be a writer, I’d show him.

When August came, Silas took me out into the fields in the old pickup. He stopped on a knoll, shut off the engine and lit his pipe. All around us were undulating hills of wheat, as far as I could see, shimmering and rolling like waves on the ocean. Harvest would be coming soon and granddaddy wanted me to drive the big truck to catch the grain.

"Kerri, this is all the life I know. It’s my fortune, my fields of gold. I wouldn’t trade this for anything. Someday, it’ll be yours," He said, then smiled at me. The first time ever, I think.

"I don’t want it!" I shouted. "I hate this place."

His body jerked liked I had slapped him, and in a sense I had. He started the truck and drove back to the farmhouse in silence. We parked in front. He stared out the windshield. "When you’re of age, you can leave, I don’t care. Until then, you’ll do your share of the work."

Three nights later a wind started blowing hard enough to keep the fireflies flittering down around the bottom of the house. A pulsating glow from the other side of a near hill brought the fear all farmers dreaded. FIRE!

"Silas, Silas!" I yelled as I raced into the house."The fields are on fire!" He dropped his pipe and jumped to his feet.

"Call for help, Kerri, and stay away from the flame." By then the crackling could be heard and the flames were shooting a hundred feet into the air. The fire was cresting the hill. Silas grabbed a shovel and several gunnysacks and ran toward the inferno.

"Come back!" I screamed. "Granddaddy!" The operator knew who I was and said she’d have volunteers and the fire department out as soon as possible. I took the water hose and started spraying the sides of the house, the chicken coop and the shed.

When the fire department arrived, flames surrounded the farm, but hadn’t taken one building. It was finally out by five in the morning. Haze and smoke lingered and the smell of burnt wheat permeated everything. A man came over and took my hand, leading me to the house.

Granddaddy was laid out on the kitchen table; burned, clothes smoking, but alive. I stood close to him, afraid to say anything. He put his blistered, hot hand on mine and said, "Kerri…I’m sorry." His breath sounded like a saw being pulled across a metal bar. The piercing blue eyes turned soft, then closed, and Granddaddy died after a long sigh.

"I’m sorry too, Granddaddy, so sorry." I cried. The firefighter said he’d take me to his house until the welfare people could be contacted. I got into his truck, and as we backed out of the dirt drive, I know I could feel the wheels roll over the three-burnt matches.

* * *

I pulled my Lexus over to the side of the road that fall afternoon, years later. Highway 15 turned north and passed by the turn-off to my granddaddy’s farm. My book had been on the New York Times Best Seller’s List for seventeen weeks straight. It was even number one for ten weeks. Kerri Fowler, best selling author. The critics said my writing seemed like someone trying to rid themselves of demons. I was. Not a night has gone by I haven’t been haunted by the image of Granddaddy on that table, burned and telling me, he was sorry. Therapy takes years, they’ve said; you were only a child, let your writing cleanse your soul. What bull.

Granddaddy treated me as best he knew how. He hadn’t promised anything except hard work. I know the day I told him I hated the farm, a bit of the brightness went out of his eyes. The childish scrawl on the handwritten will left the farm to me. I still own it, though I lease it to a hard-working family man I’ve never seen. Just spoken to on the phone. The farm will never be sold but I’ll never live there again.

I was here by the side of the road because my agent closed a movie deal. I had left Chicago to drive to L.A. to co-write the script. This was the first time I had been to the Nebraska wheat fields since the fire. The welfare people had placed me in several foster homes in Omaha, where I lived until reaching the age of eighteen, and then I went to Chicago. I looked out over the wheat fields, or as Granddaddy had called them, his fields of gold. Granddaddy would have been proud of me now, I think. My best-selling novel is about a struggling man burdened with a young girl who doesn’t understand life. I named it, The Fields of Gold.