Dreams Paved With Marmalade

A boy's quest to achieve his dream.

            The hundred-foot jar of orange marmalade just sat there all day.  No one knew where it came from.  No one had ever tasted it.  It just remained there, in its place among the corn, just as it had as far back as anyone could remember.   

            From a very young age I was fascinated by that jar.  It seemed a shame to have all that marmalade go to waste.  I often stared out my bedroom window, where I could see it in the distance, and dreamed of tasting it.  I sometimes imagined myself climbing the vast jar and somehow unscrewing the lid.  Other times I tried to come up with ideas for huge machines that could open it or drill a hole in it.  It seemed downright wrong that no one had taken advantage of this wonderful resource that was so close to home.

            You’re probably wondering why no one had yet devised a way to access the marmalade, and why I seemed to be the only one interested in doing so.  Well, mainly it was due to Farmer Lou.

            Farmer Lou was known as the grumpiest person in the county.  He was old and wrinkled, but farming was his life.  That and yelling at anyone who set foot on his property without permission.  He lived alone and rarely interacted with anyone other than workers he had hired to farm his land. It was this land that was home to the giant jar of marmalade.  

            I’d heard stories about reporters and tourists coming to his house and asking all kinds of questions about it.  They mostly asked where it came from, why he hadn’t opened it, and whether they could have any.  Rumor had it Warren Buffet even offered to buy it for millions of dollars.  But Farmer Lou always yelled at them until they left him alone.  He said that the marmalade had been in his family for generations, and that they had no right to ask him about it.  Everyone thought he was just crazy.

            One day, when I was about five, I asked my mom why Farmer Lou never shared his marmalade and why he was so mean all the time.

            “Don’t call him mean, you’ve never even met him!  And I think Lou is just being protective of his property.  It’s been kind of like his family’s tradition not to open it.  He probably feels like if he opened it, he would be betraying them,” she told me as she scrubbed a dirty pan clean.  “If you want some marmalade, I’ll get you some next time I go to town.”

“I don’t want a normal jar of marmalade,” I muttered to myself as I left to look out my bedroom window.  “I want that one.  I must have it.”

As the years passed, my obsession with that marmalade grew stronger. However, I no longer voiced my feelings or opinions about it.  Nobody could have understood why I wanted it so bad.  In fact, I didn’t quite understand it.  Maybe it was about the fame or glory of being the one to finally open it.  Maybe it was about the injustice of having tons of marmalade to spare while people all over the world were starving.  Maybe it was because I had nothing else to do and no other plans for my life.  I think it was all of these things, plus maybe a few mental issues to go along with them.

When I was sixteen, I saw a sign as I drove past Farmer Lou’s house on my way to school.  It was a handwritten message on a piece of cardboard.  All it said was, “Now Hiring.”  I had to get that job. I knew very little about farming, but I was willing to learn.  This was my chance to get closer to the marmalade.  I thought maybe somehow this could be a step toward achieving my dream.  I knew it was a long shot, but I was an optimist.

After school that day, I pulled into Farmer Lou’s driveway and knocked on the door.  He opened it a minute later.

“What do you want?”  He demanded.  He seemed a lot smaller up close, but just as intimidating. 

“Uh, I’m here about the job opening?” I replied nervously.

“What about it?”

“I’d like to apply for it.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“That your car out there?”  Lou asked, squinting past me at the rusty old Ford I’d gotten for my birthday.

“Yessir.”

“You been in any accidents?”

“No, sir.”

“Come back here at four tomorrow afternoon.  You’re my new driver.”

“What?”

“You want the job or not, kid?” he asked, looking annoyed.

“Um, yeah.”

“Tomorrow at four,” he repeated and slammed the door shut.

I stood there for a moment in shock.  I was going to be Farmer Lou’s chauffer?  I had not seen that coming.  Part of me was disappointed that I wouldn’t be in the fields with the marmalade, but the rest of me was glad that I wouldn’t have to learn anything new.  I considered myself a decent driver, so this might work out okay.  The only problem was that I’d have to spend extended amounts of time alone with that terrifying man.

I arrived at Lou’s house at five ‘til four the next day.  He must have been watching for me because he came out before I even left my car.  He got into the passenger’s seat.

“Good afternoon, sir,” I greeted him awkwardly.

“Take me to Wal-Mart.”

We let the fifteen-minute drive to town pass in silence.  I had the urge to turn on the radio, but I doubted Farmer Lou’s taste in music coincided with mine.

When we got to our destination, he told me to wait in the car while he got his groceries.  He returned a while later with two full plastic grocery bags and set them between our seats. 

I suppressed a smile when I noticed he had bought a jar of marmalade.  He apparently noticed me looking at it and glared at me, as if daring me to ask him about it.  But I wasn’t that stupid.  I wanted to keep this job.

After that, Lou called me every few days when he had an errand to run.  He paid me decent money, and the drives gradually became less awkward.  Sometimes he would tell me about his childhood.  When I was lucky, he would talk about the marmalade. 

He told me that when he was a kid, he often begged his mother to let him have some of it.  His family didn’t have a lot of money, so he went to bed hungry a lot of the time.  He could never understand why he couldn’t just eat marmalade.  His mom tried to explain it to him, saying that no matter what happened, even if all the crops failed, the marmalade would still be there.  It was the only thing the family could count on, as well as the only thing they had to be proud of.

But Lou didn’t get it until he was twenty years old and his parents and younger siblings all died in a car crash.  He was the only one left to take over the family farm.  It was tough for him, dealing with his sudden loss and at the same time having to run the farm on his own.  But one night, after a long day of intense labor, he looked out the window and saw the marmalade, finally understanding its importance.  His life had been turned upside down, yet there it was, a beacon of consistency in an ever-changing world. 

I was surprised when he told me all that.  There was a lot more to the old guy than I had thought.  I felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t really relate.  My life was kind of the opposite.  It was always the same, boring routine, nothing new or exciting happening to me.  Instead of seeking consistency from the marmalade, I was looking for a new adventure.  But he didn’t need to know that.

I had been Lou’s driver for about two years when he passed away peacefully at age seventy-four.  I was surprisingly sad when I heard the news.  We had grown somewhat close over the time we had spent together, so it was going to be weird without him.

Then I found out about his will.  He had left everything to me:  his house, his money, his farm, and yes, even the marmalade.  I didn’t understand it.  It was a dream come true, but I couldn’t comprehend why he would leave everything to an eighteen year old he had only known for two years.  Then I realized that he had had no one else.  No family, no friends- except me, apparently.  It hit me then that I had actually been a friend of “the grumpiest person in the county.”

I was in shock as I drove over to the house and looked over the cornfield at the marmalade- my marmalade.  My lifelong dream was finally coming true.

I began to run through the field.  I put my arms over my face to protect me from the whipping corn as I sprinted.  Nothing was holding me back anymore.

            I almost ran right into it as I popped out of the cornfield.  There were tears in my eyes as I stared up at the beautiful thing, placing one hand on it.  It was finally mine.

            Suddenly, Farmer Lou’s story about what this jar meant to him came back to me.  Overwhelmed, I sank to the ground in front of my marmalade.

            I put my face in my hands and took a deep breath.

    ***

            I will never forget the day my dream reached its climax.  I was standing in a cherry picker next to the top of the opened jar, holding and spoon and a bowl in one hand and a ladle in the other.  There was a crowd down below in the harvested field, cheering as I scooped myself a bowl-full of marmalade. 

            I reminded myself that there was nothing to feel guilty about.  Farmer Lou was gone and could have his consistency in Heaven.  However, I was still alive.  I could still use this marmalade as a source of happiness.

I smiled and took my time.  I wanted to savor the moment I had waited for my entire existence. 

            It tasted as disappointing as the life that followed.

 

Reviews

[SomeTypeOfArtist]

Wow, there were so many good parts to this story, where to start? I really enjoyed both Lou and the narrator; they were opposites in so many ways (old/young, grumpy/outspoken, longing for stability/longing for change, etc.) and you showed it using so little, which is very impressive. The giant jar of marmalade was this perfect, surreal object in relation to the plot, but I also liked how it represented two different things to two different people. It made me think of how the same thing can have different effects on others. I also liked the ending; although I wished the narrator could continue his/her search for excitement, I respect the fact that he/she saw the marmalade like how Lou saw it. The dialogue and narration were both great, too. I felt like I knew who both of them were in the short time I had reading this story. Great work!

[selkietales]

Whoa, this was great! I like the last bit - how he still opened it and such - and I liked how the marmalade stood for something important. Love reading your stuff!

[Adam, the Grub Street L..]

I love a tale, especially a tall one and this one had that lovely magical-realism type tone where the marmalade is a solid fact of life. It might be amazing, but it is as one with the corn and the rusty ford and such.

I also like the way you made the jar of marmalade mean something, it's not merely a large jar in a field, it's a symbol of consistency and solidity in a constantly changing world. I think it is that element which raises the story above being a nice funny little story into being about something, which is always good.

A couple of changes; I'd get rid of the bit in brackets, it doesn't add to the image of opening the jar and feels a little too jokey. I'd also take some of the latinate words out like 'resided' and 'transfixed' try and find some simpler and earthier words to go with the earthy, country tale. I'd also change brainstormed as sounding too much like an urban business type term.

Those small things aside, enjoyed the little story a great deal.