A Bundle of Burdens

This is an adaptation of an American tale. Written for the FairyTale contest.

     I grew up in the Midwest, the Heartland, the Fly-over land. The town I grew up in used to be a coal mining town until the coal dried up and everyone had to look elsewhere for work. Back when my great-great-grandparents came to America, this town had a movie theater, and a shopping center, a brothel - because what town is complete without one - and a post office. Now, all but the brothel is gone. It was a hard town where people worked all day in the heat on the farms, or traveled miles into town to work for a faceless, often nameless, master. The only relief was from the churches. Five of them, with their own private graveyards for each, next to five pubs, all for a thousand people.

     Every once in a while, during the heat of summer, traveling preachers came to town and set up a revival in the field. I never thought this was strange, this day and age, where everyone has Joel Osteen on their TV, that there was such a thing still as the traveling revival meeting. In small Midwestern towns, revival meetings were a welcome break and people flocked to them.

     The summer I was seventeen was a summer like all the others. I worked for the local tea shop. That's what I called it because I was obsessed with British literature and wanted to posh-ify my job. The store was the bakery for Jubelt's Bakery which was a large building behind the storefront that made doughnuts and bread and cookies for the entire southern part of the state. The bakery and the lumbermill on the other side of town were the only two factories left over from when the town was booming. Both holdovers from the twenties, when the bakery also made underground beer for the gangs.

     I hated the work. Oh, it was fine for a bit, but then you couldn't get the sugar smell out of your hair and clothes and you had to wait on the little old ladies in town as they slowly made their purchases, and they'd ask me if I had a boyfriend, and where I was going to go off to college, and I had to answer them.

     "I don't know. England, I think, I want to study literature in Oxford," I'd imagine myself saying. But, of course, I couldn't say things like that. It just doesn't happen to girls from small Midswestern towns. I used to dream that I'd be able to walk out of that town and go to California or Britain, I'd meet a boy who was handsome and smart, and I'd be rich, and I'd never look back. For me, the American dream depended on moving out of my small town.

     The revival came through same as always during Homecoming week. Now, Homecoming week for most places is tied in with football at the High School, not so for my town. We had a long and proud history of coal mine unions so Homecoming was all about Mother Mary Jones, the union hellraiser who's buried in our coal miner's cemetary. After I got off work, and unsuccessfully bathed the sugar smell off me, I got dressed in my nicest outfit and went to the revival meeting.

     First thing I noticed was that it wasn't the same kind of revival meeting as before. Oh, the Homecoming was the same. There was the beer tent and the crafts area, the farmer's market and contests, on stage the old men were playing Polish and German folksongs because around here people never forgot the Old Country and that they were immigrants. But, the revival tent was packed. Usually, we all ended up at the revival tent at some point or another, but the only people that were there the entire time was the old folks already near God. But, there were young people all clustered around, kids my age, all of them staring intently. It was not the usual slightly bored look most of the preachers got, that look that says the people are thinking about what they need to get from St Louis next time they're at work, but intent like when they're watching something scandalous going on at the neighbor's house.

     Curious, I wondered over. The preacher wasn't the usual fat white man sweating pinkly into his starched white shirt. He was young and good-looking, tall, thin, muscular under his loose t-shirt and blue jeans. T-shirt and blue jeans! Who ever saw a preacher wearing that? And that was enough to get me listening.

     "The big banks, the government, the CEOs, they aren't your friends. They don't care about you. They don't give a second thought to you. Bush, how many men and women, how many of our sons and daughters, has he killed in Iraq? And for what?" There were murmurs through the crowd and I was riveted, of course I was, this didn't sound like preaching, more like hellraising. "To get money for him and his cronies, that's what. They don't worry. They don't care. They have no burdens." Amen.

     "Sister," the preacher turned to one of the little old ladies, Mrs. Dobrinick, with the force of his personality. "Sister, does your back ache? Do your feet hurt? Are you tired of driving all the way to Springfield, to St Louis, to work? Your husband is gone and you are left the mortgage, the bills, the expenses of life. Your children left you to work in the city leaving you to care for yourself." This was all true. He must have sent his helpers, the good looking men and women in casual clothes who were working the crowd, to figure things out. "Would you like to shed those burdens? Would you like to trade your burdens with someone else, like, say, Michelle Pfeiffer? What does she have to worry about? The burden of too much money!" This got a laugh. 

     He went from person to person asking the same question. Would you like to trade your burdens with Brad Pitt? Mathew Broderick? Robin Williams? Bill Gates? All of them said, yes, yes!

     "This is what I want you to do, all of you, I want you to wrap up your burdens in whatever you can hold them in. Bring them back here tomorrow and I'll get rid of them for you." There were cheers all through the tent. After that there was the usual preaching and a few songs but I'd left by that point to wrap up my burdens.

     See, I know people say 'she's seventeen, what kind of burdens can she have? She has no mortgage, no husband, no kids, life's pretty damned easy at seventeen.' That's what people say. I know. That's all I heard when I was seventeen when I'd talk about what was bothering me. So, I stopped talking about it with other people and they all thought I was the happiest girl in the world.

     I wasn't. I sat on my bed with a box and started putting things into it. I didn't have a boyfriend and never had, I was probably the only virgin in town though no one knew that, I felt trapped in this small town and felt like I'd never get out, that I'd die here and never do anything with my life. Into the box I put my bad grades, my job at the bakery, my parents' nagging, my overdue library fines, and my cell phone payment. It was late when I finally got all the burdens into the box, I tied it up, and fell asleep. That night I wondered at the way the preacher said the word burdens, he stressed it in an odd way that mademe feel all the weight of my burdens, but I slept the feeling away.

     The next day, there was a line to the revival tent. Everyone had a box full of burdens. Some people had small boxes, like the lumbermill owner, Mr. Jacobs, but some had large burdens, like old Mrs. Mueller who had to drive hers in a car. Everyone was happier than I'd ever seen them and that morning I'd been happier than I'd ever been in my life. I was weightless. Unburdened. One by one, under the careful supervision of the preacher and his helpers, we all tossed our burdens on top of the pile. I thought we were going to then set them on fire, but a woman in a long, white, gown handed me a ticket.

     "What's this for?"

     "To claim your package tomorrow," she said.

     "But, I don't want it back," I said, laughing. I tried to hand the slip back to her but she shook her head.

     "It's not your package, it's someone elses. See, everyone was complaining about their burdens as if they had the most burdens of everyone. So, tomorrow, you'll get the chance to trade with someone else. Since your troubles are the worst of all of them trading with someone else will be a load off. You can't go through life with no burdens at all but we're giving you the opportunity to have some that are a little less stressful."

     "So, I might get the burdens of like Melissa Drusty." Melissa was the high school sweetheart, perfect grades, perfect parents, perfect life. She and her family was moving to Florida next year. Lucky.

     "Sure," said the woman, and she smiled.

     Confident and happy, I left the revival meeting and spent the rest of the day burden-free. I don't know if you've ever had a day that was burden-free, but it's wonderful. I wasn't worried, I wasn't afraid, I wasn't angry or frustrated. I felt so free and confident and just happy. That day, I'll always remember, was the happiest in my life. And the most productive. I had the courage to talk to Mike Sandvi, the cutest kid in class, and we made a date for next Friday to go to St Louis. I went online and checked on scholarships to studying abroad and found, to my surprise, that I qualified. My parents weren't nagging me for the first time in my life and it felt good.

     But, it wasn't to last. See, I think the woman in the dress was right. You can't go through life without burdens. By dinner time, I'd started to miss my parents' nagging, missed the ladies asking me about my life because now, now, I had something to say to them! That night, I started to think about the whole situation and it started to bother me. The way the preacher had stressed the word burdens to make me feel the weight of my life on my shoulders. Were my burdens really so terrible? Parents that loved me enough to nag me, neighbors who were interested in my life, grades that were going to get me into Oxford. After all, it was my own damned fault I had racked up huge library fines and it wasn't fair that I force someone else to pay them.

     I got up and got dressed and went out to where the revival tent was. I could hear, as I got closer, someone laughing. It wasn't a nice laugh, it was hard and derisive and it sent chills up my spine. When I got to the tent I saw the preacher and his helpers sitting around drinking. But they weren't human any longer. If you looked at them right they looked human but if your eyes slipped, even for a second, they were hideous and gnarled, they were naked and their hands were claws.

     It was the Devil. Satan and his imps, laughing and dancing drunken in the revival tent in front of the huge pile of foolish people's burdens. I was horrified. Suddenly, I knew, if the Devil was laughing it couldn't be good news for me. I missed my burdens now. Life wasn't so bad with them and whatever the Devil had in mind couldn't be as bad.

     Now, I know you're thinking that I'm a silly, superstitious, backwater girl now. Seeing the Devil in a revival tent. Let me tell you right now that isn't so. I never thought the Devil could exist, not the way he exists in fairy tales and biblical stories. The Devil, to me, was always just badness personified, a name for wrongness and the serendipidous evil of people's lives. I wasn't drunk, I wasn't asleep, I wasn't crazy, but I saw the Devil that night. And that's something I've never told people until now just because I know they'll think I'm crazy.

     It scared me. For a while, I couldn't move or think or hear or breathe. Then, I realized that the weightlessness of being burden free wasn't worth this but it gave me the courage to walk up to the Devil. He stopped his merrymaking when he saw me.

     "Oh, my child, what are you doing here?" he asked, trying to sound and look like the preacher but the glamour had worn off.

     "You can stop that now. I know you're the Devil," I said. He laughed and turned to his real form, all the imps dropped their glamour, too, and I was surrounded by twisted forms.

     "Then, you've come to dance with us?"

     "No," I said. "I've been thinking about my burdens and I think I want them back." There was a hideous laughter then and it made my blood turn to water but I held firm.

     "You want your burdens back? You don't want the light, carefree burdens of someone else? I'm giving you a once in a lifetime chance to be free. Why would you deny that?"

     I hated that he was trying to use the word magic again. I could feel the weight of my burdens on my shoulders again. The kids who made fun of me, the sticky sweet smell that never seemed to leave me, the intolerable boredom. Had I not made a date with Mike that day, or learned I could go to Oxford, or seen the way out of this town maybe I would have balked, but I did do all of those things and so I lifted my head.

     "Please, just let me take my own burdens back and let me on my way."

     "Well, my dear, I don't see how I can do that. See, your ticket isn't for your burdens, they're for someone elses, and I can't give you back your burdens unless you have your own ticket." This seemed, of course, perfectly reasonable. I frowned.

     "Can you at least tell me whos burdens this ticket goes to?"

     The Devil snapped his fingers and a clipboard appeared. He read down the list.

     "Oh, yes. Yes. That one." He picks up a very tiny bundle of burdens and hands it to me to inspect. I read the name on the box, Anna Kaganich, and a jolt of mortal fear ripped through me. I hoped the Devil hadn't seen it. I handed the box back to him.

     "See," he said. "Not a big burden at all. Aren't you glad?"

     "Yes. Thank you." I made to leave. Then, I turned back. "Out of curiosity, who has my ticket?"

     "Maryanne Blount," he said.

     "Thanks."

     I ran to Maryanne's house which wasn't far from the revival tent. She was a good friend of mine and I'd have her sleep over at my house when we were kids and I remembered that she was a very sound sleeper. I snuck into her bedroom and found my ticket on her dresser and stole it. I went home and, heart pounding, waited until the morning.

     I didn't sleep at all and the next morning I was first in line at the revival tent. I hoped the Devil saw me as composed, resigned, I was nervous. When I got up to one of the imps I handed her my ticket. Would she notice that the names matched? Or was she and the others still too drunk to care? I was shaking as she went back to find the bundle my ticket corresponded to, thinking at any second, she'd return with the other box, the one I'd seen last night.

     When she came back I nearly cried. It was my box, my own bundle of burdens, and I was so happy to see them. I ripped it open and welcomed them back. All my problems, my parents' nagging, my grades, my fears. And they seemed lighter than my life had been burden-free. Life was wonderful again and stretched out before me with opportunity. I had beaten the Devil at his own game and gotten a new lease, and new appreciation, for my life.

     Because, you see, Anna Kaganich was a ninety-eight year old widow dying of breast cancer.