WHEAT/Lorenc I slowly realized that there was light coming from around the corner of a short foyer. On unsure legs I hurried around two corners and stopped in the opening of a long hallway. The length of each wall held three ordinary looking wooden doors. The source of light was the morning sun pouring through huge glass doors at the very end of the hallway. I could see a mountain landscape full of apple trees and blue green ponds. My mind shifted back to the hallway. I decided to run to each of the six doors, and throw them open and look quickly inside. Before I could think much about anything I'd yanked the first door open. People! The room was full of people. And everyone was dancing. It was funny though. All the boys were in one long line facing all the girls in an opposite line. I could not see the end of either line. The massive room was a kind of redone gymnasium. The music must have been on records and the record was stuck playing the same measure over and over again. Once I heard whispering, but could not tell where it was coming from or what was being said. No one talked. They just danced. I thought maybe no one had seen me so I waved and shouted. The music kept repeating. The lines kept moving and all eyes looked straight ahead. I closed the door sheepishly. I was too embarrassed to know what to think. I headed for the middle door, pushing the questions I could not answer deep inside me. Just before I got to the next door, it opened. A short neutral looking man stopped in the doorway. He brushed dust from his coat, pulled the door closed behind him and went to the glass doors. Quickly he pushed them open and was gone. As the doors wooshed shut a warm nutty wheat smell mixed with the sweet tartness of roses rushed into the hall. I closed my eyes and let the smell cover me up and paint pictures on my mind. And then it was gone. It evaporated into the plainness of the air. I peeled myself off the wall and moved a few inches and re-opened the middle door. Far beyond the range of sight people sat, sprawled, and stood reading. There were great bulky books and tiny two-page books of red and green. But there was no music, like before. There was no movement of any kind. And no sound. Once I felt eyes dart a glance at me. But that was all. I could not get the next door open. Behind the door feet moved scuffling and running across the floor. Once or twice the door knob turned and feet brushed close against the door and were gone. I stood here a long time trying to hear voices or make out the business of the locked room. I finally gave up and went across the hall. I had no trouble with this door. Inside were rows and rows of all kinds and ages of people. They were all chanting the same sentence. The only light came from a row of small candles just in front of African drummers who were far to the back of this room. Without the light from the open door I could never have seen these people's faces. The chanting, the rhythm of feeling, the look in the eyes of the young and old alike, was the same. In the light their expression was cloudy and dark and with the door closed it became darker. I stood next to the crowd and joined in with the chanting. A moment later the faint aroma that comes from outside the glass doors lifted quickly through the room. There is nothing here either, I thought as I left. The middle door opened up onto a freshly bricked wall. Some of the bricks looked loose but I was beginning to feel tired enough to smother my curiosity. The fall down the stairs began to bother me all over. I opened the last door and tried to focus on the smoke-filled room that was full of bearded, black-robed people. No one spoke, or clicked fingers, or smoked. I went in and closed the door. When I could see more clearly, I noticed a shaft of light toward the back of the room making a circle of visibility around a young man sitting on a tall stool. A piano, bass fiddle, drum and bowl end of a guitar glittered just beyond the sharp edge of light. Casually this combo broke into a syncopated tirade. The smoke, or fog, I do not know which, ebbed and flowed covering and covering the people. Soon many began nodding with the music at the same time many nodded 44 against the music. The young man on the stool spoke: All must go down into the darkened made hopeful, confused. The blind, the deaf the mute to find to stay forever unless the gift of breathing demands its reward and then the wheat shall be harvested. The young man stopped. The combo played on. The head nodding continued. He left the circle of light. No one noticed. He opened the door and paused, then went out. I ran after him. As he pushed the glass doors open and the familiar aroma filled the hall he spoke again: ...Most who come are deaf and blind and mute and do not breathe. So few shall harvest the wheat. I wanted to reach out and speak but he was gone. There was a thumping rolling sound, and as I turned sharply towards the stairs a young girl appeared in the archway. I called to her feeling relieved because now there would be two of us. She did not answer or stop walking. I stepped in front of her. She did not see me. She headed for the farthest door on the left and I shouted to her that that door would not open. In one swift movement she'd opened the door and was gone. I ran to the door but heard only the scuffling of feet. Suddenly there was not time. No thinking. No feeling. I turned around to see a tall well-dressed boy listening intently. I asked him who he was. He answered by asking me to take him to the first door on the right. For a moment the hall was full of weird rhythmic chanting as the boy was swallowed into the room. As I turned around, a girl appeared in the archway, and the door I'd just closed opened and closed again, letting a small finely featured woman out. Before I could decide what to do, the woman had pushed open the glass doors and was gone. The warming aroma filled the hall as it always did, so I hurried to the girl. "Do you smell that?" I asked. The girl looked funny and said, "I'm blind, I can not smell anything." "Take a deep breath, hurry before it's gone," I said. "Don't be silly," the girl said, as she moved along the wall disappearing into the same room that the woman left. I watched four persons file into different doors before anyone came out. I waited and as the glass doors swung open I asked a prematurely grey-haired man if he smelled the wheat and roses. "Yes. I" He was gone. I went back to the archway. I peeked around the corner into the blackness where I had fallen. Conscious of pain above my eye I touched my eye. I must have a cut over my eye. I felt heavy all over. I thought back to my early despair. I went to the glass doors and used them as a mirror. I could see how bruised and puffy-looking my left side was. I also saw that the first heavy handle was not the door I had been told about. Nor the door I had dreamed about opening. I pushed the great glass doors open. The bright summer breeze caught my hair and brushed it out of my face. I took a deep breath and became for a moment the apple trees, the cool blue pond full of white water lillies, the round brown mountains, the roses and the summer wheat. Patiently, I Watch turning seasons Cover the same fields With sunlight. Randy Hansen 45