Another Excerpt from:
When Light Comes Unexpected
―Choices―
Taken from Chapter 9
By John W. Vander Velden
Nick watched as the afternoon’s light
filtered through the branches above and shone on the creek as it flowed. The
stream of water was forced to rise and fall by the stones it flowed over and
around. A thought came to him as the stream remained within his focus. Matthew said, In life we have choices. Had he made the
best choices? We can be moving forward,
like the creek’s water, or we can be stuck in one place.
“Like a rock,” Nick spoke aloud as he
finished Matthew’s words.
Matthew had told him that, the time he
had found Nick sitting in this exact spot. But the man he had come to respect,
more, had come to love, had told him something else. Something about the
choices each person has to make. With
the sound of flowing water, a music that always helped him, Nick remembered
those words. And though Nick had often rehashed his past, he had wondered
whether the words were true. But now, on this late Sunday afternoon, he reached
out to those words and grabbed them like a lifeline. “We make choices,
Nick,” the man’s voice echoed in the boy’s head. “We make choices, the
best choices based on what we know at the time.”
Had he really? Had he, Nick Coulter,
made the decision to leave Missouri, based on what he knew―then? Matthew
had continued, “When we look back and say we ought to have done this or
that, and feel bad about what might have been, we gotta tell ourselves that at
the time, we done the best we could.”
Wishing he could believe that leaving
home was best, his doubts had persisted. Was leaving beneficial for his
sisters? For his mother? Surely the friction within the home would have
decreased. No matter how hard Nick had tried, he and Tanner had not meshed.
Nick couldn’t deal with the way his mother’s husband operated the farm. How
Tanner abused the draft animals. The poor farming practices which, by now,
would likely have the creditors at the door.
Nick bit his lip. Had it been a
mistake not to take Mister and Missus’ offer to go home for a visit? Bending
over, he found a pebble and tossed it into the water streaming before him. He
watched the small stone sink to the bottom of the shallow creek. But that
pebble did not come to rest on the creek bed. Rather the swift water caused it
to tumble downstream. Certainly not as rapidly as the water’s flow, but it
moved rotation, after rotation, until it was out of sight.
He sat there wondering, for that stone
was neither the flowing water nor one of the stationary rocks. That pebble had
become something unique. How would that bit of rock fit Matthew’s words, when
the man described choices?
Nick stared at the stream, barely
aware of the flowing water. The small
stone may not rush headlong with the stream, Nick decided, but it still moved.
Life might push him along, but it was
up to him, Nick Coulter, to decide just how much change it would cause.
“Yes,” he told the rushing water,
“Matthew is right. It is up to me to choose. To think through each of those
choices and then decide. I must move forward, but at the pace that is best.” And
hopefully, he thought, learn from the mistakes he’d make along the way.
Yes, he would go back to Missouri, but
not quite yet. If those kids from Illinois were coming, then Mister and Missus
would need him for a time.
He gave himself a sharp nod.
(606 Words) 11-7-2025
