I Am A Poor Boy Too

Every Christmas Dale keeps popping into my mind because I think this was the only miracle I ever witnessed. I'm not much of a believer in miracles. I am convinced God gave us a natural order of things and the system is never changed. But this December night in the hospital was different, an almost eerie quality to the moment, that has stuck in my mind for nearly four decades.

It was strange that Dale was in the hospital at all. He was a big man, powerful in build and determination. He owned a piece of land, half in hardwood and half in tillable soil. He was in the fields most days raising soybeans and corn. Then at dusk he would step down from his tractor and become the keeper of about thirty milk cows, a bunch of hogs and a flock ofchickens.

His three children were old enough to pick the eggs, throw some feed down for the chickens and clean out the waterers. They even slopped the hogs so Dale could clean out the barn and keep the milking machines humming.

But Dale was obsessed with the woods that spread south from the farmhouse and ran along the creek where the children ice skated in winter and fished in the summer. He wanted that land cleared of trees, roots and all. It was his conviction that he could remove all the growth if the Lord just gave him enough time, a lifetime of back-breaking work.

From the edge I would watch him dragging primitive trees out of the brush. Year by year the field grew and the forest fell, trees uprooted and pushed into a tangled pile. It was Dale's dream and nothing could stop the movement. One man and a beat-up tractor battled against growth that had been there for centuries.

I suppose Dale was obsessed with the trees because he had won a great victory. He owned a farm. That was a huge acheivement for a man who was orphaned by the age of twelve and spent his teen years bouncing from one farm to the next as a hired hand. It was a monstrous event for a man who dropped out of school halfway through third grade.

Then one day, he was felled, like one of the hardwoods in his forest. It was in his head, an ache so terrible he knew it was going to be relentless trouble. The ambulance came and took him to the hospital where he lay for days with an aneurysm in his brain. In those days doctors observed and hoped, always too cautious for miracles.

I sat with him and watched the pain pull life from him. Our prayers were thin and cowardly, like beggars pleading with a tyrant God. "Please, another day," we prayed, "another hour, one more visit with the children, another night with his wife."

Finally, we knew the hour was near. Dale could scarecly focus his mind long enough for the simplest conversation. He was asking to die, cursing the pain and the sorrow. Misery was his only companion and he knew it was his last enemy.

One evening out of the hospital silence he said, "I wish I could hear The Little Drummer Boy once more." Then he fell quiet again. It was the first week in December, too early for carolers.

Within a minute, a group of singers stood in the doorway of his room singing, "I am a poor boy too - I have no gift to bring - that's fit to give our King - pa rum pa pum pum."

His chest heaved and then his entire body fell into repose. By the next morning he was dead.

Clark D. Morphew

Posted 11-28-01