Harvest Song

By Hannah Birss

Sadie was seven years old, sitting next to her father on the flat roof of their low-slung barn as they watched farm workers move through the fields under the harvest moon. The mechanical whir of the robots filled the warm September air, and crickets sang along. Their metal limbs gleamed as they walked carefully along rows of corn, reaching through the stalks to snap off ripened cobs and place them into the containers on their backs.

From where they sat, Sadie could see fireflies blinking throughout the meadow. The insects darted in and out of blackberry brambles and flowering bushes, pulsing gently. They reminded her of fairies, and she couldn’t help but smile.

The autumn moon was huge, bigger than she had ever seen it, and it hung low and heavy in the sky. Sadie half-believed she could reach up and pluck it from its place among the stars and bite into it as if it were a juicy apple.

Next to her, her father’s paintbrush moved in circles across his canvas, shading in the craters of the moon above waving fields of wheat that he had painted, edging them with streaks of silver. Sadie’s own hands were stained with charcoal as she tried to sketch the movement of mechanical bodies under celestial ones, her tongue peeking out from the corner of her mouth and her brow tense in intense concentration.

“There were times, you know,” her father told her as she peered down at the figures in the field, “when we would be down there instead of them, our backs aching and our bodies sweaty. We were the ones doing all the work. That’s why they used to call it the harvest moon. It was so important to get the crops in before winter, and the light of the full moon would let us stay up late into the night, harvesting.”

Sadie heard her mother’s violin playing from the back porch, the notes of Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp Minor twining through the night to reach them. “We don’t do that now,” she said. “They do all the work.”

“And we thank them for it,” her father said with a smile, dipping his brush into his container of linseed oil. “Without them, this wouldn’t be possible.”

“They aren’t people.” Sadie frowned in dismay as she accidentally smudged her drawing with the side of her hand. She turned to a blank page of her sketchbook and started fresh. “Why do we need to thank them?”

Her father paused. “No, they aren’t people. They are built to look like us, but they merely perform the basic functions they were designed for. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be grateful, or acknowledge what they have done for us.”

He nodded toward the fields. “They give us the freedom to be human, to explore our feelings, our thoughts—to make art and to spend time with one another. That is something to be extraordinarily thankful for. That’s why now, during the harvest moon, instead of spending our time in the fields, we pay a kind of tribute to the ones who let us explore our own humanity. We paint them, we play for them, we perform for them. We show them we are grateful.”

“Do they even understand all that?” Sadie barely did. “They just do what they’re supposed to do.”

“Even if they don’t understand, we do,” he said. “It’s important for us. The same way we acknowledge the gifts of the earth that keep us healthy, we should acknowledge what technology has done and the burdens it has lifted from us. The way it has freed us, the way it neutralized the troubles of our ancestors, the way it has allowed us to regenerate what we previously destroyed. It has brought us so much opportunity.”

Sadie sighed. “I guess it’s polite to say ‘thank you,’ even if they can’t understand.”

Down in the fields, the robots continued, the light panels along their backs thirstily drinking in the bright moonlight and converting it into the energy that fueled them. Man and daughter watched them work. A piano joined the violin—her brother must have brought his keyboard to the back porch with Mom.

“Was there art back then?” Sadie asked her dad after a moment. “When we were in the fields?”

He leaned over and kissed her soft cheek, his beard tickling her.

She giggled.

“For as long as there have been people, there has been expression. Art, music, writing, dancing. Even then, we created what we could when we could. It’s just that now, thanks to them, we have more time to explore.” He rubbed his brush with an oil-stained rag. She saw colored flecks of paint on his hands, reminding her of sprinkles on a birthday cake.

Below, her mother and brother transitioned seamlessly to Moonlight Sonata. Sadie could have sworn she saw a robot pause, tilting its head to point its auditory receptors toward the house. It continued working, moving lightly as if dancing through the corn. Sadie’s heart filled with joy.

“I’m glad,” Sadie said softly as she began to sketch the face of a farm machine, “that they gave us that.”

“Me too,” her father said. “Me too.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hannah Birss is a writer and aspiring magpie based out of Ontario, Canada. She lives with her partner, children, and multiple animals. She can usually be found in a nest constructed of books, writing journals, and shiny trinkets.

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