TDTLBU Chapter Fifteen

 Josh cast the wrench aside with a sigh, dragging the back of his hand across his forehead to wipe away the perspiration. The grease on his hands left grimy smears on his face. He glanced up at the sky, squinting in the bright sunlight. Must be near eight o’clock, from the look of the sun. He rose stiffly to his feet, stretching as he stared at the deconstructed engine laid out in the barnyard. He had figured out what was wrong with it quickly enough, but fixing the issue was a completely different ballgame. At the rate he was going, they’d be bringing the hay in with Dan and Lou this summer. The tractor was rendered completely useless. 

Frustrated, Josh gave the rusty crankshaft a kick. It slid into a pile of old nuts and bolts, sending them skittering across the dusty ground to fall hidden in patches of grass. He’d begged Rob to give him a chance at getting the old tractor going before they started the haying and Rob had agreed, allowing him a few precious hours of work time to devote to the tractor. 

“But by eight thirty sharp, son,” he had stated firmly. “We’ll have to start on the haying. Tractor or no tractor.” 

Josh had given the tractor his all, even getting up at three instead of his usual four in order to get a head start. Rob had taken over his chores for the morning. It made him angry to think that after all that effort, he had failed. He kicked the crankshaft again, harder this time, grimacing as the impact shot pain through his foot. 

“Josh?” Rob was calling across the barnyard. “You ready, boy? Get Dan and Lou hitched up, daylight’s burning!”

The Stewart and Hayes farms had functioned as a team in a sort of unofficial partnership for all the years that they had worked side by side. Separated only by the shared apple orchard and the fence running between their fields, three generations of Stewarts and Hayes had worked together. As they did now. The hay had been mown in both fields and was now ready to be baled and gathered. It was the Hayes’ year to get their hay in first and the Stewarts were there on time to help. The hay wagon belonged to Rob, the baler to Jim. He drove it into the barnyard just as Josh was bringing the horses out. There was nothing wrong with the Stewarts tractor and Josh noted this with scarcely-concealed jealousy, still annoyed with himself for not getting their own tractor in shape in time. 

“Hiya, Josh!” Mickey called down from where he was perched on the back of the tractor seat, a battered straw hat crammed down on his head and showing sunlight in speckled patches on his freckled face. He was still eating breakfast, a half-eaten sausage wrapped in a slice of bread still in his hand. Mickey was rarely seen without something to munch on. Eight years old now and having the time of his life, he was more excited about the haying season than anyone else involved. 

“Thanks for coming over,” Rob greeted Jim as the latter leaned down from the tractor to shake hands. “We’ll start in the east field, should be able to get that done tonight. You start out with the baler, I’ll follow with the hay wagon and the boys can pitch the bales.”

It hardly needed spoken, the arrangement had been the same ever since Ronnie was old enough to lift bales and Josh had just naturally joined in when he arrived at the Hayes’ farm. It was easier now, having two boys. Three, actually, counting Mickey. Before that, they had always hired an extra hand or two to help. 

“Not like in my day, when there were four boys on my place,” Jim often said, smiling reminiscently as he remembered his brothers. Two had died in the trenches of France during the Great War. The fourth… the youngest… had no interest in the farm. He had moved out to Concord Township after the war and started a general store. Somehow he had managed to keep it going, all through the crash of Wall Street. Countries may rise and countries may fall, but people would always need flour and sugar and paint and nails. 

“Well, here we go again,” Josh grinned as he clambered up on the hay wagon with Ronnie. “I’ve been dreading this week all year.”

“You mean you don’t like haying season?” Ronnie raised his eyebrows. “C’mon, what’s not to like about lifting hundreds of seventy-five pound hay bales in ninety degree weather for hours and hours? You getting soft again, city boy?”

“Say that again and I’ll knock you off this wagon,” Josh threatened. “I’ll show you soft, you hayseed.”

Ronnie said nothing, just grinned and shook his head. It wasn’t that he wasn’t equal to the challenge, it was that he knew Josh would probably make good on his word. And a fist fight would hardly contribute toward getting the hay in.  

Mickey reluctantly relinquished his cherished spot on the tractor as they reached the field and Jim set the baler into action. He groaned loudly about having to get off the tractor, but as he joined the older boys on the hay wagon, his enthusiasm returned. Ronnie walked alongside the wagon, lifting the bales and passing them to Josh, who stacked them in neat rows. Mickey leaned over, both hands on his knees, as he watched eagerly.

“Hand me a bale, Ronnie, I’m strong enough!” he begged. Grinning, Ronnie shoved a bale at him. Wrapping both arms around the end of it, Mickey tugged and puffed and strained to get it up onto the wagon. As Ronnie let go, Mickey fell backwards, the bale landing on top of him.

“Holp… holp… it’s squishin’ me… get it off…” Mickey hollered enough to alert the entire neighborhood as Josh, laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes, dragged the bale off and set it on the growing pile. “I can do it,” he added indignantly as he pulled himself to his feet and dusted himself off. “Hand me another one, Ronnie. That one was a… a…” he frowned, pursing his lips as he struggled to find the right word. “A fluke,” he announced proudly, having heard Emma mention the word before. 

“These things are gonna squash you like a bug,” Ronnie laughed. 

“Yeah, a little stink bug,” Josh echoed. Gritting his teeth, Mickey reached for another bale, managing with much assistance from Ronnie, to pull it onto the wagon. Trouble is, once it was up there, he couldn’t move it. 

“Greetings and salutations!” Emma’s voice rang out from the far edge of the field. She was bringing in the second wagon with Telemachus and Penelope, the Stewart’s horses. She had named the team herself, after the classic characters of Greek mythology, but she was the only one who used their full names. To everyone else, the horses were simply Mac and Penny. 

Josh grinned as Emma drove up, noting that she was looking very much like herself again, and that was a relief. She had started an internship at the hospital a few months ago and had been so busy with her work and studies and so unlike the old Emma in her starched white ward dress and cap that he had been afraid she would never be the same again. Today she was clad in an old pair of overalls and her hair braided in two tails, with a big red bandana tied over her head. 

“I’ve brought the extra hired help,” she called out cheerfully as she pulled the wagon to a stop alongside Rob. Jerry and George rode in back, both dressed in overalls and ready to get to work. “Here right on time, just as you ordered.”

“Perfect. Welcome, boys, and thanks for coming.” Rob jumped from the wagon, striding over to take Mac and Penny’s reins from Emma. “You take the full wagon back to the barn, Ronnie, Josh, you go along and unload the bales. Mickey? You goin’ or stayin’?”

“I’m a’goin’,” Mickey hollered from his perch atop the stack of bales, waving his straw hat. “See ya later!”

“Oh, Mrs. Hayes said to tell everyone to come up to the house at noon for lunch,” Emma called over her shoulder as she turned the wagon back towards the barnyard. “She’s got a feast fit for a king back there… ham salad sandwiches and brownies and iced tea! Mom and Katie are up at the house too.”

“Got a good breeze going,” Josh lifted his face to the sky, closing his eyes and drawing in a deep breath. The air was fresh and clean, the sun warm. Birdsong rang from every tree and the cattle were lowing contentedly in the pasture that ran alongside the hayfield. He could see the apple orchard from where he sat on top of the bales, a bountiful crop of fruit already starting to turn ripe. As Emma turned the wagon into the barnyard, Myra’s chickens scattered, clucking wildly for a few moments before settling down again to scratch for bugs in the dust. Myra was standing at the kitchen window, mixing bowl in hand as she watched the boys scramble down from the wagon and start moving the bales into the barn. 

Home. It was beautiful. Although he often complained about the work, Josh never meant it. And everyone knew he didn’t. He had fallen head over heels for the rural life and by now, was so much a part of the farm folk of Jefferson that no one seemed to remember that he hadn’t been born among them. It had been an adjustment, to say the least, but he was more grateful than he could ever begin to say for the new life he had found. 

Strange how nothing ever seemed to really change in Jefferson. Oh, there was change alright, happening every day… but it was in little bits and pieces. Not changing and moving and growing every day like it had in the city. Old Mr. Pfeiffer still ran his general store, each and everything in its place the way it had been for the fifty years he had been in business. Mr. Tucker still ran his deli, selling his famous sausages and pickles and cheese. Reverend Bailey preached every Sunday in the little Baptist church in the hollow as had his father before him. An entire generation of school children still shuffled into the low brick building every school morning and ran wildly out every evening to play ball on the green or go swimming and fishing at the dozens of good water holes all over the county. 

No, nothing had changed much at all, Josh reflected as he fell into a natural rhythm moving the bales. In spite of the fact that they were all growing up. So what if Emma was working at a real hospital now, studying to become a nurse? She still sat on the tire swing of evenings, trailing bare feet in the grass as she devoured her books. Ronnie may have graduated highschool and fallen in love… but he could still play ball and fish and hunt, same as he always had. Mickey might be a bit taller and slightly more articulate in speech, but he was still the baby of his family and a wild, whooping, shrieking terror bent on causing as much trouble as he possibly could. Lucky he was so adorable. Even the roughest thing of all to adjust to… that of Ronnie and Emma and Katie all having been baptized in the past few years down at the creek behind the church… had settled with Josh and didn’t even bother him anymore. He had been terribly afraid every time one of his friends made the decision to become a Christian… afraid they would suddenly and drastically be forever different, but he needn’t have worried. They were still his friends all the same… even if they occasionally would get to talking to him about religion. It wasn’t that Josh was averse to religion… he just had never felt the need for it. He prayed and sang hymns and went to church on Sundays and listened while Rob read the Bible after supper every night. Surely he would never need any more than that. He was just pleased that everything was still hanging on, almost exactly the same as it always had. 

No, nothing much ever did change in Jefferson. It went rolling complacently along, set in all its old-fashioned ways, untouched by the chaotic pace of the world around it. And almost completely detached from the rumors of war that rumbled on the horizon.