Escaping the Past

“My mom always did love to read. She would sneak flashlights to me so I could read under the covers after my dad went to sleep.” He smiled fondly at the memory.

Lou heard the commotion of a car crunching down the gravel drive. Brody rose from the chair and leaned over the rail to check out the noise. “Looks like they’re back from church already,” he said, when Jeb’s truck stopped at the back door.

They leaned over the rail together and saw Sadie turn to help John out of the car, placing crutches in his hands. Lou gasped and covered her mouth. “What happened?” she yelled down.

Jeb looked up at them and grinned. “Damn fool was watching a woman walk by and tripped over a bush beside the sidewalk. Tumbled headfirst into the bush and broke his ankle!”

“I’ll be right down,” Lou cried, as she turned to go in the house. Brody followed her and they met the others in the kitchen.

“You should have called me! I would have come and gotten Sarah so she wouldn’t be trouble,” Lou cried when she saw them all. Sarah ran upstairs to change out of her Sunday clothes.

Sadie smiled. “She was no trouble at all. She and I went to church while Jeb took John to the hospital.”

Jeb shook his head. “Doctor says six weeks with no activity.”

“What are we going to do about getting up the hay?” John groaned. The hay season was just about to begin. This was the time of year they cut the hay in the fields, baled and stored it for the winter. John was an instrumental part of the operation, and his shoes would be tough to fill.

“We’ll just have to hire someone to replace you,” Lou replied.

“It will take four men to do the work of this one,” Jeb countered.

“Then we’ll just have to hire four,” Lou replied.

“Just hire three,” Brody broke in. “I’m here. I can help.”

“Mighty nice of you, boy. Been a long time since you put up hay.”

“I can still do it, though.”

Lou agreed. “I’ll call tomorrow and get three temp helpers.”

“So, what did she look like?” Brody surprised everyone by asking John. Was it worth it?”

“Seemed like it at the time. Would have been fine if that damn bush hadn’t jumped out in front of me,” John groaned as he raised his leg onto the pillow Sadie placed in a chair opposite him.

The room shook with laughter.

Chapter Ten

Brody wasn’t surprised at all when Jeb prayed for clear skies at the morning meal. It was a family ritual, one he had been involved in for many years before he left home. Putting up hay was a tough job, with hundreds of acres to cut. But he wasn’t afraid of hard work and actually looked forward to contributing.

Jeb was the only one allowed to rake the hay into windrows after Brody’s first attempts to drive the delivery rake. He took a good amount of ribbing for his amateurish efforts at forking the hay into clean rows. His rows turned into zigzags, which made it harder on the person driving the baler. “Yeah, yeah, yeah... Pick on the new guy.”

Brody gave up on the rake and, from that time forward, Jeb raked the hay into rows and Brody cut more pasture. As Brody finished cutting, Jeb would turn the hay and put it in neat windrows. The hay would then be left in the fields to dry and cure.

When Jeb thought the hay was dry, he would walk out the pastures and place a few stalks of hay into a small box. He added two to three tablespoons of salt and shook it wildly. If the salt stayed dry, the hay was ready to bale. John had tried to teach him new ways to test the age of the hay but Jeb’s only response to it was, “Why change what works? You young’uns and your newfangled ideas.”

Since they could only get two temps to help with the harvest, Lou was drafted to drive the baler. She drove down the neat and tidy rows of hay and the baler performed the task of firmly wrapping the hay and dropping it in square bundles on the ground. Each solid block of hay weighed about seventy-five pounds.

The crew then used flatbed trucks to move the hay from the fields to the hay barns. Lou and two hands could reasonably move five hundred bales of hay per day if they worked from dawn until dusk. Once one pasture was complete, they moved on to another.

The two temp laborers, Wes and Darrel, seemed to know very little about hay but they were eager to work. They showed up bright and early every morning, ready to get busy. Darrel was no more than thirty and had a pleasant smile and a good attitude. Wes was a little more subdued, wore a baseball cap and had a dark beard.

They showed up in time for breakfast each day and went straight to work. They doffed their hats, said amen to the prayers at mealtime and fit right in. They worked tirelessly alongside Lou, Brody, and Jeb. Everyone worked from sunup to sundown.

The days flew by and the weather stayed clear, right up until the last day. Jeb started out the day by saying, “Looks like we’ll get some rain today.”

Brody shook his head. “Not even a cloud in the sky, Jeb.”