Winter Is Not Forever (7 page)
“Mind if I throw my things in the wagon?” I asked. “I’ll ride Chester.”
“Sure,” said Grandpa agreeably. “You plannin’ on doin’
some of yer sortin’ out at the farm, eh?” “No sortin’ to be done,” I answered him evenly. “At least not for the time being. Right now we got a crop to plant, and I aim to help.”
“But what about a job—the further education?” Grandpa puzzled.
“We’ll handle all of that when the time comes,” I answered confidently. And the funny thing was, I felt confident. Uncle Nat had continually been trying to tell me that God would lead me. He would show me what I needed to know in plenty of time to do it. For me, right now, it was to help Grandpa and Uncle Charlie. That was all that I needed to know.
There were expressions of surprise on the faces before me, but gradually, one by one, heads began to nod assent.
“We’re going to miss you,” Aunt Lou whispered as she moved close to me and let her hand linger on my arm.
“That’s the joy of it,” I said. “I’ll be nearby. I’ll need to come to town often. Got to check up on Sarah, you know.” We all laughed a bit and the tension in the room relaxed.
Grandpa and Uncle Nat helped me to load my things in Grandpa’s wagon. I left nothing behind; I wanted no excuses for turning back. I went in to where Sarah was sleeping and gave her a little pat as I whispered a goodbye. Then I hugged Aunt Lou and Uncle Nat and scooped up Pixie.
“You ride with Grandpa and Uncle Charlie,” I told her, and handed her to Uncle Charlie.
“I’ll be along shortly,” I promised them. “I’m just going to drop around and thank Mr. Lewis and Mr. Trent for their job offers and tell them that I’m needed on the farm—for now.”
I don’t know if I imagined it or not, but Grandpa seemed to walk with a lighter step and Uncle Charlie with a bit more straightness to his back as the two of them went toward the wagon.
T
HOUGHTS ABOUT MY FUTURE
sometimes tugged at me as I prepared the ground for seed and planted the crop that spring, but for the most part I enjoyed what I was doing.
I had never had much to do with the planting before. Grandpa and Uncle Charlie had been in charge of that and I had been the chore-boy, but now the roles were reversed. Grandpa and I worked the fields and Uncle Charlie, in his own slow way, did the chores—at least most of them. I still did the milking, because Uncle Charlie found the job too difficult with his crippled hands.
Uncle Charlie took care of the household duties, too. Cooking and cleaning didn’t seem to bother him too much, but scrubbing the weekly laundry sure did. I sometimes winced as I watched him trying to wring out a garment. That night, to get Grandpa alone I asked him to come with me to the barn to check old Mac’s hoof. “What seems to be the trouble?” Grandpa asked, bending over to lift Mac’s right front foot.
“Oh, no trouble,” I quickly assured him. “I was just wondering if it should be trimmed just a bit more.”
Grandpa looked disgusted for a moment, but he quickly caught himself.
“Boy, you are taking your farmin’ serious, aren’t you?” he commented. “Never seen anyone with so many questions.”
It was true. I had been asking a lot of questions. There were so many things that I didn’t know about farming and planting, and I had to learn somehow. Grandpa and Uncle Charlie seemed to be my only source of knowledge.
“That’s not—not really what I wanted,” I began. “I wanted to talk to you, and I didn’t know how to do it without Uncle Charlie—”
“Anything you got to say to me you can say in front of Charlie,” Grandpa said firmly; I could tell by the tone of his voice that he wanted that straight right to begin with.
“But it’s
about
Uncle Charlie,” I protested. “Doesn’t seem right to talk about him right out.”
“What about Charlie?” asked Grandpa cautiously. “Seems to me he does the best he can.”
“That’s it exactly,” I quickly pointed out. “He tries so hard, but some things are so—so difficult for him.”
“Like?” asked Grandpa.
“Like wringing out those clothes.”
Grandpa thought on that. He too had seen Uncle Charlie struggling with the clothes.
“Don’t know what can be done about it,” he said slowly and moved away from old Mac, slapping him playfully on his full rump as he did so. “Neither you nor I can take time to do the laundry when we’re planting,” he went on.
“I know, but—” I crossed to a wooden bucket and upended it to make myself a stool. “I’ve been thinking, and it seems that it might be the right time to get us some more modern equipment.”
“Modern equipment?” Grandpa had always scorned anything that was too mechanized.
“One of those new machines for washing clothes,” I hurried on. “They have a wringer thing that you just put the clothes through and turn the handle and they squeeze all of the water out from the cloth.”
Grandpa knew all about washing machines. They had been around for a number of years. He had just felt that they were unnecessary—up ’til now.
I waited. I had more sense than to press the issue. Grandpa stood there chewing on a straw and thinking.
“Lou has one,” I finally mentioned.
“Lou needs one,” said Grandpa. “She’s got all those white shirts and fancy dresses and dozens of diapers.”
“Lou had a machine long before she had diapers to wash.”
“It works good?” Grandpa surprised me by asking.
“Real good,” I answered. “I’ve used it myself. You just stand there—or even sit, and work the handle back and forth, and the agitator does the washin’ of the clothes. Then when you’ve washed them long enough, you put them through the wringer and rinse them in the rinse tubs, wring them out again and you’re done.”
Grandpa took the straw from his mouth and teased one of the barn cats with it. It batted and swatted, enjoying the fun but never able to hit that straw. Grandpa always moved it just a bit too soon.
“I’ll think about it, Boy,” said Grandpa. “Might bear some looking into.”
That was as close to consent as I expected Grandpa to come to right off.
There were other changes I felt needed to be made on the farm, but I reminded myself that it would be smarter to take them one at a time. For now the most important one seemed to be to get Uncle Charlie some help with that washing.
We headed back to the house then, both of us studying the evening sky to see if we could read what kind of a day we would have on the morrow.
“How’s that east field coming?” Grandpa asked.
“Should finish tomorrow,” I answered, “if the weather holds.”
“Looks good,” said Grandpa, his eyes back to the sky. “We’re getting the sowin’ done in time. Should have a fair crop.”
When we reached the house Uncle Charlie was still puttering with the supper dishes.
“How’s Mac?” he asked.
“Nothin’ wrong with Mac,” Grandpa answered easily. “Josh here did ask if his hoof needed a bit more trimmin’. But it was really just a ruse.”
When Uncle Charlie looked up, I avoided his eyes and washed my hands so that I could wipe the dishes.
“He was really worried about other things,” went on Grandpa. “Hates to see you wringing out those clothes on washday. Thinks you need one of those fancy machines.”
I cringed. The way Grandpa was putting it, it sounded like I was making Uncle Charlie out to be some kind of sissy. I hadn’t meant it that way at all, and if Uncle Charlie took it that way, he’d buck the whole idea.
“I’ve thought about that myself,” said Uncle Charlie slowly. “Watched Lou use hers. Seems like a sensible gadget.”
Grandpa just nodded like he wasn’t surprised at all.
“Josh says that it is,” he informed Uncle Charlie. “Guess we should look into gettin’ one. We got the money for it?”
Now Grandpa had never concerned himself much with the day-to-day expenses of the farm and house. That was Uncle Charlie’s job. You couldn’t really say that he kept the books. There were no books involved, but Uncle Charlie always knew to the penny just where the financial matters of the household stood.
“Guess we’ve got the money if we decide we want one,” he answered honestly. “Happen to have a bit extra right now. We had talked about adding some new hogs to the pen—”
“That can wait,” said Grandpa.
“Suppose we’d have enough to do both,” went on Uncle Charlie, “but hate to get too low just in case somethin’ should happen to this year’s crop. We get hail or anythin’, and it might make it tight.”
Uncle Charlie went on washing dishes and I began to dry them and place them back in the cupboard.
“We don’t want to be short,” Grandpa said emphatically. “No sense doin’ that. We can wait on those new hogs.”
In all my years of living at the farm I had never heard Grandpa and Uncle Charlie discussing finances as openly as they were now.
“We’ve got what we laid aside for Josh,” went on Uncle Charlie. “Now that he’s not heading right off to college—”
But Grandpa interrupted him. “He still might go this fall, and we sure don’t want to be short of funds. We’ll just leave that right where it is for now.”
“We’ve got our savings—”
“We’re not touching a penny of that,” Grandpa said adamantly. “We worked hard to earn it and we sure aren’t gonna go spend it.”
Uncle Charlie nodded in agreement. It was the first I had heard of savings, or of the money for my further schooling.
“How much does one of those there machines cost?” asked Grandpa.
“Dunno,” said Uncle Charlie. “I’ll check next time I’m in town.”
They seemed to have forgotten all about me. I dried the dishes and rattled them a bit as I put them back on the shelf. That didn’t seem to work so I cleared my throat. They still ignored me.
“If you find out that it’s what you want, just go ahead and order one,” Grandpa was telling Uncle Charlie. Uncle Charlie nodded.
“How long do you think it’ll take to come?” Grandpa pulled back a kitchen chair and sat down, removing his work boots and pushing his feet into his slippers.
“Dunno,” said Uncle Charlie again.
I cleared my throat again. I had been there when Uncle Nat had ordered the machine for Aunt Lou. I knew what he had paid and how long it had taken to come, too. But I wasn’t being asked and I hated just to butt in.
“Throat botherin’ you, Boy?” asked Grandpa.
I shook my head, feeling a bit annoyed and embarrassed. Uncle Charlie turned to me then.
“Do you recollect what Nat paid for Lou’s machine and how he went about choosin’ it an’ all?” he asked me.
By the time I finished telling what I knew, Grandpa and Uncle Charlie had picked the make they wanted and decided that Uncle Charlie would head for town come morning and order himself a washing machine. I felt good about it as I headed up to bed. I had initiated one small change for improvement on the farm.