Chapter 15
Late the next morning, Zach drove out to Solomon Murphy’s farm and spotted him in the hazy distance walking the rows of his tobacco. As Zach got close enough he could see that the old man was worming, checking under any leaf that showed the tell-tale signs of tobacco worm—a ragged raw edge where the bright green caterpillar with the nasty-looking but harmless red spike had just completed its last meal. These exotic caterpillars looked like they were taken directly out of a child’s book of fantasy monsters. But the damage they could wreak was all too real, consuming a full leaf in a day, most of a young plant in a week. If you didn’t keep them in check, an infestation could decimate a crop. And the only way to keep them in check was to go through the rows on foot, turn the gnawed leaf over, pick the worm off by hand, and squish it under foot.
This was a hot and tedious chore Zach had done on his family’s farm from early childhood, sometimes—like Solomon today—in bare feet, feeling the masticated tobacco pulp squirt out from the caterpillar’s guts and up between his toes. Zach realized just now, as he approached Solomon, that there was a farmer’s visceral satisfaction in feeling the worm squish under a bare foot—intimately feeling the protection of one’s crop, one’s livelihood—a visceral gratification necessarily absent in broadcast pesticides or even the worm squished under rubber-soled boot. Zach found a caterpillar Solomon had missed, pulled it off the leaf and squished it under his boot toe, glad this day to be spared the singular sensation of worm guts squirting between his toes.
“Miss Coles don’t lie,” Solomon said without looking up.
“Never, to my knowledge,” Zach answered, stepping one row over and coming abreast of the old man in his denim overalls with no shirt underneath. “But how so?”
“You been around tobacco. You know the drill.”
“Since early days—broad-leaf, not gold-leaf, but all pretty much the same. Used to think if they cut me, tobacco sap’d come out instead of blood. Might still, though it’s been years since I suckered or stripped leaves. Or squished worms.”
“Plenty work here if you feeling homesick.” Solomon stood up straight and fixed a wide-eyed gaze on him despite the bright sun full in his weathered face.
Zach nodded. “Might just take you up on that, sir. Haven’t been in a spot that smelled this open and free since back home.”
Solomon returned to checking plants—strolling down the row and lifting leaves with a rhythmic, swaying motion. “Open, yes. But nothing free about this. Hard work, and lots of it.”
“Part of what makes it free—got to earn the gift.”
“Been earning all my life, still waiting the gift.”
“Forgive me if I presume to say it’s coming.”
“Forgive me if I presume to say I hope you know what you talking about.”
Zach laughed. “My dad would love you.”
Solomon scoffed. “Farmer talk. Nothing but a bunch of nonsense. God have the final say—all we can do is try to keep up. Harder each year to keep pace.”
“If you’ll have me, I’ll come by now and again to help you.”
“Could use a hand with Isaiah gone.”
“Monday and Wednesday afternoons O.K.?”
“One day same as the other out here.”
“It’s a deal, then.”
“Can’t pay much.”
“Try me out for free, sir. Pay me what you can spare after you sell your crop.”
“You a trusting soul.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be getting plenty in return.”
Solomon dropped an especially big worn to the dusty soil. It squished with a faint pop. “Like worms to squish?”
Zach laughed. “That and more.” He turned to head back down the row.
Behind him, Solomon said, “You young’uns got strange ideas.”
Zach stopped and faced him from ten feet away. “That reminds me—Becca wants to know if you fixed the cultivator?”
“Straightened enough to finish. Still cock-eyed.”
“We’ll take a look at it when I come back on Monday.”
“Suit yourself.”
On his way back to town, Zach pulled off onto a gravel turnout to eat his lunch under a solitary and massive pecan tree that divided its shade between the turnout and the edge of a field of young soybeans that stretched along this side of the road for a flat quarter-mile in either direction. At first he thought he’d eat that lunch while seated in the relative security of the truck cab. But at the last minute he changed his mind. He climbed out of the truck with the brown bag holding a bologna and mayo sandwich, two oatmeal cookies from a batch Becca’d made and frozen weeks earlier, and a banana, along with his insulated thermos containing home-made lemon zinger iced tea. He sat against the tree’s rugged trunk and looked out across the broad field that merged with the horizon in all directions—at least those he could see from where he sat. By looking out over the field and parking his truck between the tree and the road, he blocked what was on the far side of the highway—the manicured lawn and tree lined two-lane drive that led up to a sprawling contemporary office building labeled by the sign beside the road as the southeast headquarters of a federal agency. This time of day, there was little traffic in or out of the facility; but around quitting time there’d be a back-up of cars exiting that drive, and several pick-up trucks parked in this turnout, loaded down with melons and peaches and tomatoes from early season crops harvested down east, for sale to those home-bound federal employees.
But for the moment, Zach ignored the building’s looming and incongruous presence as he nibbled on his sandwich and sipped his cool, mint-spiced tea and gazed across the sea of green, only the occasional approach then fade of a car racing past to disrupt his tranquility. For the first time since moving down here over a year ago, he felt almost at home. More accurately, he felt he could make this place a home. The incessant heat was still oppressive, the thick humid air almost unbreathable (at least in anything other than shallow sips), and the lack of natural water a nagging deprivation. But green was green and open space open space and well-tilled rows of crops—whether corn, soybeans, tobacco—still well-tilled rows of crops: nourishment for heart and soul to be found in that order and growth, wherever you found it.
He also recognized the importance of Solomon’s voice and words in prompting this new-found optimism, that old familiar tone of indulging God and nature, bearing their wild and fickle impulses, a kinship of common struggle whatever the color your skin or your soil. He’d not fully understood till this morning how much he’d missed the farmer’s voice and ethic, how much he needed it as a part of his life.
And finally he saw a potential home in Becca, not only in her body and abundant natural grace (gifts he’d identified and honored every way he could since the day he’d met her) but also in her discovered calling to offer her bottomless open heart to those most in need. He could never be that generous and kind, but maybe he could participate in that goodness by fulfilling his natural calling to love and support her.
There was a home to be found, to be made in this place. Zach took a moment to recline in the serenity and peace of that understanding. Then he balled up the now-empty lunch bag, screwed the cap on his thermos, and climbed into the hot truck for the drive to Snake’s house—to pay the price, or at least make a down payment, on the purchase of that precious home.
Birthday Dinner Page 24
