by Rae Meadows
Mrs. Turner struck the familiar opening bars and the congregation stood, needing no hymnals as they sang out words they had known since they were children.
Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,
Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;
Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
This was not her father’s church. At times Annie missed the order, the rhythm of the same structure each week. The lighting of the candles on the communion table. The Lord’s Prayer. The doxology. She missed the beauty and airiness of the building itself. The quiet bustle in the narthex before people funneled down the aisle to their seats. But out here there was the Church of the Holy Redeemer or nothing. The church itself was boxy and raw, stuffy in any weather. After a few years in the Panhandle, though, even the Lutherans relaxed a little and cast their lot with Pastor Hardy.
It had taken a week of bed rest and requests for the latest Krazy Kat comic strip for Fred to emerge, weakened but returned. He wore his mask out of the house with little reluctance. He wrote, “I am a bandit,” and then pointed his fingers like a gun, his eyes crinkled. Annie was brittle, Fred’s illness a demon that would not cede its grip. He was better, but he was by no means well. He was still Fred with his fragile lungs. And now that Cy had abandoned Birdie without even a goodbye, she was a sad sack of potatoes, as silent as Fred.
“I’m sorry,” Annie had said to her.
“Are you?” she had shot back.
Annie had wanted to pull her on her lap then and stroke her hair, but Birdie was right, she wasn’t really sorry. She was sorry for her daughter’s pain. But glad that Birdie hadn’t settled on her life at fifteen, hadn’t tied herself to Mulehead before she had a chance to see anything else.
Samuel sang as if there were no one else in the church. He had a beautiful voice, that strong baritone, and Annie loved it still. She reached for his hand and held tight. He glanced at her and smiled as he sang. Each afternoon now, he went to the barn with clear-eyed purpose. She was glad, at least, that building the boat distracted him from his anxiety about the farm. He no longer stared out at his dying fields or ground his teeth at night or pored over what they owed, what they’d lost. Last night he had pulled her to him and she had not resisted. His hands tentative and gentle, his eyes seeking hers in the darkness. She felt comforted by his weight pressing her down and she closed her eyes and imagined his body a ballast—until he murmured, “Blessed be,” and rolled off onto his side of the bed. This is my family, she had told herself. This is good and right. She had tried to hold on to the tenderness she felt for her husband then, the warmth of his body inches from hers, but she kept seeing Jack Lily in the slanted sun of the Woodrows’ bedroom, his eyes the color of coffee, his elated grin when they had finally taken a breath after that first kiss.
In the pew in front of her, she could see that a seam of Helen Mason’s dress was coming loose, the fabric worn so thin she could see through it to the woman’s freckles.
Pastor Hardy closed his eyes as the spirit moved him, hands outstretched.
“The Kingdom of Heaven awaits all who do God’s work,” he said. “Now hear it. Feel it. The Lord is my light and my salvation—hah—the Lord is my strength and my song—hah—I will praise him—hah—I will exalt him—hah—the Lord is God and He has made his light shine upon us—hah—be our strength O Lord in these times of great distress—hah—our everlasting light. Praise our heavenly father. Can I hear an Amen?”
“Amen,” Annie said.
* * *
AT RUTH’S, SAMUEL sat at the bar, the midday sun leaking in through the small window. He’d come in a few times over the last weeks to talk harvest with some of the others, to unburden his mind of churning thoughts about the flood. The steam box was ready, and he was eager to have Fred well again, back working beside him. But Samuel had moments of wishing he had not been called. He wasn’t proud of those thoughts, but sometimes he wanted to just be a regular farmer again. Here at the bar it was a relief to be, for an hour or so, just like everybody else.
“Olafson seen them up near Kenton. Kid on a mattress on top of a truckload. Had a goat in a pen jerry-rigged to the running board. The boy was retying the back,” his neighbor Ford said.
“I’d gone to see Stew days ago,” Samuel said. “Didn’t let on.”
“What’d he say to Olafson?” Jensen asked.
“Nothing much. Said they were out of luck here. Heard there were farms needing help in California. Going through Colorado for some reason, then down to 66.”
“They had all their cattle shot, I know that. Took the thirteen dollars a head on six good ones, a dollar on the rest,” Samuel said.
“Anyone know they was heading out?”
“A surprise to me,” Samuel said. “Even to Birdie. Cy never said anything to her.”
The men wagged their heads.
“Had a cousin took off from Dalhart. Haven’t heard from him since.”
Families had begun leaving in year two of the drought but it took a while before anyone realized it would be an exodus. Where did they go? What did they find? It was all rumor, conjecture, California as exotic and unknowable as Calcutta.
“Word is they end up picking peaches for pennies.”
“It’s been a long time since I had a peach. Remember those cobblers Mrs. Turner used to make for church social?”
“Me and Garland Mitchell once saw Mrs. Turner in all her glory,” Ford said.
“Good Lord. She must be up near seventy,” Samuel said.
“Thirty-some-odd years ago. We rode out that way on two of Mitchell’s horses, back when there was bluegill in the Cimarron. Came up on her coming out of the river. Buck naked. Water running off her, shining in the sun. Man, oh man.” Ford laughed a little and sipped the dregs of his beer.
“She see you?” Jensen asked.
“We were downwind. Hid by yuccas. But I’m not convinced she didn’t know we were there. She took her sweet time and shook out her hair. Long and reddish back in those days. Skin like new milk.”
“No wonder you remember the cobbler,” Jensen said.
“A finer woman I never did see.”
“I won’t tell your missus.”
“All she needs is something else to harp at me for. ‘Stop all the drinking.’ ‘Go to church.’ ‘Apply for the relief.’”
“I’ll never think of Mrs. Turner the same again,” Samuel said, the alcohol fuzzing his tongue.
“You’re welcome.”
“How’d it get up on noon so fast? Eight more hours before I can turn in,” Jensen said.
“Say, what was Olafson doing out there, anyway? Pretty far from Beaver Flats,” Samuel said.
“Driving the dinosaur diggers around.”
“The what?”
“They think there’s bones out there. Want to dig them up.”
“They want to dig, come out to my place,” Jensen said. “I’ve got some posts need digging out.”
“Listen up,” Ruth called over the chatter, hitting a fork against a glass. “A roller’s been spotted about thirty miles southeast out near Texoma.”
“Cover your beer, boys, here comes another one.”
* * *
IT WAS HARVEST time—had been for weeks. No one in the county felt rushed to pull in the sorry yield. What kernels had emerged were a little soft, but there seemed no reason to believe they would mature further without rain. So Samuel prayed on it, then oiled the combine and hitched it to the tractor and told Annie to keep the coffee brewing and the lemonade cold. There was no money to hire out a reliever, so Samuel told Birdie to get on her dungarees and rest up, because she would be driving shifts. Fred sulked because he wouldn’t get a chance.
In those first years they’d had the draft horses, pulling the riding plow to make the furrows, the harrow to break up clumps, and the cutter for harvest. When the wheat was ripe, it was cut, run through the binder, and
tied up into bundles, which were kicked off into the mowed windrows. Then in the evenings, they would go out and put the bundles up in piles so they could dry out. That sweet grassy smell on the field, quiet except for birds, the mix of pride for what was done and nerves for what wasn’t. In the good years, those evenings were enough to bring tears to Samuel’s eyes.
He loved the charge of the first bundle in the thresher maw, the loud buzz as the wheat was separated from the straw, the chaff against a hot sky, and how by the end of the day, the prickly remnants stuck everywhere, even, somehow, between his toes. Farmers came together and worked in crews, feasting from meals the wives laid out, platters of fried chicken, potatoes and gravy, beans and squash, bread and butter, peach pie and strawberry shortcake.
In 1924 he had bought a John Deere D tractor. Starting the tractor was always a joy to him, a reminder of what God and the farm had provided. Open the petcock over the valve and turn the flywheel, which would suck the gas in, and it would fire. Shut the little petcock off. And when it warmed up a little, turn it from gasoline over to kerosene and it was good to run on and on. In the boom years, he’d traded up for a Case tractor with a front crank. And now he had the combine, which he still owed on.
There was no stopping technology. What used to take five hours now took one. But Samuel missed the simplicity of the horses. With horses, and the deeper furrows made by the plow, he thought now, the topsoil might have had more chance at holding.
The tractor engine roared and groaned as it towed the combine over the rutted land to the fields. Samuel was sweating already and it was not yet eight. With Birdie covering while he ate and emptied the grain tank, he hoped to do thirty acres today.
Praise the Lord for this harvest, he said. Bless us with wheat.
Annie came out and waved. The sight of her as he set out lifted his spirits. Since Fred’s collapse, she had been different toward him, placing her hand on his arm at the dinner table, leaving a sandwich for him when he came back from the barn. They didn’t speak of the boat, but in the week leading up to harvest, he felt her opening up to it, to him. The feel of her at night was new and familiar at the same time. She was thinner, more angular than she’d been as a younger woman, but her skin was softer, her touch gentler, and he was grateful. She kept her nightgown on, as she always did, but she moved with him instead of lying still. He had looked at other women, his head turned by beauty like any other man’s, but he’d never really coveted another. With Annie there always seemed more to figure out, and it kept him wanting.
He drove out to the western field, the dry rustle of the wheat lost to the din of the machinery. The stalks were patchy, but the Lord would provide. He set the combine wheel along the edge of the dirt and fired it up.
* * *
WHAT HAVE I gone and done? Birdie gulped fast and shallow through her mouth, unable to fully catch her breath. She set the glass churn onto the ground and kept her head down between her knees for a moment so she wouldn’t faint. She could hear her mother clanking bowls and pans in the kitchen, preparing the midday harvest meal, preoccupied enough not to notice Birdie doubled over in a chair out back. For the first few days, Birdie had not truly believed Cy was gone, sure he was coming back for her. She listened for a pebble against her window and looked for him where they used to meet up at the trio of piñon trees behind the school; she checked the mailbox for a note.
“Did you know?” Mary Stem had asked, cornering her after church, the mix of glee and horror in her whisper barely contained.
“Of course I knew,” Birdie shot back. “You think he would just leave without telling me?”
“I heard they left on Saturday.”
“So?”
“You just seemed so cheery at the rabbit thing. For someone whose boyfriend had just flown the coop.”
Birdie didn’t have the energy to pretend. She had just walked away, leaving Mary standing there lucky in her dowdy smocked dress, no baby growing inside her.
She took hold of the worn red handle of the old butter churn and started to crank it again, the butter, three quarts of it, finally starting to firm. She turned and turned the handle, a blister forming on her thumb. He loved her, but family came first. Everyone knew that.
* * *
ANNIE WAS INVIGORATED. Despite its probable dismal returns, harvest was harvest, and she delved into her preparations for the late afternoon meal. She had steeled herself not to see Jack Lily, had stuck close to home since he had come out to the house. Through work she would redeem herself, she thought, as she plucked the stray quills—Birdie had done a lackluster job, not doing the wings right out of the boil—cleaned the chicken and cut it up into parts. She had splurged on a young chicken from the McClearys, bartering with milk, carrots, and peppers instead of going with one of the old laying hens that went for less. She arranged the pieces in a deep skillet, added a chopped onion, parsley, salt, and pepper, simmering it all in just enough water to cover. The ham had been in for two hours and was close to done. The bread dough had begun to rise.
Chicken and corn pudding had always been one of Samuel’s favorites, something he remembered his mother used to make. Annie took the knife and shaved the tender kernels from six cobs, the juice sweet and milky. It was a small gesture of atonement. She would be a better wife.
“Birdie?”
Annie found the churn outside the door and her daughter gone. She sat and worked the handle until it was done. Birdie would not talk about Cy now. She would not talk about anything. Time would chip away at the heartsickness, Annie was sure. For her upcoming birthday, Annie had been working on a dress from navy-and-white-striped fabric she’d saved for three years, with a tailored front and puffed half sleeves, a straight skirt and a red tie around the waist. A dress for a city girl.
She scooped a cupful of butter from the churn into another pan, and when it bubbled, added the corn and some salt. She whipped four eggs with a fork and stirred them in with some of the broth from the chicken, beating until it was a thick batter. She smeared butter in a baking dish, poured in the corn pudding, arranged the chicken pieces inside, and set it in the oven.
As she pulled the blue-and-white serving platters from the cupboard, peeling back the stiff brown paper she’d wrapped them in last year, Annie felt a sudden rush of baby longing, skin to her skin, the warm clean smell, the perfect heft, wrinkled tiny feet. These spells came on once every few months, making her, when they passed, feel like an empty bowl. She wondered, as she leaned against the counter to steady herself, if it weren’t a kind of haunting, from the baby that was and then wasn’t.
Her mother had come a week after the baby died, the only time Annie had seen her since she’d left Kansas. Her hair gone white, her dress starched stiff, her small hands as dry as paper. Annie had wanted her mother to make it better. What she got was “God decides what’s right for us” and a butter cake she’d packed from home, made by someone in the congregation. Maybe something truthful, some real emotion from her mother, might have been a small bridge Annie could have crossed. But hers had been a family of hidden feelings, held tongues. “Life is so hard out here,” her mother had said, unable to wipe the sigh from her voice, the disapproval, as if the Panhandle—Annie’s choice—was somehow to blame for the baby’s death. Annie had been too grief-tired to get angry, but she had had the thought, when she looked at her mother’s stolid face, that she would probably never see her again.
Fred had arrived two years after Eleanor, and Annie had felt so full, restored for a time. With a baby, she knew who she was supposed to be. The needs immediate, her importance absolute. As the years went by, though, it became clear that there wasn’t going to be another child, as much as she had hoped for one.
Annie went to the garden to dig out potatoes. They were small still but would mash up well with butter and salt. As she worked the pitchfork to loosen the soil, and the sweat ran down her sides, she remembered Jack Lily’s hands on her waist, his lips on her ear, his breath that tasted faintly of pepperm
int. She pushed the thought away. She sank to her knees and dug her hands in the dirt.
* * *
JACK READ THE letter again. His father was sick, his brother wrote; it was time to come home. He hadn’t seen his father in eleven years. He wrote birthday cards and Christmas letters and called on the telephone once a year, but Chicago was far away and he was afraid of getting pulled back into a life he didn’t want. And now there was Annie.
His father was a quiet man with tobacco-stained fingers and a raspy laugh. He made a decent living with the creamery, supplying the city with milk and butter. His mother had been a tall and handsome woman who was quick with a smack of the wooden spoon. She’d spent her days talking to the neighbors over sugary, cream-filled coffee, where she died one summer morning from a heart attack. Jack had been his father’s favorite, but when he had refused to work at the creamery, his father wore his disappointment every day, his shoulders humped, his mouth downcast. They never spoke of it. And now it had been so many years since they had seen each other. He knew he must go home.
Jack had not seen Annie in over a week and it scared him. She had looked away from him that night with Samuel there, had not given him the slightest sign. As the days passed, he feared he might have made their relationship into something it wasn’t. Before Annie, it had been so long since he had held a woman. Longing sent a kick of energy through him. Had he been too eager?
Yesterday he’d seen Samuel in the old McCracken lot, kicking through the remains of rotted wood, looking for scrap. Jack had forced himself to go talk to him, as he would have otherwise.
“Sorry I haven’t come up with anything for you yet,” Jack said.
“Got some to start with from that fallen-in shed out on 287.” Samuel picked up a length of wood, gauging its softness with his thumbnail.
“Still at it, then?”
“Can’t do much else,” Samuel said.
“It will be something to see.”
Jack had felt a little shriveled inside, encouraging Samuel as if the boat were the most normal thing. He’d quickly taken his leave and ducked into the welcome shadows of Ruth’s.
