‘I can't believe
I'm stuck in this,— this limbo. If only I knew what to do about
it.’ I thought to myself as I climbed down from the tractor to
separate it from the seed rig. I’d finished sowing barley in the
rich soil of the Northeast corner up against the Dreeson line.
The Dreeson farm used to be my dad's until he was killed in a freak
accident just after I was born. My dad was only a couple of years
older than I am now when he got struck by a bolt of lightening right in
the middle of the field. I can see the piece of land where it
happened from my desk upstairs where I’m writing this. There's no
marker or anything to commemorate the spot. It became the
Dreeson’s second place. They have a share cropping deal with Tad
Barrett. I never knew my dad and don’t remember living on the
farm.
My Mom kept the
farm for a couple of years after dad died, then sold it when my twin
brother died. That’s when she opened Charlene's, the town coffee
and gossip shop. I don't remember any of that. I just
remember the town house and the attached coffee and dinner take out
shop. Doesn’t matter I wasn't raised on a farm. I think
farming’s in my blood. I've wanted to farm for as long as I can
remember, from when I first planted a little patch of tomatoes in back
of our house when I was seven. There's something about helping
life and growing things produce its bounty that no regular job can
rival for satisfaction. I worked on Hal Cooper's farm every
summer when school was out when I turned thirteen, but officially when
I turned fourteen, because Kansas has dumb laws about kids and work
permits. I loved working on the farm.
I've cropped old
Hal Cooper's farm almost two years now, living at home until last
month, when Hal moved into his house in town. He lives the next
house down from mom's. I moved into Hal's farmhouse when he moved
to town. When Lynn, his wife of thirty years died on the farm,
Hal didn't want to stay there anymore. He told me there were too
many painful memories for him associated with the house. He left
me most of his furniture to use, because the town house was already
pretty full from when his mother and dad lived there after they turned
the farm over to him. I was pretty well fixed. I had all
these thoughts about finally having a place of my own. Why, I
could bring someone to my bed if I wanted to. It just hasn't
happened because I haven’t found anyone I wanted to wake up next
to. The big house sure gets lonesome some times. It’s old
and it moans and creaks like an old person. It talks to me in the
night. There’s a board in the attic I can set my watch by.
It will pop and groan every night about the same time.
Mom wasn't happy
about me moving out because she figured I ought to follow custom and
stay at home until I got married. I felt kind of funny about
living at home, especially since she started seeing Andy Trothwell from
Gove last year. He never slept over when I was living at home,
and I felt it was because of me being there. I appreciated
him respecting me, but it wasn’t necessary. I wouldn’t have
minded if he came to me and was honest with me. Besides, once I got the
share-cropping deal with Hal there was no way I could see working in my
mom's coffee shop anymore. I wanted to be a farmer. I
wanted to be known as a successful farmer in our community.
Owning and running a coffee shop’s just right for mom, a kid who
dropped out of high school, or maybe a young mom like Cal's Sara who
helps her in the mornings. My mom needs help clearing breakfast
dishes and making cold and warm up dinners for the single farmers and
workers to take into the fields.
For the last
year Tracey helped out mornings in the diner, but she was a little
slow. Mom was looking for a replacement now that Tracey went to
visit her aunt in Peoria. She was unmarried and came up pregnant
by one of the Hill boys. They were both doing her down by the
creek on a regular basis. We usually don't talk about things like
that even though everybody in town knows Tracy’s pregnant.
Neither one of the boys was willing to marry her, so she went to her
aunt’s to have her baby and give it up for adoption. After that
she’s suppose to come back and finish high school. I could
understand Tracey falling for the Hill boys. They're both as good
looking as can be and built big for their ages. I think Todd is
sixteen and Terry is seventeen. Tracey wouldn't make a good
farmer's wife anyway. She’s too lazy. Old man Hill paid for
her trip to Peoria to get his boys off the hook; that was, after he
beat their butts black and blue for being so stupid not using
protection, and sharing the same woman which is suppose to be an
abomination.
As for Andy
Trothwell,— well, I guess he's a pretty nice guy even if he is a
trooper. He took good care of his wife when things got bad, and
saw both his daughters through college. He isn’t your usual
hard-nosed trooper. He’s pretty mellow and laid back. He
never came down hard on folks unless they really deserved it. He
even let me off for driving my pickup back from a party in Gove.
I was shit-faced, but I was still driving pretty safe, or as safe as
you can drive at three miles an hour. That was a year before he
met my mom. I figure my mom has every right to get a little
loving. She's done without as long as I’ve been alive. It
isn't natural for a woman as attractive as my mom to go without,— to be
alone. It just ain’t right. She deserves some happiness.
She won't tell
me, of course, but T.J. tells me Andy's cruiser leaves mom's house way
after midnight sometimes because he's seen it on Gove Road heading back
to Gove lots of times after I moved out here. Andy lives on the
North side of Gove in a house he built after his older brother got the
family farm. I never stay up late because my day starts early and
by the time I’m finished I’m tired. I have to get to bed if I
want to get up the next day and do it all over again; however, T.J.
gets home from seeing Julie pretty late a lot of nights. I hope
mom and Andy are getting in some good loving after supper. I got
hard in my jeans just thinking about sex. I'm always getting hard
down there thinking about anything slightly sexual or anybody really
good looking.
I wished T.J.
was still into getting corn-holed, but he's been seeing, Julie Werther,
a girl we graduated high school with. Julie is real nice, has a
great figure and sweet as honey. Ever since they started dating
in our senior year, T.J. lost interest in that kind of stuff with
me. I figure that's okay. I never pushed it on him. I
know he really wants to have his own farm and family. I figure
him and Julie will hitch up as soon as he finds a good sharecropper
deal. T.J.'s brother, Darren, hinted once he'd like to experiment
with me, maybe play around, but he just turned sixteen. He’s way
too young for me to play a tune on his fiddle. He has a nice
butt, though, just like T.J.’s. Sometimes,— well, I'm only
human. I never have touched him and never will. Don’t hurt
none to look and think about.
T.J.'s sister
Beth is a little tramp. She puts out for any man who shows her a
little attention. She has ever since she got teats, but she's
only seventeen. Aside from the fact she’s underage I figure I
don’t want another man’s sloppy seconds. Beside,— don’t like to
admit it to myself, but I guess I'm not really into girls. When I
lope my ole mule I usually think about looking at T.J.'s back. I
love the way his backbone leads right down to his butt, and the way my
dick looks moving in and out of his tight little ass.
Sometimes, I
think about the time on the interstate when I went into the toilet and
found a hole in the wall of the stall. There was someone’s tongue
sticking through it. That's the first and only time I got a blow
job. It was last summer and it blew my mind. I went back
there a couple of weeks later out of curiosity. They put a metal
plate over the hole almost covering the whole of the old wooden
partition, and the place smelled worse than a horse barn that never got
mucked. The pee smell was unbearable. I never went back,
but I always wondered who it was that sucked my dick that
afternoon. He never came out of the toilet as far as I could
tell. I waited for ten minutes to see, but he never came
out. When a trooper patrol car pulled in I got skittish as hell
and got right out of there. I don't remember if I looked at the
parking lot for familiar pickups or not. I was too busy looking
to see if it was Andy Trothwell or the other trooper, Gordon Smith, who
knew my family. It was some trooper I never saw before who got
out of the patrol car. A short heavyset man who looked to be
black or Hispanic. My heart hammered until I got home. I
was looking in the rearview mirror every few minutes to make sure the
trooper wasn't following me.
I thought about
whacking off. ‘Not gonna happen.’ I told myself. I
had to get the tractor down to old Charlie's garage to get it serviced
before it closed at seven. I don’t have them do the small
stuff. I do the plugs, oil and filters myself. That’s about
all I know how to do. I'm not much good at fixing anything else,
but I know my old Deere isn't going to suffer at old man Baker's
hands. Graham Baker's about the best mechanic in Central Kansas
according to everybody who lives around here. Even my dad
apparently used Charlie's so he could get Baker to service his
equipment. I’ve heard it said my dad hated Charlie Adams
something fierce. There was something between them about the
Vietnam War, but no one seemed to know what it was all about, or else
neither one would talk about it. Alex, one of Charlie’s boys,
didn't come home from Vietnam. They shipped him home in a silver
box.
I don't really
know Graham Baker too well even though he lives just two farms over on
Gove Road towards town. He keeps to himself pretty much. Mom said
he and my dad were tight. They were close friends and Graham was
all broken up after dad died. Mom told me he took my dad’s death
pretty hard. Then he lost his wife to Cancer a couple of years
after dad was killed and just sort of hunkered down into his own little
world. He had the reputation of being one of the hardest working
men in town and one of the most generous. If someone was in
trouble old Graham would be the first one there to see if he could
help. He loaned a lot of money out to folks he never got back,
but he never dunned them to pay him back or tried to make them feel bad
if they couldn’t.
I remember he
came to supper at our house once in a while when I was a kid, but he
hadn't been for a long time. It had been several years at least.
Whenever I saw him at the garage or one of the fairs we were polite,
but not sociable. It was probably more my fault than Mr.
Baker’s. I mean, what does a teenage farmer-to-be or a twenty-one
year old struggling share-cropper have in common with a guy in his
sixties? He is THE mechanic in town and a farm owner while I’m a
nobody hayseed share-cropper. He has two parcels, one where he
lives, the other where Gil Carver lives, and he’s share-cropping both
parcels. He gives me the creeps sometimes like he can see right
through me and knows what I’m thinking. I know he thinks of my
dad when he sees me. He told me so after the big homecoming game my
senior year. We won by three touchdowns and one of them was mine
on an interception. He told me I had my dad's strength, speed and
crazy legs.
Mom says Gil
wants to buy the piece they live on from Baker when the crops are in,
and sharecrop the parcel next to that right behind me. It's the
old Barney farm somebody bought at the estate auction last April.
They bought it too late to crop out so it lay fallow this year.
Nobody knows who bought it. The lawyer for the Barney family told
me it was a private trust that bought it, and they weren't interested
in selling it to me when I asked. He told me it would only crop
out. I'm not sure I could handle two parcels to sharecrop on my
own. Gil's already sold almost his entire crop on the futures
market. He sold in April at the top of the market. I sold a
couple of weeks later. I got almost as good a price, but I only
sold half the crop. I'll have to take spot price for the rest
come September. I'm hoping prices will firm seeing as how soft
they are now.
I drove my
tractor back into the slot in the barn it calls home where I'll lube it
and cover it with oilcloth until next season. The damn thing must
be forty years old, but it still works like a charm. Mr. Baker,—
Graham did an overhaul on it last year when I bought it at a distress
auction up in Grainfield. It was a really bad day for an auction.
I don't guess more than forty buyers showed. The Interstate was
open, the main roads plowed, but it was snowing pretty good. The
weather forecast promised a lot more snow, so not many folk came from
further away than a couple of miles. I thought they might
postpone the auction, but I guess they had too much at risk. I
got the rig for two hundred dollars. Mine was the opening
bid. Nobody else bid on it.
I almost got a
fine closed six wheeler Deere tractor for three thousand five hundred,
but a couple of guys showed up right at the end of the call and started
bidding against me and each other. They continued to bid it up
over six thousand in less than a minute. It was too rich for my
blood. Anyhow, Old Will, the guy who works with Graham Baker, at
the garage, said Graham remarked my rig was in 'pretty good nick' (I
had to look “nick” up to find out it mean good condition) and if I paid
five hundred for it, I got the buy of the year, but for two hundred I
got my Christmas present early. I only dealt with Will, or Mr.
Adams, T.J.'s dad. Graham was always busy working. I’d
always wave and say ‘hi’ and he’d wave back and smile.
I headed towards
Charlie's garage around six. I called mom the night before to see
if she'd drive me back to the farm after I dropped off the
tractor. Like all farmers I had chores to do in the morning that
couldn't be put off. I had to milk, feed the chickens, and the
usual. Mom invited me to a late supper around seven o'clock, and
said she would drive me home afterward.
‘So what you
gonna do about this mess, Billy Boy.’ I thought as I pulled down
the long drive. ‘You haven't found a mate. You can't leave
the farm. You don't want to marry any old girl and pretend all your
life. What are you gonna’ do?’
I've had this
conversation with myself three times a day for the last two
years. You get a lot of time to think while farming, especially
farming on your own. I've always wanted to find a guy who I could
feel good about, who felt good about me, who would hold me and let me
hold him, just the two of us on our own farm side by side, but there
wasn't anyone around here, in Gove, Totteville or Grainfield that gave
me the flutter of that special feeling in my chest.
I'd had it
once. Well,— the beginnings of it anyway, when I went to the
Agricultural School extension in Salina the year after I graduated high
school. There was a guy in my class from up North
somewhere. I learned that from one of my classmates. His
name was Hank, and he graduated high school two years before me.
He hung out with a group of people who were older than I, and because I
was commuting from home every day I didn't get much chance to run
across him outside of class. We had one class together, Farm
Finance, I think it was, which we shared on Tuesdays and
Thursdays. I was always early for class to be sure I got a seat
on the right side of the room across from where he always sat with two
of his friends. I could look at his profile, his big ears, his
lanky frame, watch his legs as he sometimes crossed them straining
against his jeans or chinos. A couple of times he came to class
in shorts, and I couldn't believe how good his legs looked. They
were covered with fine dark hair, his muscles were taut, and he had
lightly tanned skin.
His face was
like a more masculine version of Tony Curtis longer and more
angled. He was about the same height as me. I figured he
was somewhere between six three and six four. He had dark,
flashing eyes, especially when he laughed. He laughed a lot and
seemed to have a good personality all his buddies liked. I wanted
so badly to meet him, but I was too shy to walk up to him and say
‘howdy.’ I watched from across the room, and got more and more
flutter in my chest every time he looked over at me. He was so
fine.
About four
months after I first saw him I was getting so frustrated I couldn't
stand it. I whacked off every night thinking about him, his white
teeth, his crewcut beauty, his incredibly fine butt, the long cleft
between his shoulders and his belt, how fine it would be to plow his
field, maybe let him plow mine, and maybe even kiss and hold each
other. I even thought fleetingly of putting him in my mouth and
tasting his seed like the guy in the stall at the rest stop did to
me. The best was the fantasy of having my dick deep in his mouth
with his eyes looking up at me, taking me as I shoot. I had to
reach down and adjust myself as I jounced along Gove past the old house
where I was born. I was screwing up my courage to walk over to
him right after class one Thursday the next to the last week of the
semester when somebody said softly in my ear,
"I wouldn't hit
on him if I were you."
I spun around in
my seat feeling the blood rush to my face. There was a
chill running down my back.
"He hates
us." said the guy behind me real soft. He was the sort of
swishy guy I couldn't abide. He always wore shirts more like they
were blouses. He had dyed hair, wore his pants too tight, had bad
acne scars, glasses and his voice was pitched too high. Even
worse he had an earring in one ear. He was always with two or
three girls, and walked more like them than a guy.
"What are you
talking about?" I said, a little mad he would even talk to me.
"I've been
watching." said the little one, not looking at me, talking into
his notebook. "I've seen you watching him and it’s pretty obvious
you want him."
"Fuck
off." I said lamely.
"Hank beat up a
guy a couple of months ago that hit on him." said the little
queen, "He put him in the clinic for stitches. Not right
off, though,— he waited until after the guy gave him head."
"Don't mean shit
to me." I fired back, "I ain’t like that."
"Okay,—
sorry. I can see I was wrong. I just didn't want to see you
get all bloodied for nothing." he said. I saw the way Hank
looked at us, like he knew we were talking about him. Somehow, I
knew the little queen was right. There was evil in his glare I hadn't
seen before. It was a look of hate that doused my little flame
with the coldest of water. I never saw hatred in a man’s look
like that, so strong you could see its reflection in a mirror. I
found out the little queen’s name was Edward. After class we went
and got a cup of coffee at the Student Union before I drove back
home. We only talked about class. I shut Edward off when he
started talking about Hank getting a blow job from a friend of
his. I guess I managed to convince Edward I wasn't queer,
explaining I thought Hank might be one of my second cousins on my dad’s
side of the family; however, once I heard what Edward had to say about
him I knew he was no one I wanted for a relation.
Edward and I
never became friends. I think he would have liked to, but he
wasn't someone I'd want for a friend. His effeminate ways
embarrassed me too much and made me squirm when people saw me talking
to him at the Student Union that afternoon. Hank was there, too,
and I got treated to the laser hate when I looked over at him.
Funny how someone so handsome can suddenly look so ugly. Hate can
do that to a man.
I arrived a
little late and sat at the back of the class the next two weeks away
from both Hank and Edward. I made it a point not to pay attention
to either of them, during or after class. I sat in the seat
closest to the proctor during the final exams to avoid them. We
got our diplomas in a pretty hokey ceremony in the main auditorium a
week after final exams. I ran out of luck. Hank's last name was
Tarwell or Tatworth,— I can't remember,— so he sat right next to me
during the most boring speeches ever given by a school
administrator. Hank kept pressing his leg against mine, and I had
to move away to keep from getting hard. My brain didn't want to
do anything with him, but my dick didn't know that. It had a
brain of it’s own. When we got up to file in front of the
assembly to get our certificates, he pressed up against me as we waited
to climb the stairs. I felt him growing hard against my
butt. I couldn't help the thrill that went through me.
However, I also felt anger that he would be so presumptuous to assume I
would respond to him.
"So you gonna
give me a treat for graduation?" he mumbled as we waited for the
line to move which was, for some reason, stalled at the top of the
steps. "I could really use a good slow suck’n,— even better, a piece of
your fine ass."
I turned around
quickly and snarled something about not being interested in hanging
around with no queer, and said it loud enough that at least the guys in
front of me and behind him must have heard. He actually flushed,
but I could see it wasn't from anger, but from embarrassment.
"Sorry,"
he said. "I thought . . ."
"Yeah,— well,
you thought wrong, asshole!" I finished for him, and turned
around and jumped up the steps to get my little folder with the
Certificate. That was the last words I spoke to him, and the last time
I looked at his face. God, he was handsome. It almost broke my
heart, but he could’ve tried to get to know me before pulling something
like that. I was hurt and angry, so I didn't go back to my
seat. I walked out the side door, got in my pickup, and drove
home. Mom wasn't at my commencement. She had to keep the
kitchen going, so there was no reason for me to stay for the rest of
the ceremony.
I still think
about his face sometimes when I jack off. I still wonder what it
might have been like if he was one of the good guys who found me as
interesting as I found him. I never felt that way about T.
J. I never felt I wanted to kiss him or hold him much less set up
house with him or anything. We were just using each other to get
off. I wouldn't let him corn-hole me, but he never seemed to
mind. I'd stroke him off sometimes when I was plowing him, but he
more often than not wanted to do it himself. That way he could
get his timing just right. We never kissed, made love, or sucked
each other. You can fuck your buddy, just don't suck him or kiss
him,— that would be queer.
I came out of my
reverie as I pulled past Cal's house into town, and got to Charlie's
garage a little after six. The lights were off. I couldn't
find anybody around, and kicked at my tires in frustration as I got
back on my tractor. I only had a block or two to go to
mom's. I was pissed I'd come all the way into town with an
appointment to get the tractor serviced, and they'd closed early.
I said a couple of choice words about Charlie and company,— or at least
about Ron and his four footed mother.
"What can I
do? They ain’t here." I said under my breath as I rounded
the corner to mom's place, "Calm down and have a nice supper with
mom, that’s what you can do."
I noticed Graham
Baker's old Jeep at Pete's pump across from mom's place, and turned
into the station. Graham turned towards me and waved as I drove
up, but I couldn't see much of him. He was behind the old Texaco
pump that still had the round globe with the star on it. The star
was a little worn away here and there. I pulled in next to his
Jeep, and jumped off the tractor leaving it running.
"Hey, Mr.
Baker." I said waving at him as I walked around his old Jeep
towards him.
“Graham, Son,
call me Graham. We’re neighbors, after all.” he smiled real
big at me as he yelled to me over the noise of the tractor
engine. His face was under the shadow of his old Stetson hat, and
I thought about his big ears and nose, his comfortable, ugly, old face,
his bushy eyebrows and ear hair, and his head as clean as an egg on top.
"How you been,
B.B.?" he hollered. "Hot 'un, ain't it?" he said,
pulling off his hat to wipe his forehead, and straightening up in the
fading sun. He looked like one of those posters of the lean, mean
old time cowboys, blue denim shirt almost white from being washed so
many times, lanky legs in darker denim, big metal belt buckle, and worn
boots. He was just a little taller than me. ‘He must’ve
been a hunk when he was younger.' I remember thinking, ‘Not
handsome, but not ugly either. He was definitely a hunk of a
man.’ He still had a tight looking butt, his shoulders were
broad, his chest looking solid, and his belly flat. Funny,— I
could’ve sworn he had a pot when I saw him last, maybe two weeks
ago. Could've sworn he had real bushy gray eyebrows, too, but
they looked normal, dark with some gray. I couldn't help myself
looking at his crotch, seeing the bulge of his manhood a lot more
prominent than most, wondering if it was still in working order.
Okay,— I know,— I’m sick.
He looked into
my eyes, and I swear, I felt a flutter, a spark. There was
something about the way his eyes were so deep, the pure masculinity of
him so blatant. I almost stumbled as I went to shake his
hand. His grip was strong, his hand not all that much larger than
mine, but still swallowing mine, in one of those shakes that tells you
this is a man, one you can count on. I almost jumped back when he
let go my hand, not wanting to give the impression of weakness, or
wanting to hold on a little longer.
"How come you
shut up shop early? Got trouble with the Jeep?" I asked
lamely.
"Don't know,
Son, don't work for Ron no more. Got myself fired
yesterday." he boomed, "Went chasing after a weather
balloon thinking it was a plane going down, and young Ronnie fired my
ass." he laughed as he said it like it was some big joke.
He smiled at me and I almost laughed. I felt a mix of compassion,
mirth and attraction, all at the same time.
‘God, what a
hunk he must have been.’ I reflected again as he spoke, looking
at his big hands, his narrow hips. ‘He ain’t too damn bad looking
to me now. I gotta' do something about my need.’ I
thought, ‘Else I'm gonna start jumping the bones of old codgers
like Graham, and get myself pounded into mush.’
"So who's gonna’
be our mechanic?" I asked, now afraid to look at him, afraid he'd
see the person behind my eyes and know I was a pervert.
"Well, Ron's
bringing in his brother's boy to replace me."
"T. J.?" I
asked, a little stunned. "T. J. can't change into a mechanic,
he's gonna’ stick to farming. I mean, him and Julie is gonna
share-crop next year when he finishes the ag course."
"Not T.J.,— Cal."
"Calvin?"
I couldn't believe it. "T. J.'s brother, Cal?" Cal couldn't
be a mechanic no more than he could become a nuclear physicist. I
mean, he's not a bad guy, but he’s dumb as a box of rocks. Him
and Sara are getting married in June. Mom said there was a rumor
she was pregnant, but we weren't to say anything about it. That
meant everybody in town knew, but we were going to keep it under wraps
to avoid hurting anybody. I never did understand small town logic.
"Well, Cal's
gettin' married, and they don't have no more work at the mine for
him." Graham said softly. "Man's gotta provide for his
family somehow."
"You don’t seem
very upset. If’n it was me and I’d worked there s’many years as
you have, I’d be plenty pissed?"
"No
purpose." Graham said.
I looked back up
into his eyes feeling, somehow, drawn to them. Lord help me if
they didn't seem deep as a clear winter’s night sky in January.
"I'm setting up,
my own business, my own shop, at the hangar soon's as I can get the
equipment ready. The power should be turned on in the morning."
Graham said, not breaking away from my eyes.
"Think you could
check out my old Deere for me, Graham?" I said without
thinking. "I gotta bad vibration at twenty-two thousand r.p.m."
"Sure." he
said. "We can take her up to the hangar, then I'll drop you to
home. Ain't got nothing to work on with my hands just now, so
it'll be a pleasure. Ought a’ have her ready tomorrow, less’n I
gotta dig into her."
"I'm supposed to
supper with mom tonight." I said looking away, "Could you drop me by
her house instead?"
"No
problem." Graham said as he put the nozzle back on the side of
the pump and wrote on a little post-it notepad how much gas he
took. He put the sheet into the box for Pete to figure the
price. The pump don't go over ninety-nine cents a gallon, so Pete
has to use a calculator every time he sells from the pump. He
leaves the pump on all the time, even though he's not there.
Nobody from around here is going to steal from Pete. One time we
had a tourist come through who didn't know the system, he found the
slip and wrote down how much he took, paid with a couple of twenties
and put it all into the box. The total he owed wasn't but twenty
some dollars.
Pete drives the
Bureau of Weights and Measures inspectors crazy, because they expect
anybody using a pump to have one of those high-tech machines that takes
credit cards and cash. They expect it to spit out a receipt,
measure everything in thousandths of a gallon, and whether the missing
attendant washed the windshield. Pete just tells them the gas
ain't for sale, it's for his own use, and sometimes he loans some to
friends as a courtesy, like everyone does out here. The BWM
people shake their heads at our ignorance and mulishness, then go away
which is just we want them to do. I never met a bureaucrat that
didn't act like the wrong end of a mule. Mostly, Pete sells and
delivers directly to the farms running a full double tanker a week from
the depot outside Kansas City. He splits off the trailer and
making deliveries. I buy two hundred gallons at a time every two
weeks which is just enough to keep my five hundred gallon tank from
going too much below half full. Pete charges only wear and tear
on his tanker, so he can replace it every five or six years. He
adds three or four pennies a gallon to live on. He only has one
parcel, and five kids. That suits us all down to the ground.
I followed
Graham’s old Jeep out to the hangar as the sun continued its slide
towards the horizon. Graham unlocked the gate, and we drove a
half mile to the hangar itself. I never realized it was so
big. Graham opened a big sliding door on the side, and motioned
me in. I expected to go right into the hangar, but there was a
concrete block wall maybe thirty feet from the side that went up about
twenty feet. There was a suspended ceiling between it and the
outside wall of the hangar, so you couldn't see inside. Graham pointed
to a place near a bench a few dozen feet into the darkened maintenance
area to park my tractor. I turned the engine off, got down, and
took the key off my ring to leave in the lock.
"Can I see the
inside?" I asked after I walked over to where Graham was standing
watching me.
"Sure,
B.B." he said, and walked over towards the door in the
wall. I followed a few paces behind. I couldn't stop
looking at his butt. It looked every bit as fine as T.J.'s butt,
maybe even a little better. I wondered what it would be like to
corn-hole an old guy. ‘Probably loose as a goose.’ I
thought. ‘Old men fart like hogs because they aren't tight any
more. Probably be better than a hog or a cow.’ T.J. said he
tried a heifer once, but she kicked him pretty good. He claimed
he did a goat one time which I find down right disgusting, but I think
he was pulling my leg. I don't think I’d be interested in sex
with livestock, thank you very much.
Graham’s butt
was a perfect shape. It looked just ripe for picking. I
imagined pulling his jeans down and spreading them on the ground,
jumping his bones before he knew I was in him. I couldn't believe
I was thinking about having sex with a guy that was older than my
granddad would have been if he hadn't bought it in a silo explosion
when I was a kid. I was trying to shut my libido down by thinking
about things like that.
Graham opened
the door and we walked into a dreamland. The sun was streaming
through the spaces between an open part of the ceiling and a higher
horizontal cap, high overhead. The light bounced all over the
place, in rays that gradually diminished into the darkness. There
was one piece of metal or glass which broke the ray into a rainbow of
colors and turned the air into a Joseph's coat of many colors at the
East end of the enormous cavern.
"Must be as big
as a football stadium inside." I said stupidly, in a hushed
voice. It must be like being in a great European cathedral like I
saw on Discovery or the History Channel once. We were standing
side-by-side looking up at the display.
"Bigger,"
Graham said, "More'n twice as big. It’s gonna’ do just
fine." he added enigmatically. No way a farm garage could
ever use that much space. I reckon it was big enough to house the
whole state farm equipment exposition held in Kansas City. I
turned to look to the West where the sun was poking under the roof
line, and somehow my arm brushed against Graham's bare forearm.
It sent shivers right through my elbow and upper arm, up to my neck,
and raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I jumped like I was
shot while stepping back from him.
"You feel
that?" he asked, his head still tilted up to the rainbow, but his
eyes looking directly into mine.
"Yeah," I
said, not thinking, just numbly answering. Something was going on
between us I didn't understand,— not at all.
"I figure there
must be a build up of static electricity in here." he said,
"It’s what keeps the dust suspended in the air." I clambered on
board the lifeboat he launched.
"Yeah, made the
hair on the back of my neck stand up." I breathed out. "Wouldn't
wanna’ stand here too long before touching somebody. Bet it would
be quite a shock."
"Depends on who
you're with, I guess." he said, breaking his gaze and turning
back towards the door. "Let's get you to supper."
I was
disappointed he didn't want to stand with me for a little while longer,
maybe. Oh, hell, I don't know. I was all muddled up.
I was so screwed up I didn’t know what the hell I wanted. I half
ran a few steps to catch up with him, the noise my boots made reflected
from every wall and corner of the huge hanger. Graham smiled at
me and winked. His smile lit up his rugged face and his teeth
gleamed in the sun. I didn't know he wore false teeth.
"How long you
lived here, Graham?" I asked, more to fill the gap than anything
else.
"Be sixty-five
years come September." he said. "Born in the house I live
in."
"You here when
the hangar got put up?"
"Yep. Old
Boyce thought he was gonna’ have him a right big airport back
then. That was afore the Interstates got built, before jets could
fly across the whole country plus an ocean without landing. He
was right when he figured people would start using planes a lot to get
from here to there, he just didn't figure on them getting so big, so
fast, so soon."
"I thought it
was just for his crop dust business." I said. That was the
story I'd heard since I was a kid.
"Well, that's
what he told folks, but deep down, he wanted to be one of the relay
airports from Chicago to Los Angeles. You wouldn’t remember, but
back before the War,— World War II,— planes had to stop three or four
times to get from L.A. to Chicago. I guess he didn't pay no
attention to the DC-4 when it came along. It could fly to Dallas
or Denver from L.A., then up to Chicago with only one stop."
"Was that an
early jet?" I asked. I'd never heard of a DC-4. I
knew what a DC-3 was, a little old propeller plane, and a DC-8 was a
big, long four engine jet that went out of service in the nineties.
"Nope, it was
one of the last prop planes. Got replaced real quick by the DC-6,
the DC-7, and then the 707."
"It must have
been exciting to live though that." I said.
"No different
than now." Graham said, as we went through the sliding door back
into the shop. My tractor looked lost inside. "We use
bigger and better machines, but the goal is the same,— coax out of
Mother Earth the crops that sustain us all,— insects, beast and
man. Nothing more fulfilling than that."
"I thought you
were only a mechanic." I said with a foot down my throat. "I
mean," I said trying to recover, "I thought you worked only
as a mechanic, not as a farmer, too."
"Only did
mechanical work in the off season at first." Graham said as we
closed up the garage and climbed into his Jeep. It was pretty
Spartan. The seats are only an inch thick, I swear.
"Mary and I
farmed the piece what raised my whole family since the eighteen
hundreds, and then the second piece north of your dad's as well, up
'til she took sick in the late seventies, early eighties. Our
main work was to keep her healthy as long as possible, so I cropped the
farm out to Gil Carver after your mom sold out to Ralph."
"Gil's been
farming your place for twenty some years?" I asked,
stunned. I thought Gil was only in his thirties.
"His dad,"
Graham hollered over the noise of the engine as we sped towards the
gate, "I didn't want to sell nothing but the piece on Post Road,
so he eventually bought a two-parcel farm over to Gove. Our Gil's
been on his own here twelve years, and now he's lookin' to buy a
two-parcel place on his own, too. I suppose I ought a’ be
thinking on selling both of mine to him, seeing as how I ain't got no
kids to 'queath ‘em to, but I'd rather 'queath it to someone than sell
it."
"Serious?"
I wondered if I'd ever be able to raise the money to buy a farm of my
own. What I really wanted was to buy back my dad's farm. I
kind of felt like it was my heritage, but that's only a dream, I guess.
"Never say a
word unless I am." Graham said, climbing back into the Jeep after
locking the main gate, "The Gove Road farm's my family
blood," he said, looking at me, not yet taking the road to
town, "I'd much rather give it to a man what loves the earth than
one what has the money to buy it without the love of it."
"Can you stay to
supper?" I asked without thinking. I didn't want to stop
our talking.
"Yore’ mom okay
with that?" he asked politely. He knows full well Charlene,
my mom, keeps a farm kitchen. She always makes enough for at
least a couple more mouths.
"Sure!" I
answered to his patent 'yes' to my invitation.
We got to mom's
house, and she gave Graham a big hug and a peck on his cheek when he
walked in, complaining it had been months since he'd sat at her supper
table (I figure more like years. I don't remember him ever at
supper since I went to high school.) and wasn't it just a
coincidence she'd cooked a butt, pork roast. There were extra
greens,— and come on in,— she was just putting the potatoes on to boil.
I poured us all
a big glass of ice tea, and we stayed in the kitchen talking for a
while until mom shooed us out so she could concentrate on what she was
doing. Graham and I sat on the porch and sipped the tea talking
mostly about the tractor, what he thought was probably wrong with it,
and why it would only take a couple of hours to fix. He really
knows his engines. His hands are huge, even bigger than
mine. I always thought old people's hands got wrinkled and gnarly
with blue veins, but his were normal looking. His hands looked
like the hands of a young farmer, tanned with big veins under the skin,
only slightly blue. There weren't any liver spots, and there was
none of the swollen joints a lot of older farmers get. He uses
his hands a lot to talk, his long fingers dotting the "i's" and
underlining the important points, expanding his vocabulary. Mom called us in
just as our tea was about out. We started talking about politics
a little. He's a Democrat, but he says he always votes
Republican, because there's no Democrats any more who know what it's
like to work for a living. He says the last Democrat he voted for
was Truman. He was tempted to vote for Johnson, but he didn't
like the stories about what went on down in Texas, where Johnson was
always a politician, and his wife got rich off a radio station that
nobody listened to. He had some tart things to say about Clinton
and Gore, about how he didn't believe a President of the USA could lie
like that.
"And
Gore!" he slapped his leg. "Never got close to being a
'working man' in his life. Vietnam photographer my ass.
Ever seen one of his photographs? That asshole never saw no
action, never took nothing but photos of hospitals and award
ceremonies, the pussy!"
Politics and
religion aren't allowed at mom's supper table, but we found plenty to
keep our gums flapping. We talked non-stop about weather, crops,
the new genetic corn they were trying to push (it was only good for
silage, not for eating), the price of gas, and the new garage Graham
was setting up. We got on to birds, flyways, the passenger
pigeon, endangered species, you name it. I couldn't keep my eyes
off of him.
He spoke rough,
but his heart was in everything he said. He had a good heart, you
could tell. His head was as bald as anybody’s I ever saw, but it
suited him. His face and scalp were a little red, like from a new
sunburn. His jaw was strong and his cheekbones were high.
Graham had the kind of face portrait painters love, because it's both
attractive and lived in, full of stories and experiences. His
adam's apple is prominent, and his beard grows right down to just above
it, then stops dead. There was no hair peeking over the neck if
his T-shirt which surprised me a little seeing as how he has such a
heavy beard. You could tell his beard is reddish brown still, not
gray like his hair. It makes interesting shadows in the hollows
of his cheeks in the evening. His ears are big, but not flapping
in the wind. They’re tight to his head, really nice looking, and
not full of veins and stuff. And, the most amazing thing is he
has no ear hair. I thought he had tufts of ear hair, but I must
have been wrong.
Mom kept
bragging how I'd made money on my first share-crop last year, and I'd
got all my planting done on schedule this Spring. She heaped more
praise on me than I felt comfortable with, so I asked her to tone down
a little when we took the plates into the kitchen. I didn't want
Graham to think I was a swell head. She looked at me a little
funny, then said okay. Mom's apple strudel and home-made vanilla
ice with a slice of Gove Cheddar got raves like always. We
offered to help mom put away the dishes, but she shooed us out, saying
we had too much to do in the morning. I think she was expecting
Andy later. She had a glow about her.
Graham figured
as how it made more sense for him to ferry me back to my place, so I
got my ususal care package from mom,— a warm-up dinner for the next
day, some pie and stuff,— then we piled into the Jeep. It was a
little chilly heading home, the skies were clear, the stars out because
the moon hadn’t risen. I was glad for the heater that blasted on
my feet, as we drove down Gove to my place. We passed his farm,
with the big old farmhouse set back from the road on the knoll, the
gables and turrets as signposts. It had lights on in the front
rooms. It looked warm and lived in.
"Your lights are
on," I said, partly to break the silence that fell between us.
"Got 'em on
timers." he said. "I like coming home to a house what's not
so empty looking."
"Your granddad
built it?"
"One part of
it. The main part was built by my great granddad, after the bad
times was over, before the Depression started."
"Do you remember
the Depression?" I asked.
"Wasn't born
until it was almost over," he twinkled at me. "Ain't as old
as what I look."
"I don't think
you look old," I said, again without thinking. "I think you
look,— experienced."
"You got a way
with words, don't ‘cha?"
"I guess,"
I said, "I liked school a lot, but not History, Art, Chemistry or
German."
"But you liked
English, Math, Biology and Physics; oh, and sports." I looked at
him with wonder how he knew that.
"You been
talking to mom?"
"I knew your
dad. He was the same way. I watched you grow up, don't
forget."
"What kind of a
man was he, my dad, I mean...?"
"Kind, caring,
loving, and strong. All the good things you heard about him was
mostly true. "
"Do you think he
killed himself?"
Graham looked at
me like he'd been shot.
"Where'd you
hear an awful thing like that?"
I thought back
to the times when I was a kid, and the rumors got to me that my dad had
done himself in. I think it was Chuck Dreeson, who was a senior
when I was still in seventh grade. He told me I was an orphan
because my dad killed himself to get out of debt after I was
born. I tried to beat him up, or at least I got in a couple of
good punches before he got hold of what was happening, and pounded me
into the ground with two lucky punches. Chuck's twenty-seven now,
still single, lives in downtown Chicago. He manages a Mc Donalds,
a Burger King or something.
"You know how
talk gets around." I said, my voice was kind of small. I
should have kept my mouth shut.
"Yore’ dad loved
you too much to not want to stick around and watch you grow up into the
fine young man you've become, B.B."
"I, . . .
thanks." I said. I felt like I was going to get a little
teary eyed, but I didn't want Graham to think I was weak.
"You're just as
bright as he was, maybe a little more handsome because of your mother,
and as nice a man as he could've hoped for. Take it from me, he'd
a’ been mighty proud of ya,’ Son."
I didn't say
anything back, hoping the dark would cover my softness, my weak
side. I was on the verge of a blubber. It didn’t help none
when he called me ‘Son.’ Made me feel pretty damn good inside,
though.
Graham turned
into my drive, up the trail to the old house, not as big as Graham's
place, but just as ornate. It didn't look at all inviting
standing amid the big oak trees, almost cowering beneath them, gaunt,
cold and dark. The drive is pretty well rutted, so we were
bouncing around in the seats like Ping-Pong balls, and I slipped out of
the soppy thoughts.
"You doin' all
right on your own in here?" he asked as we slowed to a stop.
"Pretty
much," I said, not yet ready to get out of the Jeep. My
butt felt a little worse for wear from the ruts in the road, but that
wasn't the reason. "Truth is, sometimes I get kinda lonely in the old
house. There's days go by when I don't see another soul, only
maybe a distant pickup or tractor in the field, so far away you
couldn't make out a wave unless it was done with the whole body."
"I get a little
lonely even after all these years in my house, without my parents,
without Mary. You ever get that way, you come over for a nip or
two and a jaw or three." Graham said, sticking his paw out for a
shake, "I keep a bottle of decent bourbon on hand all the time
for visitors."
I went to shake
his hand, and I felt a small repeat of what happened in the hangar, a
shiver up my arm, the back of my neck all of a sudden in a shudder. I
looked in his face, and I knew he felt something, too. His eyes
were a little widened, in almost a deer-like surprise. His lower
lip was a little slack.
"Night, Graham,
and thanks." I said as I got down from the Jeep. I stood
there for a minute, looking at him in the moonlight, his Stetson
shadowing his eyes, but I could still feel them washing over me.
He looked younger in the moonlight, maybe forty-five instead of sixty
or sixty-five. He nodded at me and turned the Jeep around,
carefully avoiding the roses, giving me a salute as he passed me again,
tall and upright in his seat.
‘A real
man.’ I thought. ‘Strong and good to the core. Made a
good man for his Mary.’
Everybody seemed
to find a mate eventually, although it was always man/woman as far as I
could tell. Why couldn't I find a guy like me, someone who loved
the land and nature, who wanted to build a life with someone like me,
make love together, to each other, grow together, grow old together?
"Where's
mine?" I muttered to myself, sinking into that damned well full
of dark thoughts and deep despair.
The Jeep zipped
down the drive, the single red tail lamp obscured by the dust. It
disappeared suddenly at the bend in the drive, hidden behind the
hedge. I heard its whine as it went back along Gove Road towards
town, eventually getting lost in the sound of a big jet flying
overhead. I turned to go into the house, feeling somehow
abandoned, and incredibly lonesome. I remembered I had to wash
some jeans before I went to bed. I went back to the room behind
the kitchen. It kept whispering through my head as I separated
the clothes, threw the dark stuff in and started the machine.
"Where's mine?"
I wanted to
start fertilizing the alfalfa in the morning, using the little Cat
instead of the big Deere. I had to start early, as it would take
a couple of hours longer with the Cat, probably until dark, so I turned
in right away. Even after I turned out the light and crawled
under the sheet and blankets, the counterpoint of my question continued
to bounce around in my head. I felt so alone I couldn't resist a
tear or two in self pity, the words echoing again and again as I prayed
for the slow, sure oblivion of sleep.