“Who knows what Mr. Herndon and Isac Lee get up to when they’re working way down in the bottom hay field for weeks on end?” The way she said it made me see the men and boys I worked with as they were; hayseeds, squatting in the shade of the tractor, shirtless, straw stuck to torsos, greasy hands, and stringy hair poking from dirty caps. But suddenly I saw what she saw; those fellas but with lewd smiles, goat eyes, and little red horns, probably about to sacrifice a white calf or worse, urinate in the woods. I knew she knew that I was one of them and guilty of all the things they got up to in the hidden, bottom field.
“Yes ma’am.” I answered, “I mean I don’t know ma’am.” Then, “Thank you for the ice, I better get back down to the bottom field now.” I was just a skinny, 15-year-old, boy sent by her husband, my farm boss, Mr. Herndon. Honestly, when I was working with the men all day, I felt like a bit of a weirdo. But up here, around her was so much worse that I had to lock my boots still so as not to race back to the safety and protection of the male herd.
Obviously, I knew what her husband and his buddy did all day but I wasn’t about to say a word because I didn’t know which thing would be most offensive to this prim wife, the Baptist choir leader, the woman who at the end of every week, handed me a tidy, manila envelope filled with crisp bills, accompanied by an ‘Uh-hmm’ acknowledgment of my presence that didn’t require her to open her mouth but somehow conveyed that all men and boys ought to stay on the stoop, if not out in the barn with the cows.
On this scorching afternoon, I’d been sent by her husband to ask her for 2 more frozen one-gallon milk jugs of water. I knocked, stepped back onto the grass, conveyed the request, and waited with my face covered by the bill of my cap. No eye contact and no conversation. Especially not anything like “M’am, they take swigs from a bottle of Ancient Age hidden under dirty rags in the wheel-well toolbox. And they drink out the same bottle!”
Nor would I say, “In the heat of the afternoon, the boys keep working but your husband and Isac Lee go over to the shade by the fence line n’ take a nap.”
I imagined telling her all sorts of things that happened while we bailed Bermuda. I could say that Sander, a year older than me, with curly black hairs that caught every bit of flying hay, was allowed to use bad words when he told stories of what the basketball team did on away trips. These stories made her husband and Isac Lee buckle over laughing. Or that Sander, convince us all to line up by the electric fence and take a leak, waving our stream over the wire till one of us hit it and the electric current traveled up the liquid to shock us so bad we’d jump back squirting ourselves, or more hilariously, the next guy in line. I definitely wasn’t gonna admit that I was sneaking a peak at Sander and though I was laughing, my stomach and the top of my neck clenched in fear I’d be caught. One afternoon, we baled the entire field and finished early but the men, sliding their bottle under a rag said we couldn’t go back just yet. Sander, marshaling all his charm, convinced the men to stand there in line and pee on the electric fence with us. I was embarrassed and appalled. Somehow I knew that Mr. Herndon knew it and helped me out, made it ok to be me when he said, ‘Boys, you’re all gonna be men soon enough. You’re all gonna have a set of tools and tackle. It’ll all be just fine even if it ain’t all exactly the same. But right now, y’all all look at what Isac lee is holding and know this, ain’t none us ever gonna have a tool like that. I figured it out when me and Isac Lee was y’all age; you gotta learn to work with what God gave you.”
At which point Isac Lee hit the wire, stumbled backward howling, spraying Sander’s jeans and boots. Sander laughing like Woody Woodpecker fell back and hit his head on the hay trailer. Blood ran with sweat and hay down his shoulder, into his right pit. They made me caretaker, “Son, hold that ice jug to the back of his head. We’ll get the equipment hitched up and call it a day.”
Sander sprawled and I sat up rigid under the platform of the trailer. He leaned on a wheel. We were practically in a tent under the triangle tarp of shade cast where sun hit the stacked hay above us. While I held the milk jug of melting ice to wet curls, he did something he only did when we were alone. Handsome, charming, everybody’s favorite Sander, zipped up his still wet jeans and said, ‘Tell me the story that you made up today.”
A frog filled my throat. No one else knew. Not the men. Not the other farm boys. Not the prim wife. Only Sander knew that when we were on tractors all day long, out in the field, isolated by machine noise, heat and exhaustion, I did something the others didn’t do. I made up stories. I made our farm boy crew go on a weekend bus trip like Sander’s team did. But we’d run across an old man, crying like a baby ‘cause his mule was lost, just like the story Isac Lee told us about his Daddy. We’d set out chasing a mule in Atlanta traffic, through the mall, and the lesbian book store in Five Points, then along I-20 where we exited to Six Flags and rode the Scream Machine, while the happy old man watched his mule graze under the roll-a-coaster. This was the tool I had to work with. Sander loved my crazy stories, probably because he was usually the star of the story, but also because it way for us to escape this hayseed farm together.
Back then, making up stories filled my lonely, hot hours on a quiet farm. I had lots of characters and imagination to work with. And lots of quiet time for that imagination to kick in. Today, when I’m on a tractor cutting grass, or weeding endless rows of flowers that this old hay field has turned into, memories, stories, and questions grow together in my imagination.
Today, Sander probably has a bald spot, a 3-story suburban house, and a dozen grandchildren. Often when I write a story, I’m telling it to him, watching sweat and blood trickle into black curls and hoping for a tiny hint of a smile that lets me know that he gets it. If he gets it, I might share it with other people.
I miss those afternoons of isolation, of uninterrupted thinking. Of all the things we got up to in those fields, none of them were exciting, I don’t need to repeat any of that stuff. But the unstructured time to ponder someone else’s stories, repeat someone else’s words, pay attention to my senses and commit it all to memory, I do miss the I hope to find that again.