Chapter One
1963 (part two)
The next morning we all went out to the vegetable garden early and picked tomatoes, pole beans and field peas. Before we finished, Nancy and I were allowed to eat one tomato each straight from the bush. I chose the biggest, reddest one I could find, plucked it from the vine and buried my face in it.
Aunt Mattie had a canning station set up in the kitchen with rows of Mason jars lined up and two pressure cookers going on the stovetop. The women prepared for a marathon canning session that would keep them hard at work for days. Since the vegetables are sealed up in glass jars I'm not sure why they call it "canning," but they do. Among other treats, the women intended to put away fresh tomatoes, two kinds of beans, three kinds of peas and a combination vegetable soup mix.
Tommy didn't seem to mind all of the canning work even though she was on vacation. Really, I think she liked it because she didn't can much herself anymore.
After the canning assembly line was set in motion, the pea shellers and bean snappers at their task, Nancy and I decided to explore the old barn out by the cornfield. The barn was weathered but sturdy looking, dark gray on two sides and a lighter gray on the opposite two. It had a hard-packed dirt floor and was mostly empty except for an old tractor. It smelled earthy and mysterious inside the barn.
I pretended to be a farmer driving the tractor through the field, plowing the earth and forming the rows like they do in the springtime for planting. I gripped the big wheel with both hands and pretended to shift gears.
"Let me up, Josh," Nancy said. "I want to play, too."
I looked down at her pixie hair and freckles and her little cotton shirt tied at the waist. She looked cute but I made a face at her anyway and went back to my serious tractor driving.
"Josh!" she yelled, stamping her foot.
I shifted gears and pretended to make a sharp turn. Nancy clambered up behind me, dirty and frowning on the big rear tire. I kept driving. She caught my shirt, grabbed the frayed hem of my cutoff shorts and pulled up to a sitting position in my lap.
"Go, Josh," she said. She couldn't reach the gear levers, so I let her take the wheel. I made humming and rumbling engine noises and pretended to grease the motor with an imaginary can of oil. Nancy bounced up and down in my lap and jerked the steering wheel back and forth. I kept making noises and Nancy kept bouncing and wiggling in my lap. She slid between my legs trying to reach the pedals below. She wore a pair of ragged cutoff shorts like me, and I felt her thigh rub mine as she slid. She pumped the brake pedal a couple of times, then used my knees to pull herself back up. I could feel her stringy hem rolling up and down against my leg and I could feel the round shape of her molded between my legs. I started to feel another sensation between my legs, the one you feel when you touch yourself in just the right spot, but this feeling was growing and the way it was growing was familiar yet different than any way I had felt before.
I put my hands on Nancy's hips. "Hey," I said hoarsely, "what, uh, what do you say let's go see what's up in the hayloft."
"Sure,"
she said, grabbing the rim of the wheel and twisting hard against me.
Then she swiveled around and looked at me. "Let's see."
I tested the ladder to make sure it was safe.
"You first. I'll follow you in case you slip."
"No, Josh. Carry me up piggyback."
I looked at her long legs, bony little knees and the dirty tire marks on her arms.
"Okay, hop on."
Nancy curled her arms around my shoulders and straddled my waist with her legs. I climbed carefully. We reached the loft and I turned to set her down on a lone bale of hay.
"Carry me some more, Josh. I like it." She squeezed gently with her legs and hugged me. "It's like a horsey." I looked over at a crate filled with old bridles, blankets and a beat-up saddle. I felt hot and strange and I noticed Nancy's left leg pressing the hardness in my shorts.
Just then I heard Tommy calling from the back porch.
"Josh! Nancy! Time for lunch!"
We scrambled down the ladder, Nancy first. I stopped for a second at the top and shook my head, like a wet dog shakes. Then I went down after her and by the time I sat down at the kitchen table the feeling had gone away.
Granny had cleared one side of the table so that three of us could eat. It would take a few days to complete the canning operation and until then we would eat in shifts. Aunt Savannah sat down with Nancy and me.
"Where you been?" she asked, looking at Nancy's dirty arms.
Nancy looked up from her plate and grinned. "Playin'," she said.
That afternoon Nancy stayed in the house and I went over to one of Aunt Mattie's neighbors. They were supposed to have a twelve-year-old boy like me, but he was away visiting his granddaddy's farm near Mentone. The boy's mother let me play with his dog, though, a fluffy collie who looked just like Lassie. I know she must have been hot in that thick coat of hers, but we played for an hour or so before we both collapsed on the side of a hill in the shade of an overgrown hemlock hedge. Through the trees I could see Nancy and Granny setting out Mason jars in the screen room outside of Aunt Mattie's kitchen.
Doctor
Pritchard came to call the following morning and the grownups sat in the
front parlor talking with him. After he left, we had lunch in shifts of
three and the canning activity was halted while the adults gathered again,
everyone except Aunt Savannah who was
taking a nap. The three women talked quietly in the living room for a
long time.
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I tried to read a Hardy Boys book on the back porch but Nancy kept making noises, stomping on the porch and looking to get my attention. She did about ten loud somersaults landing at the foot of my chair. Then she stopped and tugged at the sleeve of my tee shirt.
"Josh, let's go play in the corn."
"It's too hot."
Just then my mother came out looking unhappy and handed me a quarter.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Why don't you two go down to the general store and get some ice cream. Now, I want both of you to wear shoes or you'll burn your feet on the hot pavement."
"Okay!" said Nancy, slamming the screen door on her way to get her sandals.
The interior of the general store smelled of tobacco, pickles, kerosene, leather, candy and soap. I loved the way everything came in oversized bins, boxes and bales and the way it was organized with nails, screws and tools on one side, canned goods, barrels, food sacks and fabrics on the other, with a sort of combination drug store and candy shop in the middle.
Nancy and I got double-dip cones for a dime apiece and we would have stayed so I could look around but you can't eat ice cream in a general store.
The walk home was long and hot but we concentrated on our cones so it didn't matter too much. Nancy chattered about some boy she knew in the fourth grade. I licked the butter pecan and looked at the faded red gas pumps at the filling station. She was saying the boy looked like me, with black hair and green eyes and a cute nose and long eyelashes.
"Just like you, Josh, except smaller."
"What?"
"Ellis, the boy I was telling you about."
I pretended not to pay attention to what she said, but I was listening with one ear because no one had ever complimented me before on how I looked. Except my mother, I guess. I suppose my looks were okay. Miss Henson, my seventh grade phys ed teacher, said I had a nice smile once. And Tommy said I had her eyes which look pretty when she's happy. But, really, I wanted to be taller and slimmer.
"Anyway, I think you're cuter than Ellis," Nancy said.
We turned left onto a side street and came to the main highway across from an open field with a single billboard in front of it. The sign displayed a John Deere tractor in peeling green and yellow.
"Will you hold my hand across the road?"
"There isn't any traffic," I said. "Besides, your hand's all sticky."
But I let her clutch my hand with her chocolate-smeared fingers and we crossed together. A logging truck appeared in the distance and Nancy pretended to be frightened.
"Come
on, Josh! Let's run!"
GO FORWARD TO 1963 (part three)
