After Sherry left my cabin, I turned out the light and lay on my bed thinking about what had happened in the last two days. When I became an apprentice to learn farming, I did not expect I would meet anyone like Sherry and was amazed how suddenly my life had changed. I wasn't sure what Sherry meant that her mom was on her side. Mary had told me that John fired other apprenticeships for being around Sherry. Despite what Sherry said, I wasn't going to take any chances and hoped I could keep our relationship a secret from John. I didn't want to get fired.
The next morning was Saturday and a half day of work. At breakfast, Mary served pancakes made from wheat grown on the farm, sausage she had made from last year's pigs. We had maple syrup from their trees and home made butter. The only thing not from the farm was the fair trade coffee they bought at the co-op. John told me he had to go in town this morning for a meeting at the bank, but he should be home for lunch. He wanted me to move the portable chicken yard we had for their free range chickens. Though the chickens were fenced in, they had a large area of grass to feed on. John gets them as chicks and within twelve weeks they're ready to take to the Farmer's Market.
While John and I were talking, Sherry came down, gave her mother a kiss on the cheek then went to John and gave him a kiss on the cheek then took her seat at the table. She glanced at me and said good morning. I noticed she was wearing the tight jeans she had on the other night. Her round ass looked like they would split the jeans if they were any tighter. She had on what looked like a man's white under shirt with two straps over her shoulder. She wasn't wearing a bra and I could see her nipples through the thin white material.
"So guys," she said, smiling. "What's on the agenda for today? I'm ready to begin working."
"Good," John said. "I'm going into town and I need you to take the tractor up to the North Meadow and finish disking the turned over soil in back of the corn. I want to get the barley planted there on Monday. You'll have to go over it two or three times to break the clods down."
I was surprised to hear that Sherry knew how to use the tractor and plow. I didn't know how to do that.
"So you can use the tractor?" I asked.
"Yep," she said, pouring maple syrup on her pancakes. "Dad taught me two years ago and I'm almost as good as he is. Right, Dad," she said.
"Sure is," John said, proudly.
Then Sherry said something that really surprised me. "After you finish with the chicken yard, come on up to the North Meadow and I'll teach you how to use the tractor."
I gulped and looked over at John. I couldn't believe she was being so defiant. He pushed his plate away but didn't say anything at first. He cleared his throat then said, "That's not a good idea."
"Yes it is," she responded. She took a sip of her coffee and put her cup down. "Daddy, it would be good for Pete to learn how to use the tractor. It would be a big help if he learned and you know it."
"He's got too much to do with the chickens," John said. "And he has to plant a few more rows of carrots."
"Don't be so stubborn," Sherry said. "It won't take that long. I can show him how to drive the tractor and plow in an hour and then he can come back down and plant the carrots." She looked at me and then back at her father. "Daddy, the more of us who know how to use the tractor, the better it is. I'm just being practical. You know I'm right."
I was impressed with how serious and business like she was. "Well, okay, but only an hour," John said, then got up from his seat. He picked up his empty plate and took it into the kitchen. Mary walked John to the door and kissed him on the cheek. "Good luck at the bank," she said.
When John left, Sherry asked, "Mom, why is Dad going to the bank on Saturday? Aren't they closed?"
"He's having a special meeting with the manager. He's trying to get a loan to buy some equipment we need," she said.
"That must be hard," Sherry said. "I know how much he hates banks and borrowing money."
"He's pretty certain we will be able to pay it off by next summer," Mary said.
Sherry turned to me and said, "My dad always says you lose your freedom when you have a debt. We're lucky I got a full scholarship to Brown, otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to go."
"I had to get loans to go to COA and now I owe $30,000 and I have lots of friends who are even more in debt and they can't get jobs that pay anything. Now they can't pay their loans back. I have friends who majored in philosophy and zoology and ecology and anthropology and were top students and now they're working as waiters and carpenters or doing landscaping. One of my best friends is driving a cab in Boston and he has a degree in American Studies."
"That's why I'm glad we have this farm," Sherry said. "I love studying philosophy and I'm learning so much, but none of what I'm learning will get me a job. There's not much of a market for philosophers," Sherry laughed. "You're smart to want to have a homestead and be as self-sufficient as possible, but you have that $30,000 hanging over your head."
"We'll see what happens," I said. "Right now, we better get to work."
When Sherry got up to take her plate to the kitchen, I couldn't keep my eyes off of her body. She looked so damn sexy in those jeans and thin white undershirt. Her hair was still braided in two pig-tails. She went to the coat rack and got a baseball cap which she put on with the beak at the back.
We stood together for a moment on the porch. "I loved being with you last night," she said. "That was a lot more than fucking," she added, softly, making sure her mother couldn't hear. "I loved it too," I said. "You amaze me, Sherry. It's like there are many Sherrys in one body."
"There are," Sherry said, looking at me and smiled. "Thanks, now let's get some work done." Just then Sherry jumped off the porch. She ran over to the tractor, climbed up and got it going. She looked so comfortable up on the tractor seat and I suddenly got an image of her as a tom-boy when she was younger. She had a toughness as well as a softness about her. As she turned into the road to go up to the North Meadow, "I shouted, "Drive carefully!" She turned around and gave me the finger.
It took me less than an hour to move the chicken yard so that they would have fresh grass. I changed their water, filled up the feed containers and then walked up the steep hill to the North Meadow. I could see the tire tracks in the road as I walked. As I approached the top of the hill, I stopped for a minute to look out across the farm. I could see the pasture in back of the barn. The cow was at one end and the sheep huddled together in the other end. The large pasture was divided into three fenced in areas so that they could be rotated once the grass got too low in one.
I saw Sherry on the tractor at the far end of the meadow. I could see where John has planted the corn and the shiny pie plates and poles with hats and shirts on them that were suppose to scare away the crows. While I walked towards Sherry, I could see how the tractor was rocking from side to side as it rode over the bumpy clods of the first plowing. Sherry was breaking them down with the disk.
She was concentrating on what she was doing and didn't see me until I got closer. I watched as she drove the tractor with her eyes staring straight ahead and then turning back to see the clods breaking up. When she got to the edge of the field, she waved me over.
When I got to the tractor, she was sitting on the seat, looking down at me. She had work gloves on and the baseball cap had the beak turned to the front to keep the sun out of her eyes. There were smudges of dirt on her face.
"Okay, buddy, ready to learn?"
"Sure," I said. "You sure look like you know what you're doing."
"It won't take long too learn and then it's just practice," she said. "But we've got to get going so that this whole field is ready to plant on Monday."
She pointed to the field of clods that stretched about 50 yards. "It's rough going over the clods 'cause they're still hard from the winter, but the disk will break them up with a few swipes over them and we already spread compost last fall."
Sherry showed me how the gears worked and how to raise and lower the disk. She climbed down and said, "Get going." She looked up at me as I took my place on the tractor. She had her hands on her hips and l could see down her undershirt, one thin strap slipping from her shoulder.
