The air conditioner kept the tractor cab to the same comfort level as my living room in spite of the ninety-five degrees of searing, July heat. I hit the hydraulics to raise the cultivator, made the turn, and lined back up on the next eight rows of soybeans. Another tap on the hydraulic lever caused the gleaming sweeps to bite into the rich, black, Illinois soil. It used to be hotter and harder work, but I liked it more when my ears were filled with the sound of the tractor exhaust instead of the local radio station, and when I could smell the freshly turned dirt and herbal scent of the weeds.
There's an old saying about being able to take the boy off the farm, but not the farm out of the boy, and I know it's true. Farmers all have dirt flowing in their veins; we get it from our parents. I've loved farming since I can remember. She loved it too, even though she got a late start. The dirt was there, given to her at birth, and once she'd experienced working the land, she never looked back. To my grandkids, that was ages ago, but it seems like yesterday to me.
When I was eleven, the arrow-straight rows of beans seemed to stretch to the end of the world. In 1962, I was twenty, and knew they ended half a mile North at the fence line between us and Jake, and a quarter mile East to the timberline. Experience had taught me it would take the best part of a week to clean up the weeds the cultivator left hiding in the rows of bushy green soybean plants. In the early sixties, herbicides were expensive, as well as being somewhat less than reliable, so Dad stuck to the time-tested method of walking the field with a six-pound grub hoe. Why he carried the grub hoe instead of a smaller garden hoe, I could never understand. His instructions, from the time I was old enough to walk from one end of the field to the other without resting, were to pull all the weeds. He used the heavy hoe only on particularly thick stands of cockleburs or the occasional, deep-rooted jimson weed.
Dad had married late, and was getting on in years. Most of the farm work was becoming difficult for him. I had decided before I finished high school that farming would be my life, and that summer, I suggested that I should start doing most of the farm work. Dad didn't like the idea very much, but he finally agreed. We became partners. I was the worker, and Dad was my advisor and kept the books. That meant he was also my hardest critic, but it suited me fine. I didn't have a huge income, but I didn't need much. I was mostly my own boss, was learning from an expert, and Dad was getting a well-deserved rest.
Since it was late June, the air still had a spring chill, but once I started walking, my T-shirt would be plenty. It would probably be getting hot by eleven. I tested the edge of the hoe with my thumb, and started toward Jake's fencerow, half a mile away. I followed the method of weeding used by Dad and most other farmers. I walked between two rows of beans, and watched both those rows and the two outside them. When I saw a weed on the outside rows, I'd step over the inside row and pull the invader out by the roots. Before I turned thirteen, Dad only let me walk two rows. It was somewhat a coming of age thing when Dad let me walk four at once, and I had been proud. This field had taken most of the week, but I would finish today.
Dad had always been a good farmer, and I moved quickly because the weeds were few and far between. That's what forty years of weeding by hand could do. I could see our neighbor, Jake Hanson, just turning to another four rows in his field on the other side of the fence.
Jake was like Dad. They both got up at four, even on days when it was raining or there was no urgent farm work to do. It was just a habit from the days when they had to milk cows and harness horses every morning, I guess. I never really slept in, but six seemed early enough for me. I could still get a cup of coffee and be in the field before the dew dried.
The morning went pretty quickly, and before I realized it, the sun was high overhead and I was starving. A quick trip back home for lunch fixed that. Dad laid down for his usual nap, but I wanted to get those beans finished. At four, I straightened up to ease out the kinks. I was done, and tired, but it was the good kind of tired that comes with the satisfaction that you've done a job well.
It was Saturday, but Jenny was off visiting her cousin, so I would be staying home. Jenny was not exactly a girlfriend. We went out on Saturdays, and it was fun being together, but I didn't think we were exactly in love. I had kissed her a couple times, and once in a while did we hold hands, but we'd never gone any further. She seemed to enjoy being with me as a friend, and we had an unspoken agreement that we wouldn't push the relationship any faster. I was in no hurry to settle down with a wife, anyway. Money would have been a problem unless I could find more land to farm, and there were no places available. Jenny said she felt the same way. Her mother had been twenty-five when she married, and Jenny saw no reason to start any earlier.
A month later, the beans had grown to nearly full height and it was time for the final cultivation before they bloomed. I was driving the tractor and cultivator through the field of waist-high bean plants. A heavy rain had almost caused me to wait too long. I saw a few blossoms peeping out of the broad leaves. I also saw the button weeds stretching for the sun above the broad spread of rows that nearly overlapped. My last pass through the field with a hoe would clean them up, and the beans were big enough now that few weeds would get enough sun to sprout.
The next morning was hot and the humidity was crushing. I would be soaking in my own sweat before I went a hundred yards, but that was old hat by now. The steel water cooler in the back of the pickup was filled half with ice and half with well water. It's surprising how a cold drink of well water can drain away the heat. The routine would be weed to the fencerow, turn around, weed back, stop and get a drink, and then start back.
As I neared the fencerow, I saw Jake's pickup just pulling into the field. I didn't often get the chance to rib him about his farming methods, but this was an opportunity I wouldn't pass. The next time I saw him in public, I'd tease just a bit about him getting older and not being able to get out of bed. I could see it all now. Jake would be buying chicken scratch and I'd say in a voice loud enough to be heard in the next county, "Hey, Jake. I saw you pull into your beans last week...about eight, I think. I'd been through sixteen rows by then. You forget to set your clock or something?"
All the other farmers would laugh, and Jake would sputter something about having some chores to do at home. Then the banter would start.
"Well, Jake, I thought you quit hoein' beans years ago, at least that's what your missus tells Doris."
"Yeah, she told my wife somethin's the matter with your hoe, and it don't work no more."
Jake was used to this, and would just smile before returning in like kind.
"Ain't nuthin' wrong with my hoe, Don. It's bigger than that little thing you're carryin' ever was, if I can believe what your Doris tells Irene. If it was longer, you could get to them really deep roots. Course, if you'd like some help, it'd only be neighborly to oblige. Doris might not be the same afterwards, though. Once you start getting' to them deep roots, it's hard to go back.
"Same offer goes to you Mike. Your Lizzie's a cute little thing. Told Irene you hoe real fast, too fast usually. 'Bout time somebody showed her that a good weedin' takes more'n a couple minutes."
I'd never get the best of old Jake, but it would be fun trying.
Jake was moving through his field. He seemed to be working a little slower than usual, and he looked so slumped over that he must have been about three inches shorter. I felt for him. He and Irene had no children, and now that they were nearing seventy, they had no one to help them. Jake was too stubborn to give up the farm. He'd probably die riding his tractor or putting up hay or something. I slowed up so we would both get to the fencerow at the same time. It seemed right to offer to help him once my beans were finished. I wasn't prepared for the woman's voice that yelled "Hi", when we both walked out into the end rows.
She was older than I was, but by how much, I couldn't guess. Jake's old pith helmet almost hid her face. I could barely tell she was a woman. Jake's bib overalls were baggy on her small frame and way too long. She'd rolled the cuffs up so they didn't drag in the dirt. The overalls and the man's work shirt hid all traces of any figure she might have had.
"You could at least say hi back"
"Oh, I'm sorry. It's just that I was expecting to see Jake, and you kinda caught me off guard. Hi."
"I'm Karen, Karen Mason, Jake's niece." She held her hand out over the fence.
"Jeff Dillard. Pleased to meet you." Her hand was small and soft, but the grip was firm. It was also electric. I felt the tingle shoot up my arm and land in the hairs on the back of my neck. "I didn't know Jake had any relation."
"Well, he doesn't really talk much with my father, so I suppose he doesn't tell anybody else he has a brother. Uncle Jake's a little funny that way, but he and I always got along pretty well."
"Is Jake OK? I don't figure he'd let anybody take care of his crops unless he was really sick or something."
"He's fine, but he couldn't get his breath yesterday and the doctor told him to stay out of the heat as much as possible. I came down to visit for a few weeks, so when he said he had to hoe his beans, I told him I'd do it. Between Aunt Irene and me we convinced him. He didn't like it, but we convinced him."
She pulled off the hat to wipe the sweat from her forehead, and waves of gleaming brown hair spilled out over her shoulders and around her face.
"Whew, I think I should have stayed in the shade, too. It's hot out here." She wrinkled her pert nose, and laughed. "I think I'm starting to smell. My deodorant must only be good for the city."
"Yeah, I'll bet. That heavy shirt doesn't let much air through, and it'll make you hot. That's why I just wear a T-shirt. When I get really hot, I take the shirt off and that helps."
"Well...I really can't take my shirt off, now can I?"
