Catherine Gilbert Murdock [Da Dairy Queen (epub)

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."Can I drive the tractor?" Brian asked, trying to get out of the heavy lifting.Curtis and I exchanged a look.Driving always goes to the weakest person.I started driving the tractor when I was six years old, when Bill who was nine could wrestle the bales into place.I shrugged."Sure."Brian climbed in."What's that pedal?""That's the clutch," I said."You mean this is a stick shift?" he asked."Yeah," I said, straight-faced."No such thing as an automatic tractor."Curtis snorted loudly.Brian flushed."Doesn't your dad"—I asked this as slow as I could, because it was, you know, worth lingering over—"doesn't your dad own a truck dealership?""We don't sell tractors," Brian said, like that explained everything.He was looking daggers at Curtis, who in his quiet way was rubbing it in.Curtis has always taken the Red Bend–Hawley thing really hard."Let's just have Curtis drive," I offered.We needed Brian, after all.Curtis and I could hay by ourselves if we had to—we had already done it twice this summer, but it had been pretty awful.So Curtis putt-putted back and forth across the field, trying to get as close to each bale as possible and slowing down when we were behind, while Brian and I humped bales into the wagon.A hay bale weighs about fifty pounds and it's about the size of a filing cabinet, with two big loops of baling twine—rope, kind of—holding the hay together.That's how you pick up the bale, with the twine, and you'd better wear gloves because that twine will cut your hands up in about five seconds.Which it did to Brian, I saw, because he wouldn't wear them even though I said "There's gloves in the tractor" just as clear as daylight.It's hard enough to pick up a hay bale, but you sure can't toss one if your hands are all raw.So Brian would just carry a bale over and lay it in the wagon with this huge sigh, and then look at his hands, which were getting all pink, and then look down the field at all the hay bales we had left to get, and then sigh again like this was all too much.Eventually at least he put the gloves on.He was smart enough to do that.The thing with haying—or most jobs, really, that I know of—is that you can't think about how much you have left to do because that's just one thought, one sad thought, that'll make you bummed out all day long.Instead you've got to think about how much you've already done.I never look down the field, I just keep my eye on the wagon.First layer of bales in: hooray! Second layer: hooray! Third: yippee! And then the top layers when you have to really swing the bale to build up enough momentum to get it up there, that's even better, because it means the wagon's almost full and you can quit loading and drive back to the barn to unload.Although it's best not to think about that part either.It was hard, though.I couldn't really get into a zone and just work away until it was done, because of Brian.Because every time he'd load a bale he'd wipe his face off and look at all the bales we had left and groan a little bit.Even though he was twice as slow as me.Really.I counted.I could easily get two bales loaded for every one of his.Plus he kept looking up at the sky too, like he couldn't believe that the sun was still up there burning so hot.But guess what: it was.Then he'd shake out his T-shirt, trying to lose the little bits of grass seed stuck all over his skin, but that's impossible to do once you're sweating.That's the thing about haying.It's hot and slow and backbreaking, but worst of all it's itchy.So even though we were faster, kind of, than just me doing it with Curtis driving, it seemed a lot longer.And Brian couldn't figure out that hip thrust you need to get the bales up high, so he'd just hand them to me instead, and I'd toss them up and then climb up the side of the wagon to put them in place while he wiped his face off and shook out his T-shirt.Again."I really need some water," he mumbled."There's some back at the barn," I said.He sighed.We finally filled the wagon, and Curtis drove as carefully as he ever has back to the barn with Brian and me hanging on to the sides of the wagon, trying not think about how itchy we were.I was, anyway.I can't speak for Brian.Then I got to back the wagon up into the barn hayloft so we all could have so much fun unloading.It's not as much work as loading, thank God, because you don't have to walk as much.And you're out of the sun, although it's not like the hayloft is air-conditioned or anything.Or dust-free.Plus you have to be careful when you stack the hay bales because you're stacking them so high, and if you leave gaps the whole stack could collapse when you're climbing on it and break your leg.But at least Curtis was helping us unload, so we got it done faster [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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