My uncle was a farmer and so was his brother who, because of the vagaries of second marriage, was not my uncle. My uncle’s farm was just across the valley from ours, past another farmer’s north-by-northwest cornfield, and past the shiftless creek that syruped alongside until a hard rain, when it briefly overflowed its banks and flooded the corn.
My uncle’s little brother had about 50 head of milk cows. He owned the rest of the cows, too, but cow counters seem mostly interested in the heads. Those 50 sad-eyed cows were pretty lackadaisical, except in two areas. They wanted to be fed, and they wanted to be relieved of their milk twice a day.
Farmers can’t take time off, then, unless they find pinch-milkers. Otherwise the cows would explode all over the inside of the barn, making a big mess, and farmers’ wives hate messes.
My dad, a telephone repairman fighting the good fight to keep five kids in Oreos and milk, was always looking for a few extra bucks. So he milked my Uncle Duke’s herd when my uncle was unavailable. By osmosis, then, he found himself doing the same for my uncle’s little brother a couple of times a year.
I generally rode along for the evening’s work. It was a treat to have my dad to myself for awhile, and to feel like we were equals there in front of the big yellow telephone repairman’s truck. And the farm was a fun place, full of beams and fields and climbing trees. A slight added incentive was Dawn, the farmer’s daughter. She was my age, and we played kid games while my dad worked very hard.
On this trip, late in the hot July right after I turned 12, I stepped a P.F. Flyer off the truck’s running board and into the dust, and there was Dawn to greet me.
I noticed two things different about her right away, and they were both under her shirt.
“Hi, Benny,” she said.
“Um, hi,” I said to the shirt.
My dad noticed me noticing and half-grinned.
“Milk, Ben?”
“Huh?” I answered, startled.
“You gonna help me milk?”
When I didn’t answer, he headed towards the barn.
“You kids behave.”
I took that to mean he didn’t want us to set any fields on fire or throw rocks at the mailbox.
Dawn and I walked to the hayloft area of the barn, while my dad headed towards the bottom floor where the milking stalls were. She was walking in front, and I sort of noticed that she had hips now, and they moved in her blue jean cut-offs rolled just above the knees with a jerky, bumping motion as she heel-steeped in bare feet.
Like always before, we pretended to be circus high wire performers on the barn beams. I decided I’d be a pirate after that, and used a fake sword to make her walk the barn-beam plank, then jumped laughing alongside her into the haypile ocean below.
We fell side-by-side and she rolled towards me, landing with her side pressed to my side. I smelled hairspray, and through the open armhole of her sleeveless, plaid shirt I could see the white cotton of a training bra.
I looked away lest my eyes spontaneously combust, and saw her watching me look.
Maybe she stayed pressed to my side a few seconds longer than she needed to. Maybe I just wished it and made it so.
Later we went into the farm kitchen to drink red Kool-Aid.
“Hey,” she said. “Have you heard that song, “Beans in Your Ears?”
“Sure.” I started to sing it.
“That’s a neat song.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, although I didn’t agree.
“I got that record.”
Pause. Sip.
“Wanna hear it?”
“OK,” I lied.
“OK, but the record player’s in my bedroom. So you can’t tell my folks you were in my bedroom, OK?”
“’K.”
I figured they didn’t want her to have friends in her room because they’d get it messy or break something valuable. Fine with me if we didn’t tell. I didn’t tell my folks half what I did.
I sat on the floor next to her twin bed with pink blankets, and looked through her 45s. It was mostly girl music. Leslie Gore. The Supremes. No Beatles. Dumb girl.
We were facing each other cross-legged on her floor, listening to how grown-ups have beans in their ears, when a car door slammed outside the open window.
“Oh no! That’s my mom!”
We hurried from the room and she quickly shut the door. We were walking out the screen door when we ran into her mother.
What were you kids doing?” her mom asked, and her tone seemed, I don’t know, different.
“Nothing,” Dawn answered. She was telling the truth, but it sounded like a lie.
About then my dad walked up.
“Everything OK here, Benny?”
Darned if he didn’t have the same weird edge in his voice.
And I thought, is everybody going nuts around here, or what?
