Farm

I woke up before my alarm. A distant square of eerie half-twilight from the window held the familiar outline of the locust tree. In the dark, I fumbled to dress without waking my parents. I slipped outside.

The sun was still below the horizon but the clouds above the mountains were tainted the color of pomegranates. Around me the shadows seemed empty. I tried not to look into the brush as I walked down the driveway. I had stopped before, looking to see the back of the shadows; staring hard, only to have them retreat from my eyes indefinitely. Invisible birds called from within. Their sound followed me down the driveway and onto the road.

As I walked I let my eyes close and my feet feel the groove in the gravel. My mind, still asleep, dreamt of breathing. The lining of my father's old coat escaped inside the pockets and caught my fingers, which were numb from the cold. I would have worn gloves but the sun would be unbearable later in the day. The clouds would rise over the mountains and disappear and the birds would slowly become silent as the heat settled in. But for now it was just cold. I tried to warm my neck by breathing down the collar. It smelled like diesel and sweat.

A half a mile down the road, when I reached the edge of the lentil field, I started to run. I leapt over yesterday's windrows and headed towards the swather, sitting silent and small where I'd left it at the top of the hill. Panting but no longer cold, I climbed up to the seat. I had to pull the choke to make it start. The sound drowned out the birds, making a bubble of dust and noise.

The vibration and the heat of the engine woke my senses. As I started around the unfinished piece of the field I looked to see how much there was left to do. Maybe forty acres but I was still a bad judge. After this there was still the pine tree field and "the-place-in-back-of-Johnny's," a field behind the neighbor's. Dad had planted more lentils this year. I had rolled my eyes when he told me: 300 acres. He had laughed, "That should be nothin' for the prettiest swather driver around, Munchkin." I was only prettiest because I was the only girl.

The swather cuts crops to dry before they are harvested and lays them in long rows that snake around hills in endless spirals. In eastern Washington state we swath lentils in late July and early August. My father did the swathing when my grandfather owned the farm. My brother took over when he was twelve and then it was my turn.

Swathing is to the farm kid what mowing the lawn is to a suburban kid; just multiplied by a few horsepower. But it's that kind of job. There is the same certain thrill of learning to use the machine for the first time; a new vibration of power connected to your fingertips and devouring whatever comes before you. But after a while it loses its edge. If you don't grow to hate it your mind is free to wander. That's when the suburban kid clips the flowerbed and when the farm kid veers off and makes a crooked swath.

It took me a whole summer to get used to the feeling of running a machine that big. I was thirteen. I felt more important than ever. And a little scared. It was so loud and powerful that I didn't dare let up on my concentration for fear I would break the sickle or slide off the hill. My father had patiently told me what not to do. Don't push it. Don't run out of fuel. Don't forget to look behind you once in awhile. Then he left me alone with the swather, walking toward his pick-up in a faded chambray shirt the color of the sky.

To say that I developed a bond with that machine is not quite accurate. The swather and I soon became one when we're together. The calluses of my right hand conformed perfectly to the knobby handle of the hydrostatic drive. My left spun the suicide knob like a roulette wheel at each turn. I breathed its choking engine heat as if we were engaged in some sort of resuscitation act. It was an ornery machine, but once you knew the right touch, it would ease over the roughest ground or turn on a dime. At that point, I was free to watch the butterflies rise like petals falling up from the thistles under my sickle.

Twelve hours of an August day seems like a long time when you have other things to do. But when you are all alone like that there is no such thing as time. The day divided itself into three sections: when the sun was still rising, when the sun was overhead and everything was heat, and when the color of the field started to look like a faded newspaper and I noticed that it was getting late. My mood went in stages too; early, it was still cool and once my mind woke up enough to think I could concentrate on the beauty of the sunrise. Then there was that moment when I would breathe the first breath of dusty heat. From then on my mind began to stretch to the size of the field and then the horizon.

I could think of anything in those hours. And after I'd thought of everything, I started talking. If I wasn't sure that I was closer to that machine than anyone else, I'd be afraid it would betray my deepest confessions. I composed speeches. I had conversations with people I'd never spoken to before. I hosted self-help radio programs. I screamed until the bandanna, tied around my nose to keep out the dust, got damp with condensation. There would usually be a point, mid-scream, when I became suddenly conscious of myself and the machine. The rest of the words would flow silently out with my next breath and, scanning the horizon, I would listen to the sickle. I would feel like a fool; no one around to hear me anyway.

The harvest after graduation, my father hired my friend Travis to help out. He was eighteen, just a few months younger than I was. He ground the gears on every machine and smoked a lot of pot when my dad wasn't paying attention. That summer the swathed lentils had blown themselves into big bundles of tangled plants, as high as my head and as long as a tennis court. Travis and I were sent out with pitchforks to pick them apart so they would dry. It was a hundred degrees. Rivulets of sweat inside my shirt felt like someone's fingertips on my skin.

After a few hours the work seemed never-ending and no amount of water poured into our caps could beat the heat. Travis jabbed me playfully with his pitchfork and drew blood in my thigh. I jabbed him right back and we fought until our scrambling left us lying in the dust, little pricks of blood on our legs. Had we not been so miserable and exhausted we would have been laughing. But we just stared at each other, exchanging two grimaces that were not quite smiles.

He screamed first. An animal scream; eyes clenched and hands gripping at the clods of dirt at his sides. His face reddened and shook. Gut-wrenching. But the oppressive air swallowed it whole. The sky and heat embraced all the noise he could muster; no primordial reverberations were heard. Had we been inside I would have covered my ears. But out here it could have been a whisper.

When he was finished he opened his eyes and spat into the dirt. He smiled, "You try it, Kid."

I returned his smile and then lay back on the dirt. The sun was so bright that all I saw was blinding white-red under my eyelids. I took a deep breath and screamed as hard as I could. I was aiming for the kind of scream a woman in a horror film would do: a controlled, elegant decrescendo. But once I let it go, I couldn't stop. Once it left my mouth it was it's own sound. When I sat back up, and the blood in my ears stopped throbbing, all there was left to hear was the sound of lentil pods popping in the heat. Travis was already standing. He pulled me off the dirt and we got back to work.

Travis and I had known each other forever. When we were younger he was the charming, chubby kid with glasses in Boy Scouts with my brother. We took the same classes in high school and played hacky sack in the hallways. In my little town, your friends were for life because if you couldn't keep your friends, there would be no one to replace them. For this same reason, romantic relationships were nearly nonexistent. By senior year, most people felt incestuous about dating the people they'd known for so long. So in an odd way, Travis and I were like family.

It was sometime during those years that we both got fed up; with football games, FFA, streets with no stop lights, and the searing breath of gossip from which everyone else seemed to draw so much satisfaction. We reacted in slightly different ways: Travis grew his hair long, listened to Nirvana, and bought a guitar. I studied hard and found a boyfriend from out of town with a pierced tongue and a tattoo.

Travis grew up in town. That summer was the first time he'd worked on our farm, or any farm for that matter. My dad needed him to drive one of our grain trucks during harvest because by that time my brother had gotten a job in Minnesota and couldn't make it home to help out. I'd recommended Travis for the job because I knew he needed the money. But I was also worried, because I knew how he drove. There had actually been times during our friendship when I'd climbed shakily out of his passenger's seat, vowing never to sit there again. His little white 76 Ford Ranchero kissed curbs and laid rubber all over town. He loved to go fast, push it to the limit. I think he was fearless because he was always having the time of his life. He couldn't have cared less if it ended right then.

But on the farm, there is no room for carelessness. The few times my father had yelled at me were times when I'd overlooked a leaking gasket or a squeaking belt, let up on the clutch too fast or let my mind go too slow. The summer before it had been a particularly wet year and he'd told me to come in from the field if it started to shower while I was out swathing. But one morning, before the sun was fully up, I kept on going when I heard thunder in the distance. I only had a few more acres to go until I was finished. I wanted to go back to bed.

As I worked my way clockwise around the field, I watched clouds ooze across the sky from the west. A few raindrops fell as I crested the hill. I don't know why I didn't notice the thunder getting closer. Maybe I didn't hear it over the engine.

For a moment, all I could see was crystal blue. All I felt was the knob of the metal gear shift in my right hand and the little button on the top of my baseball cap pressing into my head. The churn of the engine seemed to stop, retreating into a fuzzy silence. My chest felt stuffed with cotton for just that one moment. But in the next it was gone. I was still crawling along the edge of the uncut lentils, rain hitting the back of my neck. All I needed was a deep breath to realize how stupid I was. Lightning. I wasn't smoking, I wasn't charred, but I was freaked out. As fast as I could I shut off the machine and ran down the hill to the truck.

Dad won't let me forget how I burst through the door that morning, soaking and wide-eyed. "What were you thinking?! You were on the top of the hill for heaven's sake!" Weeks later, when I joked that I was "electric" and I could survive anything if I could survive lightning, he turned on his heel and walked away without a word. I was relieved late in September when I overheard him talking to his farmer friend, Johnny. He was saying with a chuckle that I had been "tapped on the head by the hand of God."

By the end of the first day that Travis worked for us, my father had already sensed that precaution was not part of Travis' lifestyle. He watched from the door of the machine shed as I taught Travis to drive one of our trucks, the little 1700, around the perimeter of the alfalfa field - Nice and easy. You're in no hurry. Let up a little. By the time we returned to the shed with a cloud of boiling dust and protesting brakes, my father had started pacing. Travis was grinning as he jumped to the ground. "That thing's got power!"

My dad nodded. "I guess I'd better get you on the insurance," was all he said.

From then on I was in charge of taming him. I rode along in the truck and repeated everything my father had ever taught me: Let up on the clutch, the transmission will hold you back. Listen to the engine before you shift. You're never in a hurry. Just take it easy. After a while Travis settled down a little. He still barreled along on the back roads but for the most part he got used to our harvest rhythm, slow and steady. My father was visibly relieved.

Packing lunches with my mom one morning, she told me I should be proud of myself.

"How come?"

"Your dad was saying he's never seen anybody handle that equipment as smooth as you do, even your Grandpa. You're doing a lot better than any number of guys he's had out there." Then she laughed, "Be careful, he's going to want to keep you on the farm!"

I rolled my eyes but I was already smiling. That was one of the best compliments I'd ever gotten.

A dusty haze turns purple on the horizon as the sun sets during harvest. One by one, farmers and hired hands make their way in from the fields. We shut down when my father gets on the CB; "Let's call it a day." Climbing out of the truck or the combine, the cooling air smells sweet, like baking bread. Everyone's limbs are tired and dusty. They bring in lunch boxes and water jugs to be filled for the next day.

One night after work, Travis and I sat on the hood of his car, watching lights in houses on hills that were miles away. We had been harvesting for weeks. I would leave for college in a few days. He lit a clove cigarette and offered me one. More for the taste of sugar on my lips than for habit, I took a drag and handed it back. I ran my finger down a ridge on the side of the windshield. My hands were so dry that I couldn't feel the smoothness.

We said nothing for a long time and I thought about our silence as it stretched on. Later, after having been at school in the city, I would realized how much more I should have appreciated that comfortable silence, as easy as thinking and breathing. I liked that about Travis.

"So you're leaving in a few days." He shook the ash off his cigarette and looked over at me. He wouldn't be going away that fall. He'd been offered a scholarship to the University of Idaho, just twenty miles from home.

"Yeah. I should start packing tonight," I said.

"Ah, just throw in a toothbrush."

"Yeah, maybe you're right...Hey, let me know if my dad doesn't get you a paycheck right away."

"Uh-huh." We paused and listened to the crickets as we spoke. He lay back on the hood. "I'm going to miss you, Kid."

"I'm going to miss you too."

"This farming thing is kind of fun, you know? I've really enjoyed hanging out with you."

I smiled. "You like it, huh?"

"Yeah. It's not so bad."

I didn't know if he meant the time with me, or the farming. We were silent again. The harvest moon was rising, big and orange and heavy.

"Yeah, it's not so bad."