He looked over at Lorna. Her lovely face was turned away from him because she was looking out of the passenger’s window. Her family called her Lorie. It sounded like the British word for a truck. He doubted that her parents were aware of that. Nicknames used by family members and lovers were supposed to be affectionate. In many ways, those names were like terms of endearment. Calling this slim, attractive girl a truck would not be endearing.
“Do you suppose terms of endearment, such as sugar and honey, are clichés?” he asked.
“They probably are, but people who try to get too creative about terms of endearment usually come up with things that are pretty ghastly.”
She reached over and turned on the radio. She searched through the frequencies, but all she found was static. She turned the radio off.
“Just as well,” she said. “I don’t care for country-western music anyhow.”
Ralph smiled. “Rock and Roll’s boisterous, like the city. Country music reflects the hard life and isolation of the farm. I don’t like the work or the isolation, but the music’s okay.”
“And here I thought you enrolled at UCLA to get away form the yeehaws and twangy music?”
“No, but I like your comment about people creating ghastly terms of endearment. It sounds like a pretty good defense of clichés.”
“Do people actually use clichés because they think they’re true?”
“That’s an interesting question. Why don’t we have some fun with it?”
“A new game!”
“We’ll call it, ‘Is It Really Darkest Before The Dawn?’”
The game had barely started when all the air was let out of it. Which is to say that the right, front tire of the car blew out. At sixty miles per hour this was a problem. The car fishtailed violently. Ralph fought the steering wheel until he was able to regain control. He brought the car to a stop on the right shoulder of the road and looked over at Lorie.
“Are you all right?”
“It almost made me add some weight to my panties, but I’ll be okay now that I feel safe enough to unpucker a bit.”
Ralph laughed. Leave it to Lorie. She was always prim and proper around strangers, but she could come up with some real doozies when she was with close friends. He got out of the car and walked around to the right side to look at the tire. He wondered why he automatically did that. He already knew what a blown out tire looks like. He shrugged, walked to the back of the car, and opened the trunk.
“Damn it!”
“What’s wrong?”
“The spare’s flat!”
He saw a truck approaching, and he waved his arms at it. It pulled up in front of his car and stopped. A teenage boy was in the passenger’s seat, and a middle age man was behind the wheel. Ralph walked over to the driver’s side.
“Don’t tell me a strapping young man like you can’t change a tire,” the man said.
“I can, but it wouldn’t do me much good. The spare’s flat.”
“Well, I’m going into town. You might as well get both tires fixed there. Give him a hand Arnold!”
When both of the tires were in the back of the truck, the man told Arnold to sit in the bed so their guests could sit in the cab. This was a polite thing to do, and Ralph thanked him. Ralph climbed into the cab first. It was usually polite to let the lady go first, but, as his daddy said, “when accepting a ride from a stranger the man sits next to the stranger.”
The man did not say anything. He just pulled out onto the road and brought the truck up to highway speed. There were a few strands of straw in the bed of the truck. Arnold was picking them up one at a time. He was throwing them into the air, trying to catch the swirl of wind that would make the straw return to the bed of the truck. He removed his hat and looked very much like he was thinking of tossing it in the air as well. The man pounded on the back window. Then he stuck his head out of the side window and yelled.
“Don’t toss your hat, Arnold.”
“I won’t, Oh-man.”
“The boy’s a bit slow, but he’s a good worker.”
“Does he always call you ol’ man?” Lorie asked.
“It should be ol’ man, but it isn’t. It’s Oh-man, like the expression folks use when something goes wrong.”
“Odd thing to call a man,” Ralph said, hoping that Oh-man would not consider the comment rude.
“Yeah, but there’s nothing I can do about it. The hands I hired used to call me the old man, like I was a sea captain or something. Arnold was just a little tyke at the time. He thought they were saying Oh-man. So he started calling me that and so did everyone else. Now I’m stuck with it.”
“We could use your name if you’d prefer,” Lorie said.
“My Christian name’s Charley, but you might as well call me what everyone else does. I’d take it kindly if you minded the inflection in your voice, though.”
Ralph and Lorie laughed. “I’m Ralph and this is Lorie.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Is Arnold your son?” Lorie asked.
“Like it, but no. His mother was unwed and an outcast. My Misses took pity on her, and we took her and Arnold in. By the time he was four it was pretty obvious that he was slow. I guess that bothered his mama because she took off with a drummer and left the kid behind.”
“So you raised him like your own,” Ralph said.
“He’s no bother. As I said, he’s a good worker.”
“How like a farmer, long on affection and short on the expression of it,” Ralph thought.
They entered the town and Oh-man pulled into a gas station. “Got some tire work for you, Fred.”
Fred examined the spare. “It’s awful worn. I can put a plug in it, but I wouldn’t trust it to get you very far.” There was no reason to discuss the one that blew out. It would have to be replaced.
“The least expensive tires I have are these retreads. They aren’t too bad. At least I haven’t heard anything about the treads coming off, and folks around here aren’t too shy to complain about such things.”
The price of the retreaded tire was reasonable, but it was going to leave Ralph and Lorie short on cash.
“Maybe we can find some work,” she said.
“I’m afraid I can’t give you credit.”
“We can pay for the tires,” Ralph replied. “It just leaves us a little short of what we need to make it home.”
“Where you from?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Long ways from here.”
"Yes."
“If you knew something about farming, I could pay you more than I would pay a beginner,” Oh-man said.
“I was raised on a farm.”
“Know anything about bucking and stacking bales?”
This was exactly the type of work Ralph was trying to get away from, but he needed the money. “Sure do,” he replied.
“Room and board are included, and you get paid when the harvest is done.”
The deal was struck. Ralph put the retread on his car, threw the repaired spare in the trunk, and followed Oh-man to the farm.
Oh-man introduced them to his wife, Sally, and to the farmhand, Bob. Sally walked them to a little cabin near the main house and opened the door for them to enter. There was a pot bellied stove in the center of the room. The bed was off to one side. A wash-basin and a large pitcher were on the other side. There was no running water.
“This is a guest cabin,” Sally said. “Sorry, but I wasn’t expecting guests. I’ll bring you some fresh bedding and cleaning supplies. Your man can split some stove wood while you clean.”
“Does it get that cold at night?” Lorie asked.
Sally smiled to indicate that it did. After Lorie cleaned the cabin and Ralph stacked enough wood next to the stove, they went to the main house for dinner.
“Are you settled in okay?” Sally asked as she served the meal.
Ralph was tempted to use the "snug as a bug in a rug" cliché, but Lorie prevented that by saying yes.
Oh-man said the prayer.
Sally waited until all of the dishes had been passed around. “You can use the bathroom in here,” she said.
“Ralph can save himself a few trips by peeing in the bushes,” Oh-man said.
Sally gave him a disapproving look. “Behave yourself!”
“We all do it,” Bob said.
“But we don’t talk about it!”
The men laughed. One thing Ralph noticed during the course of the meal was that Arnold did not participate in the conversations and rarely showed any reaction to what was being said unless he was directly addressed.
The next morning Ralph went to help Arnold in the barn, and Lorie went to help Sally in the kitchen. Arnold and Ralph finished milking the cows, and Arnold opened the barn door. The cows made a dash for it. The dog was on the other side of the door. There was no need for him to herd the cows. They were more than eager to get to the sweet grass in the pasture. The dog’s job was to make sure they went through the gate two at a time rather than crowding the gate and damaging the fence. Arnold closed the gate behind them.
That is when Ralph heard Lorie. “Ouch! Damn it! Ouch! Oh, Shit! That hurts!” She was in the chicken coop, and it did not take much imagination for him to picture the hens pecking her.
He walked to the chicken coop. “You have to spread out some feed.”
“What?”
He opened the top of the bin, scooped up some corn, and spread it out on the floor. The hens abandoned their roosts to get the corn. “It distracts them enough for you to gather the eggs.”
“Now you tell me!”
He laughed and walked back to the barn to help Arnold muck it out. Bob placed a powerful fan facing the door of the barn and turned it on. “It should help with the smell and the flies,” he said. Arnold moved a wheel barrel into a position where both he and Ralph could use it. Bob went to the structure where the tractors and such were housed.
When the wheel barrel was as full as Arnold wanted it, he started to wheel it out of the barn. The fan was in his way. So Arnold turned it off and set it where the wheel barrel had been. The fan was now facing Ralph. Ralph’s back was turned to it, and he was so busy using the shovel to rake the muck into a pile that he did not notice what Arnold was doing.
Arnold was leaving the barn with the wheel barrel as Lorie approached. She told him breakfast was almost ready, and she entered the barn. For some reason, she turned on the fan just as Ralph threw a shovel full of muck where he thought the wheel barrel was. She jumped out of the way. The blades caught the muck and threw it all over Ralph. He spun around. Lorie was out of his line of sight. What he saw was Arnold entering the barn with the empty wheel barrel.
Much to Ralph’s credit, he did not swear at Arnold. Instead, he said: “Little man, so spick and span, where were you when the shit hit the fan?”
This quotation of an old joke, which had become a cliché, made Lorie laugh.
“That’s funny,” Arnold said.
“Not when you’re on the receiving end,” Ralph replied.
“Sorry,” Lorie said. “I’m the one who turned it on.”
“Why?”
“A fan doesn’t do you much good when it’s off.”
“As you can see, it didn’t do me a hell of lot of good when it was on,” Ralph said, inspiring more laughter.
“I’ll help you clean up,” Lorie said.
Arnold waited for them. When they were leaving the barn they heard an engine start and then stall. This was followed by: “Son of a bitch! Piece of shit truck!”
Lorie walked over to the door of the structure Bob was in. “Breakfast is ready,” she announced.
“About time,” he growled.
She made a hasty retreat.
Oh-man walked into the dining room and sat at the table. Sally poured some castor oil into a glass. She then added some orange juice to sweeten it. She set the horrible concoction in front of Oh-man.
“That ought to fix what ails you,” she said.
Arnold, Ralph, and Lorie now entered. They had just sat down at the table when Bob stormed in. “We’re up shit creek!” he shouted.
Ralph should not have said it, but he did. “It could be worse.”
“How?”
“We could be downstream, trying to work our way up the creek without a paddle.”
“Smart ass!”
“He always sees the glass as half full,” Lorie said.
“You think that’s good?” Bob asked.
“Yes, it’s a positive, cheerful attitude.”
Oh-man looked at the glass in front of him. “Not if the glass is half full of castor oil, it isn’t.”
Bob laughed, and the laughter caused him to spill some of the hot coffee in his lap.
“Shit!”
“If I could, I wouldn’t have to drink this terrible stuff.”
Everyone, except for Sally, laughed. “Stop bellyaching and take your medicine,” she said.
“It makes my belly ache.”
“Only until it passes through.”
He raised his glass high enough to hide his lips from her, and he mouthed: “Easy for you to say.” Everyone expected him to drink the stuff, but he lowered the glass to ask a question first. “Why’re we up shit creek?”
“The damn truck has a loose wire somewhere. It starts all right, but the slightest vibration shuts it down.”
“I can give you a temporary fix,” Ralph said.
“How temporary?”
“Well, I wouldn’t trust it to get you through the harvest, but it should get you to town. A good mechanic can probably replace the wire in an hour or so.”
Oh-man decided that Ralph would take the truck to get it fixed. “We need someone who can get it running again if it conks out on the way,” Oh-man said.
Sally told Lorie to go with Ralph. She gave Lorie a list of five items to pick up and a small amount of cash. When Lorie asked if there was a particular store Sally preferred Sally said, “I’ll trust your judgment.”
The truck was quickly repaired. They then went to pick up the items on Sally’s list.
“No wonder she trusted my judgment about where to buy them. There’s only one store,” Lorie said.
Ralph laughed.
“Man is she good! Do you know how much change I got back? One nickel.”
“Never underestimate a farmer when it comes to money.”
“I won’t now.”
They pulled up in front of the barn and got out of the truck. Arnold was standing in the doorway of the barn, contentedly eating an apple.
“How’re you doing?” Ralph asked.
“Happier ‘n pig shit!”
“You mean happier than a pig in shit,” Ralph corrected.
“What?”
“He was correcting your diction,” Lorie said.
Arnold looked down at the fly of his trousers. “My what?”
“Your diction.”
“It’s happier than a pig in shit,” Ralph explained.
Arnold was still looking down at his fly. “How do you know?”
“Because that’s how the cliché goes.”
“That’s right, it’s a cliché. So if you correct someone misquoting a cliché, is it still a matter of diction?” Lorie asked.
Arnold answered before Ralph could. “Don’t know. I thought we was talking ‘bout pig shit.”
“Pigs in shit!”
“You think they like that?” Arnold asked. “I seen ‘em rolling in mud. They liked that okay, but I don’t know ‘bout being dipped in shit. Bob sure didn’t like it.”
“Bob was dipped in shit?” Lorie asked.
“Yeah. We went to West line, to the cabin there. We was supposed to move the outhouse and clean out the hole. Bob was saying how he didn’t want to lift the outhouse, but Oh-man come along with that fork machine he uses to lift bales.”
“You mean a fork lift?” Ralph asked.
“Yeah. Oh-man stuck them forks under the outhouse and lifted it easy. Bob smiled and said he’d be dipped in shit. That’s when the door of the outhouse swung open and knocked him in the hole. Oh-man stopped the machine and walked over to the hole. ‘Damned if you wasn’t,’ he said. ‘You been dipped, sure ‘nough. Gotta be more careful ‘bout what you wish for, Bob.’”
“What did Bob say?”
“He cussed him a storm.”
“Cussed…” Ralph was about to say, “cussed up a storm.” Fortunately, he saw Lorie shake her head, and he stopped himself.
“He sure did,” Arnold said, as if Ralph had asked him a question. “He cussed something fierce.”
“How’d he get out of the hole?” Lorie asked.
“Oh-man had me pull him out.”
“You get all the fun jobs,” Ralph joked.
“That one was kinda shitty,” Arnold replied.
The harvest started the next morning. Bucking the bales up onto the truck bed was heavy, physically demanding work. Ralph started out as one of the buckers. The job that took the most knowledge and concentration was stacking. A shifting load was very dangerous, and having to reload the truck was considered somewhat of a disaster. Oh-man always started out as the stacker. The women were given the lighter jobs of driving and marking the rows and such.
You can always tell an experienced bucker because he knows how to position his body to get the best leverage and conserve his energy. It was a skill Ralph had learned well. So had Arnold. After two and half hours Oh-man told Arnold to stack. “Arnold can’t be that slow if Oh-man is willing to let him stack,” Ralph thought. But that was the thing about Arnold. His language and social skills were not quite what they should be, and his mind frequently seemed to wonder off to God knows where during conversations. When it came to farm work, however, he was quite competent. He was obviously someone who learned by watching, and he was probably a lot brighter than anyone realized.
Another two hours went by. Oh-man then shifted Ralph up to the stacker position. A pattern was beginning to emerge. Oh-man was a good manager. He would not put you in a position you could not handle, but he did his best to rotate his personnel. Shifting people to and from the more physically demanding jobs kept them fresh and allowed the entire crew to work at a quicker pace. Members of harvest crews depend on each other, and Ralph could see that they were bonding well. Everybody did their best, and they tried to help each other.
Anyone who has been around hay will tell you that it makes you itch. At the end of the day the men walked around to the back of the barn. There they stripped down and used the garden hose to wash off before putting on fresh clothes. The women used the shower in the house.
“You don’t have to freeze them off,” Sally said, “but if the water’s too warm, it’ll make the itching worse.”
Lorie was smart enough to heed Sally’s advice. In spite of the itching and the sore muscles, Lorie felt about as good as she had ever felt.
The harvest was over in two weeks. Oh-man paid Ralph and Lorie in cash. Sally made up a picnic basket full of fried chicken and biscuits for the trip. She also gave them a large jar of freshly made lemonade.
“Your good workers,” Oh-man said. “I’m glad I got to know you. If you come this way again, pay us a visit.”
“It would be our pleasure,” Ralph replied.
“I’ll miss you,” Sally said, and she hugged Lorie.
This goodbye was about as emotional as a farmer will allow. Ralph and Lorie drove in silence for the first few miles. Then Lorie spoke up.
“I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’m glad the stupid tire blew out. The harvest was quite an experience, and I really like the people there, particularly Sally.”
“It’s easy to forget how decent farm people are,” Ralph said. “It makes me think that I might want to buy a place in the country when I retire. We could have some chickens and a nice little truck garden.”
“No cows?”
“Too much work. Remember, I said when I retire.”
“Do you realize you said we could have chickens and a truck garden?”
“Well, we can. That is, if you’ll marry me?”
“Are you asking me to marry you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you have another semester to go, and I have a whole year. Why don’t we do it after I graduate.”
“I take it that’s a yes.”
“Yes.”
“A year’s a long time. You’re not going to change your mind on me, are you?”
“No way.” She could not resist adding, “You know what they say about a bird in the hand.”
“You have one of the traits of a good farmer.”
“Which one?”
“You’re long on affection and short on verbal expressions of it.”
“There are some things the man should say first.”
“Haven’t I told you I love you?”
“No.”
“Well, I love you.”
“I love you too."
"Is ‘I love you’ a cliché?”
“Who the hell cares?”
“Professor Stein.”
First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on Jun. 17, 2009
“Who the hell cares?”
“Professor Stein.”
First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on Jun. 17, 2009
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