Linda Ford - The Road to Love

Dougie brought back a basin full of potatoes, wizened and sprouted after a winter in storage.

Not much, but still she was grateful she had food for her children. She peeled the potatoes as thinly as possible so as not to waste a bit and set them to boil. She gathered the peelings in a basin to later take to the chickens.

Dougie watched out the window, giving a step-by-step description of what the man did. “He greased it. He’s climbing down. Sure isn’t scared like you are, Momma. He put the grease pail on the ground. He’s watering the cows.” The boy dashed out of the house.

“Dougie, wait.” The skin on the back of Kate’s neck tingled as she hurried to the door. She couldn’t trust her child with a stranger.

Dougie raced to the man, spoke with him a minute and ran back to her. “Momma, his name is Hatcher. He says he’ll milk the cows.”

Hatcher? Sounded too much like hatchet for her liking. Was it his nickname? Earned by the deeds he did? She didn’t like to judge a man prematurely but she’d sooner be overly cautious than have someone named Hatcher hanging around. “No. I’ll do it,” she said.

But Dougie grabbed the galvanized tin buckets and headed back outside before she could stop him. He rejoined the man who took the pails but stood watching Kate, waiting silently for her agreement.

Again she felt his quiet patience. Jeremiah had been like that. Slowly, she nodded, and her son and the man disappeared into the barn.

Suddenly a whole stream of worries assailed her. Was she foolish to let her son out of sight with a tramp? On top of that, she wondered if the man knew how to milk properly. Would she have to go out and strip the cows? She couldn’t let them go dry. The milk fed herself, the children, the pig and the chickens. Besides providing their butter, the cream gave them the only cash they would have until the crop was seeded, and harvested. And that depended on having rain when they needed it, no grasshoppers to eat the crop and a hundred other things. “It’s in God’s hands,” she whispered. “He’ll take care of us. He’s promised.” She forced herself to dwell on these comforting words yet threads of concern knitted around the promise.

She stood in the doorway, torn between hurrying out to the barn and the need to prepare the meal. The cake was almost ready to come out. If she left it now, they’d have burned sacrifices for supper.

“Mary, sit on the step and watch the barn.”

“What for, Momma?”

“Just watch it and let me know if anyone comes out.” She shoved her daughter outside, ignoring the stark fear in her eyes. “All you do is sit here. I have to finish supper.”

She tested the cake, put it back in the oven, pushed the boiling potatoes to a cooler spot on the stove and emptied the meat and beans into pots to heat.

Mary clattered inside. “Momma,” she whispered.

“Ma’am?”

The deep voice, unexpected as it was, startled Kate. She jerked her gaze to the man standing in her doorway, two foamy pails of milk in his hands.

Dougie raced in behind the man.

Kate let her tense chest muscles relax knowing the boy was safe and sound.

The man carefully avoided looking at her as he set the pails on the worn wooden table next to the door and retreated.

“Supper is ready,” she told him. “Make yourself comfortable while I dish you up a plate.” She nodded to the step indicating he should wait there. When Dougie prepared to join the man, Kate called him inside. He reluctantly slouched indoors.

Kate dished up generous portions of food and carried the plate to the man.

He nodded. “Thank you, ma’am. Name’s Hatcher Jones.”

Kate hesitated then gave her name. “I appreciate your help, Mr. Jones. I’ll bring you dessert in a few minutes.” She ducked back inside, closed the door behind her, served the children and herself, all the time aware of Hatcher Jones on the other side of the solid wooden door. It made her feel awkward to sit at the table while he sat on the step, yet nothing in the world would persuade her to invite him inside the house. Most hobos were ordinary men on the move looking for work wherever they could find it but even without Mary’s frightened look she became acutely conscious of the vulnerability of her two children.

Mary and Dougie finished and Kate deemed the cake cool enough to cut. She put a generous slice in a bowl, poured on thick, cool cream and took it outside.

Hatcher Jones handed her his spit-clean plate and took the bowl of dessert, his eyes appreciating the food as he murmured his thanks.

Kate hovered at the doorway, breathing in the pleasure of her farm. “Where are you from, Mr. Jones?”

“From nowhere. Going nowhere.” He seemed preoccupied with the bowl of food.

“You must have belonged somewhere at some time.” The idea of being homeless, having no roots still made her tense up inside. She couldn’t stand the thought of someone out there, hunkered over a lonely campfire. Cold, wet, miserable, vulnerable to prying eyes. It was a too-familiar sensation she couldn’t shake. Not even after all these years.

He shrugged. “Too long ago to matter.”

“Going anywhere in particular? I hear a lot of men are heading toward the coast.” She chuckled. “At least it rains there.”

“Been there. Seems all it did was rain.”

“So you didn’t like it?”

Again he shrugged, a languid one-shoulder-higher-than-the-other gesture that said better than any words that he was short on opinions about such things. “Can get too much of even a good thing.”

“You surely can’t like this drought better’n rain. Even too much rain.”

“Drought or rain. What’s the difference? Man just has to make the best of it.”

“A woman does, too.”

He glanced over his shoulder to her. “It’s not easy.”

“No. It’s not. But we do okay.”

He nodded and looked across the fields. “How much land you got here?”

“Two quarters.”

“How much in crop?”

“A hundred acres.”

He grunted. “Planning to put it all down to wheat?”

How long had it been since anyone had asked her about her farm? Doyle’s only question was when did she intend to get rid of it and marry him? Her answer was always the same. Never. This farm belonged to her. Lock, stock and piles of dust. She would never let it go or even take out a mortgage on it.

Even Sally, dear friend that she was, couldn’t understand Kate’s dedication to the land. All Sally could think was how fortunate Kate was to have a beau such as Doyle. Handsome, debonair, well-off, a lawyer with a big house. “You could quit working like a man,” Sally said often enough.

Kate drew in a long breath full of spring sweetness. The smell of new growth. Who’d believe green had its own scent? She’d once tried to explain it to Doyle and he’d laughed. Unfortunately the endless dust drowned out all but tantalizing hints of the freshness. So far this spring there hadn’t been any blinding dust storms but no significant amounts of rain, either. What was the official total? .06 inches. Hardly worth counting.

She gathered up her shapeless plans for the spring work and put words to them. “I want to put in some corn. Seems to me it’s pretty hardy once it’s tall enough the gophers don’t eat it off.”

“No problem with blackbirds attacking it?”

“Some. But there’s a bonus to that. They’re good eating. ‘Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.’”

He straightened his shoulders inside his worn blue shirt, hesitated as if to consider her words and then grunted in what she took for amusement. “God’s blessings often come disguised.”

She stared at his back, saw his backbone edging at the faded blue of his shirt. A hobo who talked about God? Even more, about God’s blessings. She couldn’t keep herself from asking, “What blessing is disguised in being homeless?” She could recall none.