The Old Man(55)
Julian climbed up to the porch, set down his bag, hugged his mother, and shook his father’s hand.
“Welcome home,” said his father. “How long can you stay?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll stay until I have to go.”
There were more empty bedrooms now than there had been when Julian was young. He went to put his bag in the first one, but saw it had become a sewing room, so he went to the next and set down his bag. Then the three sat on the porch.
When the sun was low enough below the porch roof to be in a person’s eyes when he looked to the west, Julian’s two youngest brothers, Joseph and Noah, and his youngest sister, Leila, walked in along the farm road that ran between the vegetable fields. At first they were just three small, dark silhouettes in front of the harsh light, and then they grew as they came closer and the sunlight began to weaken to orange.
He could see they had been weeding, because each of them had a hoe over one shoulder and a strap over the other for the big canvas bag. He thought of those as harvest bags because when he was a boy he remembered gathering vegetables in one to dump into the baskets. He knew that right now each would hold a lunch box and a big plastic bottle for water, both of them light and empty at this time of day.
When Leila noticed the unfamiliar rental car he saw her point, and they all seemed to walk a little faster, their feet lighter. When they arrived, Julian hugged Leila, then Joseph, and then Noah, smelling and feeling the sweat on their shirt backs. “I’m so glad to see you,” he said.
“I see you got here just in time to see the workday end,” said Noah.
“Just the three of you are doing all of it?”
“Of course not,” Leila said. “We were just out there with the weeding crew. We’ve got twenty people working every day right now.”
“Plenty of room out there if you’re still up to it, though,” Joseph said.
“I’ll be out there with you tomorrow morning,” said Julian.
They all went inside, and while the others took turns showering, Julian set the dinner table and talked with his parents in the kitchen. The old dining table had only about half of its places filled now that the older brothers and sisters were gone, and he asked about each of the absent ones—how they were doing, whether they visited often, when the last time was.
Julian was up with the others before dawn, ready to go out to join the crew weeding the next patch of the farm. This one was asparagus, and if they worked hard, they could get the green beans done too. Everything on a farm came in cycles. By the time the crew got through weeding the whole farm, it would be time to start the first patch over again. Over all was the cycle of seed, weed, and harvest. Irrigation wasn’t necessary except a few times in midsummer, because the rest of the time there was enough rain, but there was a big tank at the highest point on the farm that served as a reservoir for the water pumped from the well.
At breakfast they continued the conversations interrupted the night before. The three youngest siblings were all dating local people, and they teased each other about the beloved’s appearance, prospects, and intelligence. This went on for a while, and then Leila’s big cat’s eyes turned to the side and settled on Julian. “I heard Ruthie Straughan got a divorce.”
There was silence for a couple of seconds. The others, all at least five years younger than Julian, waited. Leila added, “But I suppose you knew that already, or you wouldn’t just happen to think of coming home.”
Julian said, “Where did you hear that about Ruthie Straughan?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I guess it must have been at church. Did you hear it there too?” All three of her brothers laughed.
“I have to get all my gossip from you,” he said. “I don’t recall having been to church in a while.”
Leila said, “The Lord finds many ways to make things known. I do my part.”
When they finished breakfast they put the dishes in the sink to soak, picked up their lunches and water bottles, and went outside to get into one of the trucks and drive out to the fields. This was the coolest part of the day, and it was the best time to get the hard work done.
Joseph, who served as foreman, lined up the hired workers at the end of the asparagus field, and then the Carsons picked up hoes and bags themselves, and the crew began to move along the spaces between rows, digging all the weeds on one row and then heading up the next row. They worked steadily and methodically, as people did who had been raised to work.
They all worked until the sun was directly overhead and their shadows pooled at their feet. Joseph checked his watch and they all went to sit in the shade beneath the fruit trees and opened their lunch pails. Most of the hired hands went to get their lunches from coolers in the trunks of their cars.
As the Carsons ate, the siblings started on Julian. “You know, Julian,” said Joseph, “I always figured you had a great big job in the Pentagon or somewhere. But I can see you’re better at weeding than you ever were. Is that what they have you doing?”
“I can’t tell you much because it’s classified,” said Julian. “I’m sort of like the director of the CIA, except younger and better looking.”
After a few minutes the others turned their attention to Noah, who had been refusing to tell his siblings who he was taking to a cousin’s wedding.
They went back to work, and the stream of banter and gossip filled the afternoon, and then the sun began to go down. Leila stopped at the end of a row and said, “I’m going home. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got things to do tonight.” She shouldered her hoe, and emptied her canvas sack on the compost heap one last time. The others did the same and got into the truck, and they all drove back up the farm road to the house.