Little Joe (11 page)

As soon as Eli got the tractor going in a new direction, the birds swelled up and down…
.

“Good thing you’ll be standing in the hay wagon when we bale,” Eli hollered, nudging the six-foot snake with his boot tip to make sure it went the opposite way. Last year, Eli was the one standing in the hay wagon doing the stacking. Now he was big enough to toss the rectangular bales into the wagon, or at least up to Pa.

“Come here, son,” Pa said, putting his arm over Eli’s shoulders. “I wanna show you something.”

Eli didn’t think the evening could get any better than it was. A tent caterpillar dropped down from the bordering crab apple trees and wriggled its hairy spine across Eli’s shirt sleeve. And the stars had come out, shiny and white as if the biggest moonflowers had decided to bloom right in the sky.

Pa walked Eli across the lawn to the other fields, where the corn grew. “Right here.” He pulled back a vine, lime green and prickly, and showed Eli a pumpkin.

“She’s a five-lober.” Pa beamed. “The nicest I’ve had. And she’s got the room.” Pa pointed to the main vine. “She’s ten feet out on a sixteen-foot main.”

The pumpkin had already grown big as a baseball and was the color of creamed corn. Eli had to admit, she was a beauty. And big for this stage.

“I’m one step ahead of Ned Kinderhoff,” Pa said,
uncovering a plastic bottle. He gave it a squeeze. Creamy white liquid squirted out. “It’s milk,” Pa said. “And not the pasteurized kind you get at the store …
real
milk.” Pa dabbed his fingers with it, then coddled the leaf around the tiny pumpkin like it was a bitty baby bird, just hatched. “Kinderhoff’s fancy glass greenhouse won’t help him this year.” Pa stroked the cut in the vine where the milk got fed through. “I’m gonna beat him. No more red ribbons. This time, the color will be blue.” Pa turned to face Eli. “I got a way to speed things up with E-1, too. Boost his rations with corn silage and molasses.”

Eli looked down at the pale-skinned pumpkin, its skin a waxy cream because of the milk. He sure hoped Pa would beat Ned Kinderhoff in the giant pumpkin division this year. He knew it’d be a first. But Eli didn’t want to go rushing Little Joe. Last time he did, he got dragged through the mud. And Pa agreed Little Joe’s rate of gain was higher than most. Three pounds a day! The valley was already talking about how impressive the calf looked. Grandpa thought the calf was plenty big enough, too, and better off on grass.

“But you said Little Joe’s weight was fine, Pa. And Grandpa says calves fed on pasture are the healthiest.”

Pa covered up the vine with some dirt. “Ned’s got an eye on that calf, and he likes ’em big and meaty.”

Eli didn’t want to hear it. He wished he was out on a
log, just like those noisy bullfrogs, swelling up their yellow throats and croaking loud as they could. Or burying themselves in the mud whenever they felt like it.

“He’s got money to burn, Eli. The more weight on that calf, the better. You get paid by the pound. Kinderhoff will bid whatever he wants if he sees a calf he likes.”

Eli didn’t want Ned Kinderhoff buying Little Joe. Ned Kinderhoff made Pa work late on payday, so Ma had to wait an extra day to go to the store. And he wore a belt buckle with shiny stones on it that you couldn’t buy around here. When Eli saw Ned Kinderhoff at the fair last year, he walked into the show barn with sticky gray hair, clutching that fancy belt and wearing a smile that looked glued on.

“Wouldn’t it be something,” Pa said, “if we both had the biggest entries at the fair?”

Trading Eggs

Ma was in Sassy Clippers washing a new batch of eggs in the hair sink. “Look how big my hens are laying.” Ma held up an egg to show Eli. It was peppered with chocolate-brown spots and nearly the size of a pear.

“I’ll have that one for breakfast.” Eli smiled. He stuck his index finger next to the egg, but the egg was longer.

“Sunny-side up or over easy?” Ma asked. She placed the egg in a measuring cup above the sink.

“Sunny-side up,” Eli decided. “So I can see the size of the yolk.” Eli climbed up the slippery black chair at the other hair sink and reached for the egg. It was surrounded by plastic bottles with pointy tops like in the condiment
caddy at the Hoagie Hut. Only the colors in these didn’t seem real. They were purple and orange and a metallic red that got used up every Saturday on a group of ladies. They waited outside—the old milk house wasn’t meant to hold more than a milk tank—for their heads to get squooshed by a goosey-fleshed skullcap. Then Ma would take her crochet needle, weave it through the tiny pin-feather pricks in the cap and pluck. Whatever stuck out, Ma squirted with the color from the bottles. She smeared the mess around using a paintbrush before sending those ladies under the blower to roast.

Eli still couldn’t believe Ma got paid for it.

“It’ll only be a few minutes, Eli. Just one more rinse with cold water and the eggs will be clean.”

“How come you’re washing them up so nice?” Eli wondered. “It’s only us.”

Ma turned redder than the bottle of hair dye. “All these eggs aren’t for us, Eli.” Ma patted down the eggs with a towel. “They’re for my clients.”

“You mean you give the extras away?”

“No. Not exactly.” Ma pointed to the window. “Could you hand me one of those cartons by the windowsill?”

Eli sat down on the vinyl chair, reluctant to move. “But Pa says we don’t sell eggs.”

“They’re my hens,” Ma said. She walked over and got
a carton herself. “Besides, I don’t sell my eggs; I trade them. For other things.”

“Won’t Pa be sore when he finds out?”

“I don’t interfere with the cattle and he doesn’t meddle with my hens. For the most part. I do what feels right, Eli, and I don’t always tell your pa. You need new roper boots for the fair and a new blower to groom Little Joe.” Eli went and got another carton by the window and started in on a dozen eggs.

“I figure twenty-four more dozen eggs to Mrs. Krueger till we get them. She always comes down from the Agway and asks for two dozen on Mondays.” Ma winked at Eli. “Hand me that marker by the talcum brush, will you? And write down her name on this one.” Ma handed Eli the full carton.

“How do you spell
Krueger?”
They both laughed, and Ma pointed to Mrs. Krueger’s name on the first dozen. “You know your pa’s not as bad as all that, Eli. He just saves his caring for when it matters.”

“Grandpa says we got enough caring to go around for everyone. Animals, too.”

“Your pa’s a good farmer, Eli.”

“Then how come he likes pumpkins over cows?”

“I guess pumpkins don’t hurt.” Ma opened the old Frigidaire and laid her dozen on the stack labeled
EXTRA
LARGE
. “How ’bout some buttermilk pancakes to go with that gigantic egg?”

“With peach maple syrup on top?”

“I think we still have some left.” Ma smiled. She handed Eli his giant egg and they walked out of the old milk house toward the kitchen.

Cow Tipping

Eli lay on his bed not knowing what to do. He stared at the soldiers on the papered walls that had been there since Grandpa was a boy. But Eli was too angry to concentrate on which clusters of military men carried swords and which ones had bayonets slung over their shoulders. He was mad about the rain.

“You sure they canceled the fireworks, Pa?” Eli yelled. He leaned forward, clasped his arms around his knees and looked outside. It hadn’t even sprinkled yet.

Pa came into the room, tucked his hands into his jean pockets and peered through the window. “Sure looks like rain,” Pa said.

The clouds hung low, gathering strength near the barn.
They were stained blueberry, the edges a deep watermelon, same as a bruise.

“They’re tryin’ to figure out what to do,” Pa said. “If hot or cold’s gonna win out.”

Eli figured hot would. It had been the hottest Fourth of July he could remember. His rocket Popsicle had melted before he’d gotten to the white part, watching the parade that afternoon. Even now, Eli was waiting for the fan to blow in his direction and keep his bangs from sticking to his forehead.

“You check the fields?” Pa asked, angling his chin to catch a glimpse of the pastures. “Lupine’s in season. Lobelia, too.” Pa’d skimmed his cheek toward the window so close it was almost touching. “The stems’ll be sapping up now. If they’ve grown at all.”

Eli had already checked Little Joe’s pasture. He’d scoured the rocks for any spiky flowers blooming cone-like that might be lupine, careful not to step into a steaming mound of cow manure the damp heat refused to harden. He’d examined each flowering plant growing wild in tufts along the hillside. It didn’t matter if they weren’t white or pink or blue. Eli checked them anyhow, until beads of sweat collected on his nose and the sun made his head ache. But it was always the same. Nothing was ever lupine. Lobelia, either.

Pa’d showed him all the poisonous plants a cow could
get sick on in the seed catalog so many times, Eli wondered if that was the only place they’d ever bloomed. And this afternoon, his legs were just too tired to walk down to Fancy’s field, where all the pregnant cows grazed. Eli’d seen them high up by the pines, standing in the shade. They hadn’t even chewed the cud yet. It was so hot, they rubbed their necks and chins against each other to scratch away the face flies. Besides, he’d just combed the field last week for any purple flowers. There were none.

“Still time before it rains.” Pa cleared his throat. “And gets too dark.” He headed out the door.

It was almost dusk when Eli walked toward Fancy’s field, but it hadn’t cooled down yet. He took his wrist and wiped the beads of sweat lining his brow. The trees had gone dark before the sky did, sticking out their inky branches against the purple smudge of clouds. Encouraged by the heat, the katydids kept calling, scraping their wings together so loudly Eli had to remind himself the insects weren’t any bigger than his pinky finger.

“You a cow yet?”

Eli swiveled toward the voice and spotted Keller on the creek path, wet from a swim.

“Figured you must’ve become part of the herd, since I never see you around.” Keller smiled. He yanked the T-shirt hanging from the back of his jeans and swatted a knee.
“Horsefly,” he said. “Bite straight through anything.” Keller pulled the T-shirt over his head, which had been shaved.