hair. Brush your teeth.”
She marched away, down the hall toward their bedroom.
“Your sister, too. Breakfast in twenty minutes,” I shouted after her. “And no experimenting on the horses!”
While my hands were in the biscuit dough, Adam kissed me and ran his hands along my sides. He poured himself a cup of coffee, refilled my cup, and set it down next to me. A bar of morning light crossed his cheek. His lips met the rim of the cup. He leaned back against the kitchen counter and talked. The near field needed disking for the alfalfa this week.
I listened to the grain and lift of his voice. How, inside those words about the tractor, were the same familiar sounds, the breath of everything he had ever said to me, every groan, song, and whisper.
Outside the kitchen window, the sun shone in a brilliant slant. The field waited to be turned. The fresh impatience of the morning breeze blended with the kitchen’s odors of bacon and biscuits as I opened the window over the sink. Adam, the girls, and I were at the table passing around the last of the scrambled eggs when my cousin Frank arrived to help with the tractor.
I didn’t like Frank any better now than I had during the brief time he’d been my housemate, but I’d gotten used to him showing up a couple of times a year and disappearing with Adam to work on the truck or the pump. He was a good mechanic. Whiskey and years as a civilian had worn his edge down to the common, guarded bitterness of a middle-aged man who thinks life has not offered him what he deserves. He’d never married, though he was seldom without a woman at his side on a Saturday night. Some men envied him. During the week, he worked at the mill as a mechanic. On weekends, he drank hard.
A flask bulged in his back pocket when he stretched across the table for the syrup, but I didn’t smell anything on his breath.
I didn’t want him working on any motors if he was drinking. As I set a fresh plate of scrambled eggs in front of him, I took a sniff to assure myself that he was sober.
He and Adam finished off the rest of the breakfast, then headed outside to the tractor. Rosie and I set up the two rinse tubs next to the wringer washer on the back porch. She no longer needed a stool to stand on as she swung the heavy wringer head over the rinse tubs.
As we gathered the dirty clothes, the tractor motor sporadically caught then faltered into silences punctuated by Frank’s cursing. Every time he worked on someone’s car, a child acquired a more colorful vocabulary. For once, I was grateful for the noisy, rhythmic chugging of the old wringer washer.
The tractor sputtered and choked through the first load of washing. After a particularly long silence, Adam marched up to the back door. He held up a tattered length of hose. “We need a new one. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Anything you need in town?” he called through the screen door.
“We’re fine. Go on,” I said.
Adam washed his hands at the spigot outside, then drove away in the truck. Frank paced in front of the open barn doors and sucked on his cigarettes. A strong breeze whipped the jeans and shirts on the line.
As I finished hanging up the first load, Adam returned, new hose in hand. Soon the motor came to a steady low rhythm and held. The men’s whoops of congratulations followed. I hauled a basket of wet bed linens out to the line as Adam and Frank attached the disker to the tractor. Frank climbed up and drove to the edge of the field. He turned in the seat and gave Adam a thumbs-up. Adam began picking up the tools scattered on the ground and returning them to the barn.
Then the tractor quieted to an idle. I pushed aside the pillowcase I’d just hung up.
Jennie stood at the edge of the path, shading her eyes as she looked up at Frank. She wore a light blue dress that had been worn down to softness by Gracie and Rosie. She looked tall and thin and faraway. Frank nodded and seemed to be speaking to her. She shook her head, pointing back toward the house. Then he rolled slowly away toward the field, the disker bobbing above the ground behind the broad tires.
I went