Hayfields of the Mind, Jeanne Tody Beroza [i love reading TXT] 📗

another inch or two to his skinny frame so he could take a place in the fields. During those waiting years I drove the tractor and a hired neighborhood boy stacked the wagon. Now that Robbie was on the tractor I had graduated to bale handling and the hired boy was stacking the haymow.

The tractor was a green and yellow Model B. John Deere; the kind sometimes called the Johnny Popper. It was equipped with an electric starter, a godsend. I had tried cranking the flywheel on a neighbor’s machine and almost broke my arm when the engine turned over sending the crank flying free to whack anything within striking distance. I knew several kids on neighboring farms who sported casts due to flying crank arms.

Our tractor, built in 1947 and called the ‘late styled B’ because of its improvements over earlier models had a hand clutch, a feature that made it possible for a lightweight kid to drive it. As it was, every time Robbie stopped I could see his little body standing ramrod straight in front of the seat, both feet crammed down on the brake trying to hold the 4000 pound, smoke breathing, pulsing monster beneath him in one place. If it had been necessary to push a clutch petal with one foot while he tried to hold the brake down with his other we never would have stopped. Dad would have had to run beside the wagon, desperately throwing bales up to me as we passed by.

“Easy when you take off there,” dad hollered at Robbie. He had let up on the brake too fast and jerked the wagon forward almost pitching me off the back, into the field. “Head between those two rows up ahead,” he continued yelling while the John Deere putt-putted in place.
With both feet still pressing down on the brake pedal, Robbie lowered his rear to the edge of the seat, grabbed the clutch lever with both hands and squeezed its handles together, pushing it forward out of its locked position thus disengaging it. He clutched the chest high steering wheel firmly as he let up on the brake and stood with both feet firmly planted on the floor’s steel decking. The tractor crept forward in low gear.

“Good job, Robbie,” I yelled over the tractor’s noise. He’d managed the clutch, brake and shifting it into gear as well as I could have done. I didn’t miss driving. It was always a challenge to shift, start, stop and manage all the complicated gears and throttle smoothly and then steer exactly where dad wanted without experiencing a panic attack or mental breakdown.

As the shadows of trees surrounding the field lengthened and evening crept over the fields I finally shoved the last bale in this section into place. Every inch of my body was sweaty and itching from the prickly hay stems. The washcloths I had pinned over my knees inside my pants were showing through holes worn by lifting hundreds of bales with my thighs. Dad always wondered how I wore a pair of jeans out during haying season. Lifting with strong arms and back he couldn’t relate to how a much shorter and weaker person had to manage the same bale. I grabbed the strings with my hands as he did but then I hoisted it up against my thigh and used my leg and hip to thrust the heavy bale onto the stack.

Throughout my entire teenage and adult life I would berate myself for not possessing the long slim legs and tiny ankles most women showed to advantage with a nice pair of hose, a short hemline and high heeled shoes. I won every leg-wrestling match with boys in school. I held sheep between my short, sturdy legs to keep them captive for worming or sheering. In later years I would hike all day without tiring and run behind search dogs up and down the craggy Black Hills of South Dakota. Maybe my muscular thighs developed while hoisting thousands of hay bales up onto the stack each summer during my teenage years. I often wonder if I could have been skinnier or more delicate if I hadn’t grown up working on a farm.

Whatever the reason for my sturdy, strong legs I used them to my advantage while haying and didn’t give them a thought on this long, hot day in 1963. The last bale was on the wagon. Yeehaw! Dinnertime!

“Get on the wagon,” dad yelled at Robbie over the noise of the engine. “I’ll drive to the barn. Once we get there you head up to the house and tell Becky we’ll be in for supper in about twenty minutes. I’ve got to talk to Jeanne alone before we come in.”

“You think Becky can heat it up without burning it,” I yelled. I had made a thick beef stew yesterday and did not want my nine-year-old sister wrecking it. I was irritable, hot, and filthy. My arms and legs itched horribly. I didn’t want to stay outside and talk to dad. “I can do it quickly,” I added before he could answer, “I need to wash anyway.”

“I want to talk to you alone for a few minutes,” he said. His jaw set firmly as he turned to climb onto the tractor thus breaking eye contact with me. Robbie barely had time to climb onto the wagon before dad threw the tractor into a high, road speed gear and started moving up the lane.

Normally Robbie was immersed in his own little world. He didn’t speak to me much and didn’t become involved in conversations unless required to do so but dad’s wanting to speak to me alone was an unusual event. Robbie must have been curious because he asked, “What’s he want to talk to you about?”

“I don’t know,” I whined, “I have no idea.” Dad never talked to just me. He always addressed us kids as a group unless he was instructing an unlucky individual on a topic obviously too complicated for a dimwit kid’s brain to handle. Then he might sit one of us down and lecture the poor singled-out individual until we acted like we understood whatever information he was trying to impart – for our sake - so we’d understand how whatever it was worked. Either that or he was yelling at one of us. Yelling was normally performed for the benefit of one child at a time. I studied my father and his moods carefully. My entire childhood when I wasn’t working or escaping or loving my moments with the animals was spent watching him and anticipating what he was going to do or say. It was how I survived. I was good at keeping my head down and, if possible, keeping out of the way. I did not want to be singled out. I did not want him to talk to me alone. I knew that whatever the topic, it could not be anything good.

Robbie jumped down and ran for the house as soon as the tractor and hay wagon entered the red, wood-sided barn. “Chicken,” I groused under my breath while Robbie ran as fast as his short, skinny legs would carry him. Of course, I wanted to bolt for the house too.

Dad motioned for me to get down so I did and went to stand near where he was sitting on a hay bale. “I need to talk to you about something important,” he said. “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this but want your opinion before I make a decision.” Oh no, I thought. Dad never asks my opinion on anything. What is he really setting me up for? What’d I do? Why me?

My hands grew damp; in fact I realized my entire body was sweating like some ol’ overweight dude, puffing up a hill on a hot day. It felt awful, adding slick, sticky skin to the itching and the bits of hay abrading my delicate flesh with my every movement. I so did not want to have a discussion with dad. Why now? Couldn’t he at least wait for me to clean up and change clothes? That way I’d only have to deal with my nervous sweat causing the millions of tiny cuts all over my body to smart.

But, dad always did things his way, in his own time, and that was obviously now, like it or not! I’d like to say I spoke up here and explained to my father how miserable I felt. Maybe told him I was hurting and asked for a little sympathy. Nope. Neither did I whine out loud. Life was often hard on the farm but, even so, I liked living and I didn’t think I would be long for this world if I complained to my father.

“You know Evelyn is never going to be able to come home,” he said. Oh God this is about mom, I thought. She had been in the mental hospital for two years and had come home just one time to visit. By the end of her week with us, she was locked in her bedroom, refusing to come out for any reason. This behavior is what had caused her being taken away and committed to the hospital in the first place. We had all known she was not better and hadn’t been surprised when the police came, just like they had the first time, to remove her from the room and take her back to Traverse City.

We’d been told to go to our rooms where we’d listened to them forcing the lock on mom’s door. I’d put my hands over my ears so I couldn’t hear her anguish. She accused my father of taking her children from her. She beat him with her fists until the police took hold of her arms and led her out of the house. Carrie had sat on the edge of the bed looking at the floor. Becky hadn’t even cried this time. Robbie was in his bedroom alone. I don’t know how he reacted.

I missed mom but I hated going to visit her. She lived in a brick-walled room by herself with something like a cot for a bed, one chair, and a tiny, barred window so high up on the wall no one could look through it. I was told she had electric shock treatments. I couldn’t even understand how electric shocks could be good for someone. I had been shocked before, by accidentally touching a frayed cord. It had hurt and had not resulted in any beneficial side effects as far as I could tell. I couldn’t imagine how shocking someone on purpose could be a good thing.

Plus, when we kids walked down the hallway on the way to our mother’s room, other residents in the facility, or what we kids called other crazy women, reached out to touch us. They called us names that weren’t ours and said things that were embarrassing and made us feel very uncomfortable. Poor Becky sometimes didn’t talk for a day or two after one of these visits. None of us ever talked about them, not to each other, not to any of our friends or relatives and never, ever to our father. We all knew mom had problems. We had each experienced her problems first hand, but it was dad who had put her in the hospital. We knew she was sick but he had sent her away. It was hard to understand how her being gone could be better for any of us.

“I think it’s best for all of us, including her, if I were to get a divorce,” dad said, “and I want to know how you feel about that.”

Nonplussed, I