“Someday you’ll be glad you did this. It builds character!” Dad tells me summer after summer. To which I always respond “Not a chance!” And I mean it. There’s no way a sane person can look back at the heat, the scratches, the aches and be glad of anything, save that the torture is over.
That’s why I let out a groan and hang my head over the bowl of soggy Cheerios when Dad tells me that Grandpa is raking the hay in the morning so that it will be dry by noon. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I moan into my cereal. “It’s supposed to be in the 90’s today!”
“But there are chances of rain tonight,” he replies, settling the matter.
Moments like these remind me of my mother’s advice. She tells my sisters and me that we’re forbidden to marry farmers. “It’s too hard,” she says. “Nature is a flirt,” she explains. “She’ll demand all your man’s time and effort. She lets him think he’s in control now and then, but really, she calls the shots. Nature boosts him up and makes him love her, then bam. Like that, she throws a fit. Drops him with his head reeling and empty pockets.”
“Find your gloves, wake your sisters up, and be ready” he tells me before heading out the door.
We eat dinner early, picking at our food, careful not to eat too much, or the heat and work will make us nauseous. Mom washes the dishes, her face already reddening from the steam as if in preparation for labors that will fill the rest of her day. My sisters and I search for our gloves. We fight about who deserves the ones that have suffered the least wear. My index finger pops out of the top of mine, and I grimace thinking of the needles of hay that will lodge beneath my fingernail.
Dad yells from the doorway. His boots have too much cow shit on them to come inside. We make our way to the door reluctantly—death row inmates, on our way to the chair—Dad tells us to hurry. “We don’t have all day! There might be storms this afternoon!”
Mom hops into the front seat with Dad, and the rest of us pile into the bed of the truck. The metal is too hot to sit on, so we squat until the truck picks up speed. The wind whips my hair against my face and the dust is suffocating. Nevertheless, I’m disappointed when we get to the field.
Ellie and Dad are the tallest so they head out to the rack where Grandpa is waiting with the baler. The rest of us watch them make slow rounds, an anticipatory sense of dread growing as a greenish-brown mountain slowly rises from the rack.
When the rack is nearly full, Mom and Eliza climb up into the barn. I make my way to an empty rack, ready to hook Grandpa up for the next load. I grunt to lift the heavy tong and spread my legs wide. Once, Mom dropped a tong on her foot. Her toenail turned black, fell off, and never grew back.
You can also smash a toe if the conveyor is not tied down tightly. I always have Jenny stand on the conveyor when I wire it down so that it won’t jump around on us when bales are put on and taken off. I get it tied down tight and plug the cord into a socket. Blue and white sparks shoot for a split second, then the conveyor begins its clackety-clackety-clack rotation.
At first, there isn’t room for two of us. Heck, truth be told, there’s not room for one. The bales of hay jut out, sparing only a few inches for the width of my foot. Jenny eases bales from the top layer down to me. The first couple throw me for a loop. Their weight and momentum jerk me around, and I have to readjust my balance and footing to keep from falling. This is one of my worst fears. Sometimes I dream of falling and knocking my teeth out on the rusty tong or of mangling my face on the pointed shards of the conveyor belt.
But I adjust, take control of the bales and my body, and soon there is room for Jenny, too. We have a rhythm, Jenny and I. She puts a bale on as I grab one from the stack. She stays on her side, while I stay on mine. As we tire, our rhythm can get a bit off. The heat gets to us, and if she gets in my way, or I in hers, an “accidental” shove of prickly hay against the back gets us back on track.
Sweat trickles down my face and into my eyes, but I can’t brush it away because my gloves and arms are covered with alfalfa. The alfalfa sticks everywhere—to my scalp, between my breasts, along my spine, and even in my shoes. The hay itself doesn’t stick, it lodges itself in my waistband and bra. Hay prickles, scratches. Little red welts raise upon my arms and beneath my jeans where I support the weight of the bales as I walk. Tonight in the shower, these will sting and bring tears to my eyes.
As we near the end of the rack, I experience a false sense of relief. It might look like there is only one row left, when really it’s a longer rack than the last one and there are two more rows to go. The fake relief comes again when the last bale from the rack is placed on the conveyor. “Whew, that’s done,” I can’t help but think as I stretch my aching back and unfurl my cramped fingers. I peel off my gloves to examine my blisters—have anymore popped? Then it hits me. There are nine or ten more loads to go just like the last one! And more the next day! That’s when “the baling despair” hits. I simply can’t believe that my body can do that many more loads—four or five more, maybe, but ten!?
It does though. My body gets more and more tired and sore, until it simply goes numb. Emotionally numb, that is. Everything still aches, but I just don’t think about it anymore. That’s how I make it through.
My mind can’t make an escape. I think about my hands and fingers. They will be stiff and swollen for days—ugly man hands. Between loads I check my phone and find that three of my friends have called. I think about these calls, invitations to fun, as I begin the next load. They must be heading to the lake or Maggie’s pool. Or maybe Jake and Kyle want to take us out on their crotch rockets. Surely, my friends are splashing and laughing in little bikinis or roaring down the highway with the wind whipping through their hair, you know, the types of things normal girls do in the summer.
And then there are women like me, my mom, and my sisters who slave away at a job typically reserved for men. We could use some big, burly brothers, I decide, watching little Jenny struggle to place a bale on the conveyor just right. It’s ninety degrees out, swimsuit weather, and I’m sweating my ass off in jeans. I try to straighten my cramping back. This must be how it feels to be pregnant. Bitter thoughts of this sort hound me throughout the blazing afternoon.
Dad says that stacking well is like art. A good stacker weaves the bales together—turning the bales this way and that, leaving spaces between some and squeezing others together—intertwining all the separate little rectangles into a cohesive square. This pattern repeats itself over and over again in my head at night as I drift off to sleep. I tear the square apart and weave it back together. I nudge my feet into its crevices and climb to the top where I survey my design.
There is one—no, there are two good things about baling hay. One, calories are burned. Two, afterwards, all of my senses are heightened. An icy can held to the forehead feels like heaven. Water has never tasted so sweet and a salty ham sandwich has never been so satisfying. After the initial stinging, the warm pellets of the shower will sooth my aching muscles, and I am perfectly content to simply stretch out across a couch, a fan blowing cool gusts against my sun burnt face. The best though, is to go swimming after baling hay.
The sun is sinking in the sky when our truck rumbles back into the driveway, all the little bumps reminding me of my aching body. Jenny and I slowly make our way to the four-wheeler while everyone else strips on the porch. Their clothes and bodies are too green to be taken into the house until they are shaken and brushed off. I feel a faint twinge of jealousy when I imagine how fresh the air feels against bare, damp skin.
The roar of the four-wheeler breaks the stillness, and I climb behind Jenny and wrap my arms around her waist. We speed up the lane and down the road, the night air drying the sweat on our faces.
We pull into a weed-covered driveway. Trees encircle a dark pond, its glassy surface a mirror. The pond is perfect, shallow and still. Jenny and I discard our clothes quickly and stand at the edge of the pond, the breeze deliciously cool against my naked skin and the cool grass tickling my feet. Jenny wraps her arms around herself, a pale waif in the moonlight, but different, older now. The softening of her lean body makes her more vulnerable, more shy than I remembered.
“Let’s go,” I say, her unease making me uncomfortable. We slide into the dark water. The warm water envelops my calves and the gooey mud oozes around my toes and ankles. A pool just wouldn’t do. It would be too cold, too full of chemicals, too sterile.
“Isn’t this delicious?” I ask Jenny who is floating silently beside me. With a sigh, I flip onto my back and listen to the cicadas in the trees.