Read Online Dollybird by Anne Lazurko - Free Book Online

aching joints, but I liked the predictability of the work, the smells, the feeling I was doing something that mattered. And the urgency of it; the whole crew checked the sky as though it might fall down around us, racing billowing black clouds that grew and threatened for miles, running to get the field done because the next storm might be bringing winter with it. The work kept Taffy locked away somewhere.
    We ate four times a day: breakfast, lunch, another meal in late afternoon and yet another at the end of the day. And the Scotsmen brought crowdy to the field, a mix of oatmeal and water they claimed would give me energy. A refreshment they called it. It tasted like wet sawdust. Otherwise, the women of the farms cooked for the entire crew as well as their own large families.
    It was a cool evening and we were camped in a circle in a field not far from the farmyard. The farmer looked exhausted, his wife worn out. Still, she beckoned us to join her family and enjoy harvest ice cream. She poured salt over packed ice surrounding the bucket of cream, then turned the crank until the little ones crowded around her hollering, “It’s thick, Momma. Momma, it’s ready.” Momma insisted on a few more minutes of cranking before declaring the ice cream fit to eat. It was cold, creamy perfection. I held it on my tongue to save the taste there as long as I could before it dissolved, and I swallowed it along with the dusty rawness in my throat. I smiled at the woman whose name I couldn’t remember. Mary or Kate or Frieda. There’d been so many farm wives.
    Gabe sat a little apart from the rest of us. He’d been staring across the fire toward the house. All through the harvest, I’d said nothing to him, staying away from him as Henry advised. I only watched as he convinced a big French guy to join a poker game and then cheated him out of a day’s earnings with an ace up his sleeve. And I minded my own business when I saw him pocket a gold watch at the general store in Benson. I watched my back and slept with my moneybelt under my head. I’d no plans to get involved.
    From beside the fire I could see the farmer’s daughter, a silhouette standing in the open doorway of the house. I’d seen her earlier, guessed her to be thirteen or so, dark hair pulled into two long braids. She’d stared right back at me, innocent, like she didn’t know her skin was clear and her breasts made a small rise under her shirt – temptation to a lesser man. She was fresh and beautiful. Like Taffy...before... Gabe was looking at her with hard eyes. There was a sudden chill on my skin.
    Behind me someone tuned a guitar, and the farmer started singing cowboy songs about love and losing love and horses and dogs. We all sat quiet, listening, embarrassed by it, the western tunes strange to our eastern ears.
    And then Henry gave us a Celtic dance on his harp, and two or three from home stood up, stepping kind of awkward-like, until everyone was clapping and hollering “faster, faster.” The moonshine appeared, and soon the strangeness was gone, and we were all flushed and homesick and happy, the evening mild, a light wind keeping the mosquitoes away, the dust of the harvest hanging in the air and the taste of ice cream faint on our lips.
    Without really looking, I saw that Gabe was gone. The door of the house was empty, too, and I searched round the fire for the girl’s face. I worked hard to keep down the bad feeling rising in my throat. Standing and slowly stretching, I started toward the yard. It was stupid, giving in to the bad feeling, but my legs just took me. I needed some time alone anyway. The moonshine made my head fuzzy and the dark of the night made it worse, like I was walking sideways and uphill.
    â€œHey there.” I patted one of the horses in a pen near the barn and crooned to her like she was a woman. “Nice night. Aren’t you a beauty then?” Fear was growing to