Read Online Fields of Home by Ralph Moody - Free Book Online

pines on the ridge when he called to me, “Take the hosses in and fetch your cows. Victuals’ll be ready afore long.”
    Grandfather went to sleep at the supper table again that night, and Millie let me do the chores by myself.

7
    Uncle Levi
    I T TOOK me a day and a half to finish mowing the orchard, and I had a good time doing it. The mowing machine didn’t give me much trouble, and the yella colt only balked twice. Both times, Grandfather was away from the field, and the old horse hated having his ears wired so much that neither of his balky spells lasted more than a few minutes. Grandfather didn’t come near the machine once while I was mowing. He spent about half his time away from the orchard, but every time I saw him he was swinging a scythe as fast as he could go.
    My second afternoon was bad. Grandfather gave me a right-handed snath and scythe, and made me mow under the apple trees with him. I’d always been left-handed, the same as he was, and couldn’t make the right-handed scythe come within a foot of going where I wanted it to. I tried hard enough that I got water blisters on both hands, but I couldn’t keep the blade from bumping into rocks. Grandfather scolded at me all afternoon, and the more he scolded the worse I did. When the sun was nearly down to the top of the pines, he shouted, “Hang up that snath and scythe and go fetch the cows! Never seen such an awkward, useless boy in all the days of my life.”
    I was so mad when I brought the cows in that I made up my mind to go back to Colorado just as soon as I could get my suitcase packed. I banged the stanchion bars around the last cow’s neck, stuck the hold-peg in place, and was turning toward the tie-up door when, from just outside, Millie called, “Hurry up, Ralphie! Supper’s on the fire and Levi’s here. I done all the rest of the chores a’ready.” Then she turned and ran back to the house like a little girl.
    When I went into the back pantry I’d have known Uncle Levi was there, even if no one had told me and I couldn’t hear his voice. The table was stacked with big paper bags and bundles. Oranges were spilling out of one bag that was lying on its side. From the shape of another, I knew it was crammed full of bananas and, beside half a dozen smaller bags, there were two big bundles in slick brown paper that I knew would be meat.
    “Hi there, Ralphie!” he called to me from the kitchen as soon as I had my cap off. “How’s Thomas using you?”
    I couldn’t say anything except, “All right. I didn’t know you were coming down.”
    “Didn’t know it myself,” he called back, “till I got Thomas’s letter making out like he was on the point of death. Thomas, it’s a God’s wonder you ain’t scared ten years off my life! How many times, right in the midst of haying, have you wrote and let on like you was dying?”
    “Ain’t feeling well! Ain’t feeling well! Ain’t been feeling up to scratch for more’n a month,” Grandfather snapped at him.
    “Looking pert as a peacock to me,” Uncle Levi told him. “Don’t calc’late there’s nothing wrong with you that a little good meat to eat and a little help in haying won’t fix. Didn’t know Ralphie was down here. Ain’t he considerable help to you?”
    “Hmfff! Ain’t no more of a farmer than you be! Swings a snath and scythe like it was a flail swingle! Wants to fritter away all his time ’round the carriage house tinkering up machinery! By fire! I never seen a boy that thought he knowed so tarnal much and could do so little. Telling me to plant strawb’ries and tomatoes! Hmfff! Take a man a year to learn him you can’t cut stone with a scythe!”
    With Grandfather talking that way about me, I didn’t want to go into the kitchen, so I pumped a panful of water and was all ready to wash my hands when Uncle Levi came out into the back pantry. The first thing he did was to reach out to shake hands, and said, “Thomas don’t think nobody’s a farmer lest he can