Lambsquarters (20 page)

The sun in August gets tardy; she polishes her nails on the other side of the horizon, putting off her day, and ours. She is less focused on her warming task, her thoughts fixed on other hemispheres, or she mourns under the pall of late summer cloud, which gathers until the crepe sky is too dense, then falls in a shroud of rain over the fields. Drying is difficult.

The hay can be cut on a clear day, later in the afternoon.
Winds are down in August and the sultry air of the hottest days is too saturated to gather much moisture from cut stems on damp ground. The longer the hay is down, the more dew it absorbs. The hay can be raked, turned over to expose its leaves to sun and wind, but there is the risk of thatching, of trapping the water under and inside until mould takes hold and the crop is lost. Rain is deadly once the hay is cut.

It used to be that hay was cut and dried, forked loose onto wagons and led to barns by heavy horses sleek with sweat. When balers came the hay was packed tightly into rectangular loaves and tied with twine. Now square bales seem to be following the haystack into extinction, for all we see are acres of huge round bales, dotted over fields like enormous cylinders of shredded wheat, bleached blond by sustained sun and thatched over to deflect weather from the precious green gold inside. These bales stay out all summer, sometimes all winter. Certain farmers build sheds for them, others cover them with tarpaulins as silver as spacesuits or sausage them in white plastic tubes. But the bulk of the bales go it alone, piled up in a field or barnyard, moved there individually impaled on an enormous poker that graces the tractor’s front-end loader like an offering to Priapus.

Only an artist would envision these circular bales being carried like carrion in the mouth of a crow to feed its young. The artist, who died just as the bales were stacking in the fields, left his vision of them as part
of his legacy in a mural gracing the main street of Murphy’s Mill.

Because second-cut hay is so difficult to dry late in the summer, it is not usually baled in large rounds. Farmers are more likely to use second-growth to pasture their livestock or to cut it as haylage, blow it into wagons and pack it down to ferment in big bunker silos. Second-cut, scarce as it is, is the perfect delicacy for sheep after lambing. It is greener and leafier than anything they’ve seen since snowfall.

THE VIXEN
must have been surprised at the appearance of big round bales at the edge of her wood in late summer. The night was warm, damp, but with the sun clinging languidly to fat clouds in the west. The fox was taking advantage of something unusual and had found herself a resting place on top of a bale, where she watched the sunset and pondered whatever foxes ponder.

Pointy faced, bushy tailed, the fox adapted to the field. Her ancestors were here before mine, but we have learned to live together. She stretched out on that huge round bale like Cleopatra resplendent on her burnished throne, the hay below her perfumed with the sweet smell only second-cut gives off at sunset. Herbs and berries, sweet molasses, clover honey—some combination. The few grass shards shone like silver, and the ground below, bathed in the glory of impending dusk, turned purple.

A fox prefers not to be seen. Usually it appears as a glorious brush trailing into the woods, startled from some clearing, or as a speck in the distance, gone before it can be reached. In winter snow, fox prints make a continuous, surprisingly straight track, one foot in front of another in front of another in front of another. A straight line to somewhere. But I have followed tracks until I’m tired. The foxes always outfox me. The trail goes on and on until it disappears in a windswept field, melts in a muddle in the bushes or dissolves into a thicket. Never have I found the fox. Or the fox den. Or the fox skeleton.

The vixen on the hay bale was more feline than foxy. She stretched out, inert on her high watch. I expected her pups were weaned, her responsibilities waned. Wildest of animals, she pampered and treated herself to full relaxation. I wondered how many others had spotted her there in that remote field, her legs on pause, her lashes feeling the wind, her nose still, as she soaked up the last of the summer evening sun as if the rays could pierce her heart and carry her warmly through the winter winds.

How long would she have stayed had I not stopped? Until dark? Until dawn? Foxes are chiefly nocturnal, so my vixen was just starting her day. I can’t know, because she spotted me. The languor left her bones and her muscles tensed. Her ears pricked, her nose twitched. Her position was entirely the same, but her
attitude was that of a mother threatened, a wren crossed, a snake cornered. We stood, eyes joined, bodies still, taut. I could win the contest by not moving first. I lost the encounter. For she fled. Into the woods and away. Another mystery in a summer full of confusion.

Dusk fell.

BUS HOUSE

AFTER THE FIASCO
of the packing crate, split into its various veneers by the weather, caved in and warped, and looking like nothing better in life than a packing crate to begin with, we dispensed with a hut for a time. I sat in the car in inclement weather, both kids now perched on the edges of the seats, ready to hop out at the sign of the bus, their backpacks trebling the depth of their chests. There are no neighbours close by. We tried not to feel shame.

Not every farm has a bus house, and few kids seem to seek shelter in those that do exist. You see siblings milling about in the rain or sliding in snowstorms, their backpacks on the roadside, their dogs jumping about, their shelters empty. But for many rural dwellers, bus houses are overt indications of kid care. You need to let the world know you are prepared to provide some space for your children to wait, no matter what the weather.

Eventually the need to provide for his family got to Thomas. That and the need to build something—anything—so he could go and buy new wood. But like all of his projects, the shelter was not made without salvage. He found an old door (a very old door), tall and made of narrow tongue-and-groove, with a beautiful ancient glass window that distorted everything seen through it, including the school bus, which appeared to swim up the road in a wave of motion, humped like a porpoise in paint. He used old two-by-fours, still fully two by four and mined from the back of the drive shed, and cedar shingles left over from the roof. He salvaged the small mullioned window from the loft, for light from east and west.

When construction began, the children were still quite small. My daughter was taller than my son, though he was always taller than most kids his age. We’d been marking their heights on the mud-room’s door frame on every birthday and half-birthday since they were steady enough to stand. Pencil lines grew up the bare pine board like the rings in the tree it came from. At first I had to crouch down to make the line.

It was one of those warm weekends in September when we pretend the days are still long and we ignore the crickets chirping the season out like a warning Greek chorus. One of those Michaelmas daisy weekends, when their magenta and mauve heads hang heavy with late dew, nodding along the fencerow. One of
those
schadenfreude
weekends, which turn on you for no reason, resent your good will and suddenly blow cold and windy. The crickets retreat and the masked chorus takes centre stage, its utterances muted by Aeolus.

Up early, off to the lumberyard for boards and battens, the kids strapped into the jump seats of the truck. Home, by way of the Alderney Feed Mill, then coffee and the Saturday papers. The work began in earnest when the dew had dried and the chickens finished their egg-laying cackles. Their work done as ours began.

The kids carried nails in a box and tools. Saw and hammer, and hinges harvested with the Victorian door from some fancy dwelling. They begged to ride in the wheelbarrow, but it held the shingles and window; there was no room for them. Stones formed the foundation, laid flat at the corners, solid as rock to build on. The base was boxed with two-by-eights, and the floor was laid on top. Then the frame rose. And rose. For some reason Thomas built his shelter up into the sky until it blended into the maple tree. No one could say he was negligent now.

The weather grew cold and the children lagged and whined, bored with the chore of finding and handing, the game of hammering their own nails into useless board bits. They dallied and dithered, moved ever farther from the site until they found themselves in the house, begging for hot drinks and food. But their father soldiered on, framing and siding, battening
down the battens, boarding the shed roof. By the end of the day the structure was solid and steady, ready for finish and trim.

Next day the shingles went on, layer over cedar layer. The door was hung, the window set, and it all smelled wondrous and fine. Sap from the pine, musk from the cedar, must from the Victorian door. Oil in the hinges and the fresh reeking earth dug round the base. Two chairs, pressed back and bent, their seats dubiously split, their paint thickening out their patterns, fit side by side in the house. Marshalled up in neat rows, like the desks in old-fashioned schoolrooms, so the kids could wait in eclectic style, sheltered, dry and safe.

BEECH