Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)(4)
“Daddy,” he said nostalgically, “remember when…”
When Otis began to breathe more evenly and his face took on its natural color, Benjamin went back to hauling buckets of water. By nightfall he had watered down the back cornfield and most of the front lot.
That night he did not go to bed but remained on the porch with his daddy. It was the first time they spoke of Lila.
“Your mama was sick for a long time,” Otis said, “but she didn’t want to tell you.”
“Why?”
“She said with you off fighting for your country, you didn’t need more worries troubling you.”
“I wasn’t doing no fighting, Daddy. I was fixing trucks and hauling stuff from one place to another. I told Mama that in my letters.”
“I know. She read every one of those letters to me a dozen or more times.”
“Then why’d she—”
Otis laughed. “Your mama was your mama. Wouldn’t matter none if you was shelling peas, to her it was good as being a general.”
For a few moments Otis sat there twisting a scrap of cord he’d picked up in the field; then he turned to Benjamin with a sad smile. “Every Sunday when Reverend Beech asked for prayer requests, your mama stood up and said, ‘Please pray for our son, Benjamin, he’s a soldier in the United States Army.’ Being proud of you gave your mama a whole lot of happiness. Even when she was bad sick, she kept asking the Lord to take care of you.”
A look of regret clouded Otis’ eyes when he added, “I reckon she should’ve been praying for herself.”
Rain
The drought lasted until the first week of August. Then when half of the cornfields in Alabama were burnt to a crisp and the farmers had given up on praying for rain, it came with a vengeance.
The morning dawned with a grey haze hanging over the cornfields and the air heavy with the smell of heat. Benjamin rose from the damp sheet and pulled on a pair of cut-off trousers. “Daddy,” he called out to the porch, “any sign of rain out there?”
Otis looked across the dry cracked ground. “Same as yesterday.”
Benjamin poured himself a cup of day-old coffee and sliced up a green apple. It was too hot for coffee, too hot for food. Simply breathing was a day’s work in itself, and he had yet to carry water to the far field.
Gulping down a few sips of the coffee and leaving most of the apple to turn brown, he walked outside and groaned. “Lord God, ain’t this heat ever gonna break?”
“Sooner or later it will,” Otis answered. “Sooner or later.” He sat there, expressionless as the land.
“I’m hoping it’s sooner,” Benjamin said and started toward the well.
When the first clap of thunder came, Benjamin was in the far field. He’d already made three trips back to the well and dampened the ground with six buckets of water. He set the buckets on the ground and looked up at the sky. It was the dusky grey of early evening. No storm clouds in sight, just a dark, heavy-looking sky.
He raised a fist in the air and screamed, “Rain, dammit, rain!”
A second boom sounded and the sky grew black as night. Benjamin started back toward the house, but before he’d gone halfway a flash of lightning cut across the sky and hit a longleaf pine. The tree, five times taller than Benjamin himself and years older, split in two and crashed to the ground.
That’s when he took off running. By the time he reached the house he was soaked through to his underwear and wearing a smile that stretched across the full width of his face.
The dry spell ended with that storm. Throughout the remainder of August and well into October, the rain came most every afternoon; not a deluge, but soft gentle showers that left the field ankle-deep in thick black mud. Once the earth molded itself around the root of the plants, the corn that had days earlier been near stunted grew like weeds. Benjamin walked barefoot through the field checking and then rechecking the plants, the mud squishing between his toes and rising up to cover his feet. He’d come back to the house dragging clumps of mud with every step, but his smile was one he hadn’t smiled since the day he returned to Grinder’s Corner.
In less than two weeks the corn was ready for picking. Working together Otis and Benjamin harvested the crop, hauled it to market, then cut down the stalks. Otis seemed less weary, the evening breeze cooler, and Benjamin’s heart a bit lighter. It was as if the rain had washed away the weariness of summer and brought new life.
The summer corn brought a better than average price, and before they left town Benjamin bought a bushel of sweet potato slips along with the seed and fertilizer he’d need for a field of beets. In the early weeks of September he readied the ground for a second planting, first turning the soil, then leaving it to dry. Once the ground was harrowed, he began to plow, working from first light until he could no longer see his hand before his face. When Henry grew too weary to pull the plow, Benjamin unleashed the mule and pushed the single-blade plow by hand. Before the end of the month he had a field of sweet potatoes planted and the ground ready for a field of beets and a half field of broccoli.
With the ground soft and moist the second plowing was easier and Otis, who was looking a lot less peaked, found the energy to help. He didn’t spend long hours pushing the plow as Benjamin did but he’d walk behind, fixing the furrows so they were ready for seed.