Growing Season Read online

  Melinda reached over and patted his arm. “Who knows how it all will turn out? Just take it day by day, week by week. That’s what I’ve been doing lately. I guess I highly recommend it, since I don’t know what else to do.”

  He laughed. “I’ve been doing the same, now that you mention it. Let’s go back downstairs and see if there’s any coffee left.”

  “How easy would it be, really, to look after the animals?” She tried to contain her excitement as they rounded the landing on the stairs. This idea was starting to feel right, but she had to be realistic about what she could, and couldn’t, handle.

  “It’s simple, especially this time of year. Put out some feed for the chickens and the sheep, make sure they all have water. I’ll muck out the barn when it’s needed. But they all spend most of their time outside in the summer.”

  He stopped at the door at the bottom of the stairs and lowered his voice. Laughter echoed from the kitchen.

  “Hobo’s easy to please. He just needs food, water, someone to spend time with him. I’m afraid, though, that he’ll take it hard when Horace leaves. Think you can mend a dog’s broken heart?”

  “I think I might be able to try, for Hobo’s sake. And Horace’s, too. But first, I want to see if he has any more stories to share.”

  He did. Horace was giving an animated, blow-by-blow account to Roger of the time he chased an opossum around in the barn. “He was too scared to stop long enough to play dead!” His laugh was hoarse but hearty as he slapped a palm on the table.

  He looked a bit startled when Melinda came into the kitchen, as if he’d forgotten she was in his house. Then he brightened. “Well, what do you think of our little place? Sure cozy, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Horace, I really like your home. It reminds me of the farm my Grandpa and Grandma Foster had. You’ve done a great job keeping this place up.” Something told her a little affirmation would mean a lot to someone like Horace.

  His lined face broke into a wide smile. “Well, I do what I can. The place hasn’t had much of what you ladies call ‘decorating’ since our mother died twenty years ago. Wilbur and I just tried to keep things wiped down and maybe sweep a little here and there. Kevin’s been a big help to us.”

  Melinda poured a cup of coffee and looked for any sign of powdered creamer. She opened the cabinet above the coffee pot but saw only a box of dehydrated potatoes well past its prime. Surely there was more food in the other cabinets, but the starkness of the shelves made her heart ache.

  “Oh, sorry, there’s no creamer.” Kevin noticed her puzzled expression. “But there’s milk in the fridge.”

  It took her a moment to figure out that tugging down on its vertical handle was the trick to getting the vintage refrigerator open. The steel-grate shelves held only a half-empty gallon of milk, a porcelain bowl with a few carefully nested eggs, and one browning banana.

  “Horace says he gets to the store in Prosper those weeks I don’t come down,” Kevin lowered his voice below the laughter coming from the table. “But I’m not sure I believe him.” He reached for the milk and poured some into Melinda’s mug, his mouth set in a firm line.

  “When I take him shopping in Swanton, I stick extra items in the back of the cart because he keeps saying he doesn’t need much. I worry what he’s really eating, especially this time of year when the garden’s not producing yet. He cans in the summer and fall, but he runs through much of his stash during the winter.”

  “I can see why you’re worried,” Melinda whispered, stirring her coffee and glancing back at Horace. “He’s really at loose ends here. He seems to barely get by, and who knows how long he can sustain this?” She thought of the instability in her own life, how unsure she was of the future. But suddenly, thirty-nine didn’t seem so old. She was young enough, healthy enough to make a fresh start.

  The expectant look on Horace’s face as she took the last empty chair at the kitchen table nearly brought tears to her eyes. He couldn’t bring himself to discuss the situation with her, but he was obviously hoping she would say yes.

  Maybe I can’t do this, she thought as she stirred sugar into her coffee. But even if I could, maybe I shouldn’t.

  The smart thing to do was just say no, let Horace and Kevin down easy, stay at her parents’ instead. What did she know about looking after a bunch of sheep and chickens, and a dog who probably wouldn’t want anything to do with her? And working at Prosper Hardware? She hadn’t had a retail job since college, and the long hours on her feet and the cranky customers hadn’t been pleasant.

  But she was tired of not knowing what the next day, the next week, would bring. She was searching for something to hold on to. This house, the animals, the garden, they weren’t going anywhere. And they all needed her. So did Horace. So did Aunt Miriam.

  Kevin was right about the house. It was dated, it needed work. But as she looked around, she could see how the kitchen had been, and how it could be. Something felt right about how her father, Kevin, and Horace were leaning in around the table, laughing at some new story Horace was telling.

  It wasn’t just a few cups of cheap coffee around a scuffed kitchen table. There was a warmth in the room, a sense of stability, of family and friendship. She turned to the sunshine streaming in the double window, admired the healthy grass carpeting the side yard, the robins chirping in the large oak at the side of the driveway. A peace settled in her heart and, for the first time in weeks, she felt a glimmer of hope.

  CHAPTER 7

  Melinda enjoyed only a few moments of peaceful bliss at Horace’s kitchen table before there was a staccato of barks outside and a brown-and-white blur zoomed past the kitchen windows. Kevin and Horace nearly knocked their chairs over in their rush for the back door. Horace was more spry than she ever would have expected, trailing only a few feet behind his nephew as they hurried down the driveway.

  “Well, we might as well go, too,” Roger grinned and set down his mug. “They may need a hand.”

  They rushed out to find Hobo in a face-off with one very indignant ewe on the far shoulder of the gravel road. The sheep divided her efforts between glaring at Hobo and sampling the thick grass sprouting along the edge of the ditch. Hobo danced and barked, but made no effort to chase the ewe or drive her back up the lane.

  “He’s not a herding dog, that’s for sure,” Kevin called over his shoulder to Melinda and Roger as he jogged back to the barn, reappearing a few minutes later with a small plastic bucket of oats. “And Annie doesn’t take orders from anyone, even Horace. This isn’t her first escape.”

  Melinda saw Horace down by the mailbox, waving his arms at the ewe and ordering her to “get along.” Annie had no interest in his demands until she spied the grain bucket. Kevin let her get a mouthful, then shook the container and started up the lane backward, holding it just out of her reach. The ewe followed, slowly and casually, as if it was all her idea. Hobo nominated himself grand marshal of the little parade, barking and turning occasionally to make sure the others were close behind. Horace, looking a bit winded, brought up the rear. Melinda and Roger joined the procession where the front pasture met the barn.

  “How do you know which one is Annie?” she asked. “They all look the same to me.”

  “Oh, by her ear tag,” Horace pointed. “See, all our sheep have green tags, but hers is No. 23. She’s a feisty one. Was the smallest of a litter of triplets a few years back, when we still owned a buck and had lambs every spring. She wasn’t about to let her brother and sister push her around. We gave her bottles, too, when she was small. So she got spoiled. Thinks she owns the place.”

  Melinda could tell that Horace secretly adored Annie, and the reminiscing seemed to restore his good humor. He asked her to “man the gate,” which meant unlatching a wooden panel hinged between two fence posts and opening it at just the right time to let Kevin and a snorting Annie pass through. Some of the other sheep gathered to watch the commotion, then hurried into the barn with Kevin for an unexpected mid-morning treat.
/>   Melinda waited until the hovering ewes disappeared inside before she slipped back through the gate. She made sure the panel was aligned with the post, then slid the metal latch over with a satisfying click. Horace was watching, and she wanted to do it right.

  He nodded his approval. “Well, guess it’s time to fix that fence. Melinda, could you run into the house and bring out that blue toolbox on the back porch? It’d save me a few steps.”

  It was as if she had passed some sort of test. In Horace’s eyes, if she could manage the pasture gate, she could manage everything else with assistance from Kevin.

  Roger offered to help Kevin and Horace repair the hole in the fence, which was discovered in a front panel just past the drive. Kevin said a quick fix would span the gap, at least for now, and suggested Melinda check out the garden and outbuildings while the repair was made. “There’s never a dull moment out here, as you can see. But if you do decide to come, I promise I won’t expect you to fix fence.”

  Melinda fought back an unexpected urge to skip across the lawn, her grin growing wider as she marveled over the organized efficiency of Horace’s garden. The chickens clucked curiously as she approached their run. Only two came over for a closer look at their visitor, and she wondered which one was the infamous Pansy. Some of the birds were a lovely shade of rust, and the rest sported a mix of white and black feathers. She would have to ask Kevin about their breeds and how often she needed to gather eggs. There would be so much to learn, and so much to do. And she couldn’t wait to get started.

  There was another quick coffee break once the fence was repaired, then hearty handshakes all around. Melinda worked out her employment with Aunt Miriam that night, then called Kevin the next morning. He emailed her a lease outlining the details of their agreement, and she signed it and scanned it back from her parents’ home office. Things happened quickly after that.

  Linda, her former coworker at WP&S, had a niece at the University of Minnesota still looking for a summer apartment. Tonya was overjoyed to learn Melinda needed a subletter, and Melinda was overjoyed to learn Tonya’s parents didn’t blink at covering the full cost of the rent. Melinda got a set of house keys from Kevin, then gave Tonya spares for the apartment. In between visits to the hospital to spend time with Uncle Frank, she rented a small, pull-along trailer and began gathering what she needed to spend the rest of the summer in Iowa.

  “Look at you,” Cassie crowed one night as she and Susan helped pack totes to take to the farm. “Escaping the city for a few relaxing months in the country. What an adventure you’re going to have. How many pairs of jeans might you need?” She gestured at the tall stack in the closet.

  “Just grab those top three,” Melinda called over her shoulder as she counted out a meager ration of socks and underwear into another pile. The horrified look on Cassie’s face brought hearty laughter from Melinda and Susan.

  “You know the rules,” Melinda teased her fashion-obsessed friend. “Two totes of clothes, then one tote of house stuff per room, that’s it. I’m going to streamline and simplify my life this summer. Besides, I don’t want to make two round trips. So pack light.”

  “You sound like you’re off to Oregon on a wagon train. Surely you’ll need some cuter things, right?” She lifted out a watercolor-toned dress. Susan shook her head.

  “I don’t think the sheep would approve of that one,” Susan reached around Cassie for a small pile of faded tee shirts. “Too colorful. It might startle them, and we don’t want to give that Annie any ideas.”

  Melinda waved a worn sneaker at Cassie for emphasis. “I need pants, shorts, a few polos for working at the store. When you come for the weekend to visit, you can dress as chic as you like. Me, I’ll be spending most of the next few months pulling weeds, scooping feed and waiting on farmers buying nails and cereal.”

  ✽✽✽

  Only ten days after she spotted that sign on the side of the road, Melinda plopped the last tote of clothes on her bed and lowered herself to the comforter. She’d forgotten what a pain it was to move, to pack up clothes, books, kitchen gear and all the other pieces of your life and haul them to an unfamiliar place. Tomorrow was Tuesday, her first day at Prosper Hardware. If she wanted to get settled in at the farmhouse, she had to keep moving.

  It was a good thing she’d been so strict about what to bring. It took only a few minutes to fill three of the six drawers in the bedroom’s chest with most of her clothes. How grateful she was that Horace’s old dresser was still in this room, and the nightstand, too. She and her parents had enough trouble yesterday angling her queen-size bed up those narrow farmhouse stairs. By the time the frame was assembled and the box spring and mattress tugged into place, she had only wanted to go back to her parents’ house for a shower and a restful sleep in a made-up bed.

  Tonight, her first night at the farm, was going to make all of this feel real. The house was so peaceful, so quiet, but it also reminded her how alone she was. She was used to living by herself, but there was always someone nearby, just across the hall or on the other side of the wall. Out here, distance was measured in miles, not feet. And it was more than a half mile to the nearest farm, back north over the creek.

  She really wasn’t alone, though. The chore list, also on the kitchen counter, was evidence of that. None of it seemed too complicated. But still, she’d feel better once she made the rounds this evening. The neighbors handling chores since Horace left Thursday had come again early this morning, before her arrival.

  Kevin had made good on his promise to have the place ready within a week. A small army of neighbors and relatives must have made several passes through the farmhouse in just a few days, and she was impressed with the results. All the curtains had been washed and aired on the clothesline by the garden. The baseboards and wood floors were wiped down, the windows rubbed to a sparkle. In the kitchen, the linoleum floor had been buffed and the cabinet doors and counters scrubbed. The stacks of newspapers and much of the other clutter had discretely vanished, with Melinda suspecting most of it was now stacked in the large upstairs bedroom used for storage.

  She admired the clean-if-faded rag rug on the bedroom’s freshly swept wood floor as she added a reading lamp to the nightstand, which fit nicely between the bed and the west window. The oblong rug, the perfect length to be rolled out next to a bed, had been waiting for her when she arrived yesterday. The blues, greens and browns in the striped runner picked up the neutral tones in her comforter. The windows in this room had been stark and nearly bare on her first visit, topped with only some tired vinyl roller shades. But someone had taken the time to dress them with white eyelet-trimmed curtains, and a delicate crocheted runner was draped across the polished surface of the bureau.

  The dark varnish on the closet door stuck a bit as she turned the iron knob. There were just a few spare hangers dangling from the metal rod, and the iron hooks drilled into the wood strips on the perimeter were empty. She imagined how young Horace and his siblings would have put away their few overalls and dresses on those hooks.

  “How did they ever all squeeze into this house?” she marveled as she hung up a few shirts and pairs of khaki pants. “I probably brought more clothes with me than they ever had new.”

  There was a thump and a roar outside the west window as the air conditioning unit kicked in, and soon a refreshing wave of coolness drifted out of the scroll-patterned iron vent in the oak floor. “I couldn’t do this without you,” she called out to the metal box down below. “I’m not as tough as you might think I am.” Kevin’s note said he had closed the house up again Saturday after the cleaning spree. She was to call if the air conditioner didn’t stay on. It was mid-June, and the humidity was on the rise.

  Melinda smiled as she watched Hobo scoot out from under the shade of the picnic table and visit the water bowl by the back steps. A few slurps and he wandered back to his favorite napping spot, pausing only long enough to study a squirrel chattering at him from the boughs of the oak tree. But he didn’t bark, or
try to start a chase. Kevin had warned her that Hobo would take Horace’s absence hard, and to not expect too much from him at first.

  “They’ve never really been apart,” he said Thursday night on the phone, his voice wavering. “And today, I had to split them up. I just hope Hobo will eat, that he won’t give up with Horace gone. Oh, Melinda, I just hope we’re doing the right thing.”

  Horace had his hard-side suitcase packed with a few changes of clothes by the time Kevin and Ada arrived Thursday morning. Kevin helped his uncle fill a cardboard box with some books, his checkerboard and a photo of Hobo that had been displayed on the fireplace mantel. The morning chores had been finished hours ago, but Horace, Kevin and Hobo took a walk around the farm while Ada straightened up the kitchen and made sure her brother hadn’t left anything important behind.

  Horace had warned the hens to not peck Melinda, and admonished the ewes to give her room when she brought their grain. Hobo supervised while Kevin loaded Horace’s belongings into the trunk of Ada’s car, then Kevin and his mom took their time locking up the house to give Horace a few minutes alone with his beloved dog.

  “I’ll see ya soon, boy, real soon,” Kevin had heard Horace say. “Melinda is coming to stay with you, and everything’s going to be OK.”

  Once Horace was settled in the car’s front seat, he launched into a rundown of all the things he longed to discuss with Wilbur, how happy he would be to eat meals with his brother again. And he was eager to show those other retired farmers how a game of checkers was really played. But when he turned his head away, Kevin saw the tears sliding down his uncle’s weathered cheek.

  Hobo sat at attention at the side of the driveway, his eyes mournful, as Kevin backed the car around in front of the garage and drove away down the lane.

  “I could barely put the car in gear,” he had told Melinda. “I don’t know who was crying harder, Horace or me or my mom in the backseat. I managed to get myself under control by the time we got to the blacktop.”