The Widow Who Paid My Son Fair

At noon Elsie came out across the yard carrying a basket on one arm and a big glass jug of iced tea in her other hand.

She had changed into a blouse and jeans and put on a straw hat. She set everything down in the shade on the north side of the barn and called us down.

There were ham sandwiches on white bread with butter and yellow mustard, the way my mother used to make them.

There were sweet pickles, a bag of potato chips, and half a pan of bars, the kind with oatmeal and a layer of caramel in the middle. Cody ate three sandwiches before he said a word.

Elsie sat on an overturned five-gallon bucket and watched him eat. She did not say much. After a while she started to hum, low and steady, and it took me a minute to place it.

It was “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” the old one they still sing at our church about once a month.

“My husband used to sing that up in the loft,” she said when she saw me listening.

“Every summer. He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but he sang it every year.” She smiled at Cody. “He’d have liked you. He liked a boy who could stack straight.”

Cody went red under his sunburn and said, “Thank you, ma’am.” Then he asked her how long Mr. Rademacher had kept horses, and she told him, and she talked about him for twenty minutes while we sat in the shade.

Cody listened to every word. I had never loved my son more than I did right then.

By six o’clock we had two wagons in the loft, a little over two thousand bales. My shoulders hurt in places I had forgotten I had.

Cody’s forearms were scratched raw where his sleeves had pushed up. Elsie came out and told us to go home, and that she would not hear any argument about it.

“You’ve done more today than those boys used to do in two,” she said.

“Go home and eat and sleep. The rest will keep until tomorrow.” She looked at the sky, which was still clear and blue in every direction. “The rain won’t come until Thursday night. I have it on good authority. Channel Seven.”

I had my route on Thursday. I was out of the post office by seven and back by one-thirty, faster than I had driven that loop in years, and I changed in the car and drove straight to Elsie’s.

Cody had gone over at eight that morning by himself and had already thrown a third of the last wagon up.

He was in the loft when I got there. He had set up a fan from Elsie’s house in the loft door to move some air, and he had moved the elevator chute himself to reach the last open bay.

I came up the ladder and he looked at me, sweat running down his face, and grinned. “Hi, Mom,” he said.

We finished the last wagon at a quarter past six. I set the last bale myself, up against the rafters at the very top, tight as I could fit it, and then I sat down on the stack and did not move for a while.

Cody sat beside me, and we looked down the length of that loft full of hay.