Reggie’s wife, Allison, had died two years earlier — and so for two years, Reggie had been listening at night for the wind rattling the chains of the realty signs flanking his property. Sure, he told his brother-in-law. He could use an extra pair of hands.
At sunset, while we followed Mr. Peterson to the van at the edge of the road, Reggie pointed to the sky and told us the clouds at this time of day always reminded him of peeled tangerines. We boys and Jackie Connolly fought our way into the backseats of the van. Mr. Peterson unloaded a single large duffel and hugged Charitye, the only one of us to stay. Again the two men shook hands, and Mr. Peterson said to his brother-in-law: “I don’t mean to repeat myself, but please make sure she’s careful around that horse.” To which, Reggie smiled his cowboy’s smile and said, “We’ll be extra, extra careful.” Then we were off, and the dust behind the diminishing van rolled east with the light but influential wind. As Mr. Peterson’s van carried us away, I watched Charitye shrink in my window, scribbling in her notepad, craning her neck to the page, straining her eyes against the twilight.
In the van, Mr. Peterson said, “Kind of a kook, huh?” And when the boys laughed and the pimple on Jackie Connolly seemingly doubled in size as she chided them, I felt a deep, strange respect for Reggie, and a longing to have known him better.
So although I couldn’t see them any longer, couldn’t even see the farm — we were well on our way back to town — I imagined Reggie, a man who had always respected a person’s right to privacy, ask as gently as he could what Charitye was straining so hard to write in that notepad of hers.
“Lines,” she said, “for a poem.”
“Ah,” Reggie said, more a breath than language. “A poet. I once wanted to be a poet.”
“I figured,” she said, “what with the clouds and the tangerines.”
Reggie expected her to ask what had changed. He wanted, stupidly, to tell her that farming was a kind of poetry you got to do with your hands. He even had a little joke lined up about the two professions, how steeped they both were in anachronism. But by the time they made it back inside the house for dinner, the thread of the conversation had already been lost.
* * *
Since boyhood, Reggie had always appeared more confident than he actually was — lifting his chin when he spoke, projecting his voice, exerting little energy and displaying little patience with those who could not keep up — and for this reason, many of us Future Farmers believed he was born and raised on that little alfalfa farm of his. Sometimes, late at night, when he looked out at the silhouettes of Joshua trees dancing black against the deep blue between the stars, he bought into that story himself.
The truth was his father-in-law had owned the farm, and Reggie didn’t move out there from town until he and Allison had been married for sixteen years, when her mother died and it became clear the old man was soon to follow. Allison and her kid brother, Keith, fought about selling the land to the proprietor of the nearby golf course, a man named Knickerbocker, who wanted to build a new driving range on the property. Keith argued for the money — at the time, his daughter, Charitye, was an infant, and the money wouldn’t have been useless. Allison must have said something about keeping the farm in the family, because Keith, lifting his daughter in his arms as if she were a smoking gun, said, “I’m the only one with a family, Allie.”
Which is when Allison Nelms reportedly removed her wedding ring — she was a lefty — and punched her brother clear across the nose.
* * *
At dawn on Charitye’s first morning at the farm, Reggie expected a fight to get her out of bed. He slipped into his jeans and boots, snapped the buttons on his shirt, and clacked along the hardwood hallway to the spare bedroom she’d sidled into after dinner the night before.
After four increasingly loud knocks, he let himself in. Both the twin-sized beds (as kids, Allison and Keith had shared the room) were made. The large black duffel — unpacked and deflated — lay folded in the corner, the only visible evidence that Charitye Peterson had visited at all.
Reggie left the house to find his niece knee-deep in the alfalfa field. Again she was scribbling in her notepad.
“Surprised you’re up so early,” he said. “Took me a few months to get used to waking up with the sun.”
“Sleep’s not my thing,” Charitye said, not looking up from the paper.
From the coop, the chickens clucked.
“I’m also surprised you’re out here,” he said, “as opposed to feeding the horse. Your dad told me I’d have to work my ass off to keep you away from her.”
At this she looked up. “Same horse that killed her, isn’t it?”
To that, Reggie didn’t say a word, just hummed an affirming hum.
“I prefer plants anyway,” she said, returning to her notes. “Smell nicer.”
“That what your poems are about? Plants and flowers?”
“Poems aren’t about anything,” she said. “They are things.”
“I see. What kind of things, then, do you write?”
She exhaled into her own mouth, making little zeppelins of her lips. “I’d rather you just read one and decide for yourself. At the end of my time here, I’ll leave a poem on your kitchen table. How’s that?”
“Poetic,” Reggie said. “I’ll look forward to it. In the meantime, why don’t you follow me to the chickens. They sound hungry.”
“A few more minutes.”
“I think you’d be remiss not to come along now.”
Charitye laughed, irritated. “Those chickens can wait a few more minutes, can’t they?”
“I’m sure they can,” Reggie said. “But you’ll want to cover your notepad, at least.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—”
The sprinklers sputtered to life. Charitye, shrieking, slid her notepad under her shirt and hopscotched her way out of the alfalfa.
She tilted her head to twist water out of her hair, a deeper red now that it was wet. “Well played,” she said, fighting back a smile. “Well played.”
* * *
Reggie had to drive Charitye to class and back four times before the school year officially ended, at which point, he taught Charitye how to bale hay. “Might as well learn something while you’re out here,” he said, helping her into the tractor.
“With alfalfa,” he explained, “it’s all about the leaves. Two-thirds of the plant’s protein and three-quarters of its digestible nutrients are in the leaves, and when you’re selling alfalfa hay to feedstores, that’s what they’re paying for. No leaves, no cash. Not even for a pretty, teenaged, redheaded poet, okay?”
He showed her where he parked the equipment: mower, tractor, swather, baler. “Once the plant’s mowed, you attach the swather to the tractor, which you drive — carefully, carefully — dragging the swather behind, until half the cut alfalfa is arranged in neat windrows.”
“Halfalfa,” she said when they got back on solid ground.
“What?”
“Half the alfalfa, halfalfa, is arranged in cornrows.”
“Whatever helps you remember it,” said Reggie. “But it’s windrows, not cornrows. Like ‘windows,’ but with an r.”
“We ready to bale, or what?” she asked. “Should I attach the baler?”