He was picked up at the side of the road by a farmer named Jackson several months ago, and by the end of the trip, which took them down to Markham and back again, to a farm just outside Pontypool, the farmer had taken on his grim-looking passenger as a hand. Jackson led the lifeless man into the cellar, where his son Harley slept, and left him there to wait out the winter months in bed until the first haying in August. And now, after an interminable season spent with the conjugating clicks of a furnace and the hug-me glow of a battered space heater, the Higher Power is woken by Harley’s alarm on the first day of haying season.
Halfway up the stairs the Higher Power smells bacon, and by the time he opens the door, heavy with winter coats, onto a large kitchen, the mould on the back of his tongue suddenly tastes of toast, fried tomatoes and pancakes. Dolly, the farmer’s wife, turns to him from an electric skillet full of bacon sitting on a dishwasher and smiles, gesturing with a greasy spatula for him to sit. The table has been extended with a mismatched leaf to accommodate a vast array of hot food. Three tall stacks of light-brown pancakes, a huge peppery bowl of steaming tomatoes, a long plate, heavy with bright-green-and-red-flecked omelettes oozing cheese. An entire corner of the table is devoted to a small city of jams and preserves. A tray of still-sizzling steaks sits between two fat glass pitchers of freshly squeezed orange juice. Jackson is seated at the head of the table, and though he’s a reserved man by nature the Higher Power senses an excitement in him today. He is wearing cleaned and pressed work clothes with a bright orange cap on his head. He is staring thoughtfully at his plate, chewing, taking care, it seems to the HP, that his long grey sideburns, trimmed and combed, stay clear of the huge forkfuls of food he brings up between them.
Jackson acknowledges the HP’s presence at the table by anxiously breathing once and pausing his hands over his plate. When the HP has settled, Jackson continues eating, hurrying now for everyone else’s sake. A leader should lead, and Jackson looks up frequently through the curtains of the window above the sink, picturing himself out there already, frowning at a series of disasters that always marks the first day of haying. Dolly is watching him above her thick glasses and the HP notices how striking this is, this looking, the peculiar distance in her eyes. Dolly knows Jackson will not return her gaze. A shy man, even around his own wife. Jackson looks back at his plate, frowning, breathing in anxiously again. He doesn’t look at her, but he knows that she’s watching him and he says, “Ah-yeh, ah-yeh.” Dolly wipes her hands on her recently ironed apron and looks out the window to where her husband has pictured himself. She leans over the dishwasher and looks out further to the acres of cut and fallen hay.
“Hope it’s dry enough, Jackson.”
Jackson doesn’t look up, and the scowl he makes is nearly a smile. Dolly steps over to the doorway that leads to the cellar and flicks on a light behind a hanging coat. Jackson attempts to look up after her but winces at the effort, “Ah-yeh. Ah-yeh.”
Dolly looks back, smiling briefly at the HP.
“Harley!”
A nearly orange dog moves off the living room carpet and clicks its toes across the yellow linoleum of the kitchen. Dolly follows the dog to the end of the counter and leans ahead of it, stretching her arm to open the door in the dog’s path.
Harley appears, stripped to the waist, his blond hair towelled up. While directing his appeal to Jackson, he accepts a light admonishment from his mother’s eyes.
Jackson shuffles to rise, with his hands circling an empty plate, and waits for Harley to sit down. The Higher Power watches Harley’s long arms reaching for syrup, butter, salt, pepper. The young man surrounds his plate with condiments before sliding clean fingers under the fifth pancake in the pile halfway up the table. When Jackson has left, Dolly turns to the HP.
“Do you need more toast?”
The HP pushes his chair back. Tossing a napkin from his lap, he reaches for a toothpick. He turns it in the air towards Dolly before dropping it on his tongue, rolling it into the corner of his mouth. All winter the HP has had a fantasy that come haying season he will say “Thank ya kindly, ma’am” often, and he considers this a dry run. As he leaves the table Dolly lays a hand on his back and places a large plastic jug of water in his hands. He moves his shoulder blade under her hand so that she can feel him. He nods, satisfied that one of the reasons he feels so fine this morning is the fact that he feels no compulsion to disclose his good mood to anyone in particular. But Dolly can tell that her guest is happy, that given half the chance he might just get past that terrible state he was in when he arrived those many dark months ago.
“He’s comin’. Aren’t ya, Harley?”
Dolly directs this comment to the HP, who feels a status is bestowed on him by her. The HP takes it as a way of positioning him in the chain of command. Not just a hand, maybe the second man. He senses that one need only be a man here; it doesn’t matter that your demons once got the better of you. You’re a man. And just by being here, assuming a place on haying day, you are ultimately tougher than those demons. Dolly looks at her son as if he’s a man too young to have demons, someone who, like Dolly, follows after those who do. The HP winks and clicks his tongue, thanking the little lady with a deferential nod. He steps out into the backyard, looking over the field on the first haying day.
The farm is relatively small, three twenty-five-acre fields that begin at the base of a slope off the backyard stretch out to the highway. To the south stands a large grey barn and a fenced-in field. The HP notices twenty odd cows gathered in a distant corner. They sit and stand in what must be an uncomfortable fit of bodies, as self-conscious as a family posing for a formal portrait. They turn their heads in unison away from the HP, in response to some invisible stimulus.
The work done on these farms is performed in the old way; unlike government-run farms, these are businesses that have hung close to ruin for generations. These farms are not about preparing animals for slaughter but about preparing families to live with what they inherit. One of the things all the farming families spread across this difficult land inherit is a deep and elaborate stock of stories about each other. Each piece of land is the public log of a private struggle, and for this reason a great deal of animosity is exchanged through the windshields of cars passing each other on rural roads. Most of the stories begin as ammunition stored and distributed against specific hostilities between neighbours. Beneath each story is a forgotten dispute, and above them are cast the loose lines of future feuds. Any given farmer’s day-to-day struggle to survive is interpreted by his neighbours as perverse. Grotesque. Unresolved. Unsuccessful. Story laden.
These stories are also the mark of membership in this community. In haying season all the farms join in a communal pool of machinery and labour. One farmer will cut several fields of hay, and another will bale them, and yet another will come along with a crew and a convoy of wide, flat trailers to haul the bales up onto conveyors that roll them offinto the black, dusty mows. This summer ritual binds the community. It is the counterpart to winter’s bitter collection of tales. The deep-blue ice of dependency and imagination give way to back slaps and bright forgetting in sunshine. All is forgiven. The good families are rising above.