“Thank you, ma’am. Name’s Hatcher Jones.”
Kate hesitated then gave her name. “I appreciate your help, Mr. Jones. I’ll bring you dessert in a few minutes.” She ducked back inside, closed the door behind her, served the children and herself, all the time aware of Hatcher Jones on the other side of the solid wooden door. It made her feel awkward to sit at the table while he sat on the step, yet nothing in the world would persuade her to invite him inside the house. Most hobos were ordinary men on the move looking for work wherever they could find it but even without Mary’s frightened look she became acutely conscious of the vulnerability of her two children.
Mary and Dougie finished and Kate deemed the cake cool enough to cut. She put a generous slice in a bowl, poured on thick, cool cream and took it outside.
Hatcher Jones handed her his spit-clean plate and took the bowl of dessert, his eyes appreciating the food as he murmured his thanks.
Kate hovered at the doorway, breathing in the pleasure of her farm. “Where are you from, Mr. Jones?”
“From nowhere. Going nowhere.” He seemed preoccupied with the bowl of food.
“You must have belonged somewhere at some time.” The idea of being homeless, having no roots still made her tense up inside. She couldn’t stand the thought of someone out there, hunkered over a lonely campfire. Cold, wet, miserable, vulnerable to prying eyes. It was a too-familiar sensation she couldn’t shake. Not even after all these years.
He shrugged. “Too long ago to matter.”
“Going anywhere in particular? I hear a lot of men are heading toward the coast.” She chuckled. “At least it rains there.”
“Been there. Seems all it did was rain.”
“So you didn’t like it?”
Again he shrugged, a languid one-shoulder-higher-than-the-other gesture that said better than any words that he was short on opinions about such things. “Can get too much of even a good thing.”
“You surely can’t like this drought better’n rain. Even too much rain.”
“Drought or rain. What’s the difference? Man just has to make the best of it.”
“A woman does, too.”
He glanced over his shoulder to her. “It’s not easy.”
“No. It’s not. But we do okay.”
He nodded and looked across the fields. “How much land you got here?”
“Two quarters.”
“How much in crop?”
“A hundred acres.”
He grunted. “Planning to put it all down to wheat?”
How long had it been since anyone had asked her about her farm? Doyle’s only question was when did she intend to get rid of it and marry him? Her answer was always the same. Never. This farm belonged to her. Lock, stock and piles of dust. She would never let it go or even take out a mortgage on it.
Even Sally, dear friend that she was, couldn’t understand Kate’s dedication to the land. All Sally could think was how fortunate Kate was to have a beau such as Doyle. Handsome, debonair, well-off, a lawyer with a big house. “You could quit working like a man,” Sally said often enough.
Kate drew in a long breath full of spring sweetness. The smell of new growth. Who’d believe green had its own scent? She’d once tried to explain it to Doyle and he’d laughed. Unfortunately the endless dust drowned out all but tantalizing hints of the freshness. So far this spring there hadn’t been any blinding dust storms but no significant amounts of rain, either. What was the official total? .06 inches. Hardly worth counting.
She gathered up her shapeless plans for the spring work and put words to them. “I want to put in some corn. Seems to me it’s pretty hardy once it’s tall enough the gophers don’t eat it off.”
“No problem with blackbirds attacking it?”
“Some. But there’s a bonus to that. They’re good eating. ‘Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.’”
He straightened his shoulders inside his worn blue shirt, hesitated as if to consider her words and then grunted in what she took for amusement. “God’s blessings often come disguised.”
She stared at his back, saw his backbone edging at the faded blue of his shirt. A hobo who talked about God? Even more, about God’s blessings. She couldn’t keep herself from asking, “What blessing is disguised in being homeless?” She could recall none.
He lifted his head and looked out across the field. She wondered what he saw. Did the open road pull at him the way it had her father?
“There are certain advantages.” He spoke softly, with what she could only guess was a degree of gratitude.
She rubbed at a spot below her left ear where her jaw had knotted painfully and tried not to remember how she’d hated the constant moving, the never knowing where home was or where they would sleep. Every time they settled, even knowing it was temporary, she hoped this would be the last time they moved. There was no last time for her father, still restlessly on the move. But a time came when Kate refused to move on. She felt no call to wander. No appeal of the long winding road.
Hatcher Jones considered her. “A hundred acres to seed this spring? Quite a job. You got a tractor by any chance?”
She gladly pulled her thoughts back to the farm—her home, her security. “I got me a tractor.” She’d managed to limp it through last year with the help of the oldest Oliver boy whose ability and patience coaxed it to run. But since Abby Oliver headed north, she had no one to help her. “It needs a few repairs.” She almost snorted. A few repairs. It was as pathetic as measuring .06 inches of precipitation and calling it rain.
Hatcher pushed to his feet. “I’ll be moving on. Again, thank you for the meal.”
“You’re welcome. Thank you for taking care of the windmill.” The rotary wheel hummed quietly on the tower. No more protesting squeal of dry gears. Another month before she’d have to brave the heights again.
Hatcher stood with his hat in his hand, looking as though he had something more he wanted to say. Then he jammed the blackened hat on his head and nodded. “Good food. Thank you.”
Kate laughed. “Does that mean you won’t post a secret sign at the end of the lane warning hobos away?”
She couldn’t see his eyes, hidden under the shadow of his hat, but his mouth flashed a quick smile.
“No, ma’am. But I won’t be letting others know how good a cook you are, either. Wouldn’t want a whole stream of hungry men descending on you.” He gave a quick nod.
“Now I’ll leave you in peace. God bless.”
She watched him stride away, his long gait eating up the road in deceptive laziness and suddenly, she felt lonely. She thought of calling him back. She wanted to talk more about the farm. Ask him what he’d seen in his travels. How severe was the drought in other places? Did he really
