MIDDLE-AGED BEN HACKETT and the team, Cromwell and Julia, were haying to beat hell when the thunderstorm broke on the east ridge. Ben knew it was coming, because all morning the thunder had rumbled up and down the river; but Ben did not want the storm to break until he had drawn the hay to the barn, and when the deluge was over he felt like killing somebody. Ben had been sweating-hot before the storm came and now he was mad. The rainwater cooled him and took some of the anger out of him. But he still swore at the thunderstorm for ruining his first-crop hay.
The storm had passed over and the sun came out again as hot as ever, but just the same he had to throw off the load of hay he had on the rack. Swearing and sweating, Ben unloaded and drove Cromwell and Julia across the hayfield into the lane. Ben filled his pipe and climbed up on the hayrack. Clucking like a hen with a new brood of chicks, Ben urged the team toward the highroad half a mile away. The sun was out, and it was hot again. But the hay was wet. Damn it all!
“If God knows all about making hay in this kind of weather, He ought to come down and get it in Himself, by Jesus,” Ben told Cromwell and Julia.
Cromwell swished his horsehairs in Ben’s face and Julia snorted some thistledown out of her nose.
Glaring up at the sky and sucking on his pipe, Ben was almost thrown to the ground between the team when Cromwell and Julia suddenly came to a standstill.
“Get along there, Cromwell!” Ben growled at the horse. “What’s ailing you, Julia!”
The horse and mare moved a pace and again halted. Ben stood up, balancing himself on the hayrack.
“By Jesus!” he grunted, staring down the lane.
An automobile, unoccupied, blocked the narrow trail.
Ben climbed down, swearing to Cromwell and Julia. He paced around the automobile uncertainly, inspecting it belligerently. No person was in sight.
“Damn a man who’d stand his auto ablocking the lane,” Ben grumbled, glancing at Cromwell and Julia for confirmation. “I guess I’ll have to push the thing out of the way myself. By Jesus, if whoever left it here was here I’d tell him something he wouldn’t forget soon. Not by a damn sight!”
But Ben could not move the car. It creaked and groaned when he pushed and when he pulled, but it would not budge a single inch. Knocking out his pipe and wiping his face, Ben led the team around the automobile through the undergrowth. When he got back into the lane, he stopped the horses and went back to the car. He glanced inside for the first time.
“By Jesus!” Ben exclaimed high-pitched.
Hastily glancing up the lane and down, he opened the door and pulled out a pair of silk stockings.
Ben was too excited to say anything, or to do anything. Still fingering the stockings he presently looked in the driver’s seat, and there, to his surprise, under the steering wheel sat a gallon jug of cider almost empty. Ben immediately pulled the cork to smell if it was hard. It was. He jabbed his thumb through the handle hole and threw the jug in his elbow. It was hard all right, but there was very little of it left.
“Cromwell,” he announced, smacking his lips with satisfaction, “that’s Hetty good cider, for a windfall.”
As he carefully replaced the jug under the steering wheel, Ben saw a garment lying on the floor. It was entangled with the do-funnys that operated the car. Carefully he pulled the garment out and held it before his eyes. He could not figure out just what it was, yet he knew it was something women wore. It was pinkish and it was silkish and it looked pretty. And there was very little of it. Ben stared openmouthed and wild-eyed.
“By Jesus, Cromwell,” Ben licked his mustache lip, “what do you know about that!”
Cromwell and the mare nibbled at the road grass, unconcerned.
Ben fingered the drawers a little more intimately. He turned them slowly around.
“It’s a female thing, all right, Cromwell.” Ben danced excitedly. “It’s a female thing, all right!”
Holding the garment high in his hands, Ben climbed on the hayrack and drove down the lane into the highroad. The garment was nice and soft in his hands, and it smelled good, too.
He rode down the road thinking about the drawers. They filled him with the urge to do something out of the ordinary but he didn’t know what he could do. When he reached Fred Williams’s place, he drew up the team. Fred’s wife was stooping over in the garden. Ben pushed the garment carefully into his pants pocket.
“Nice day, today, Mrs. Williams,” he called airily, his voice breaking foolishly. “Where’s Fred?”
“Fred’s gone to the village,” she answered, looking around bent over her knees.
Ben’s hand stole into the pocket feeling the garment. Even in his pocket out of sight it made him feel different today.
Hitching the team to the horse rack, Ben went into the garden with Fred’s wife. She was picking peas for supper. She wasn’t bad-looking. Not by a damn sight!
Watching her while she pulled the peas from the vines, Ben strode around her in a circle, putting his hand into the pocket where the pink drawers were. The woman did not say much, and Ben said nothing at all. He was getting so now he could feel the drawers without even touching them with his hands.
Suddenly Ben threw his arms around her waist and squeezed her excitedly.
“Help!” she yelled at the top of her voice, diving forward. “Help!” she cried. “Help!”
When she dived forward, both of them fell on the pea vines, tearing them and uprooting them. She yelled and scratched, but Ben was determined, and he held her with all his strength. They rolled in the dirt and on the pea vines. Ben jerked out the pink drawers. They rolled over and over tearing up more of the pea vines. Ben struggled to pull the drawers over her feet. He got one foot through one drawers leg. They rolled down to the end of the row tearing up all the pea vines. Fred would raise hell about his pea vines when he came home.
Ben was panting and blowing like a horse at a horse-pulling, but he could not get the other drawers leg over the other foot. They rolled up against the fence and Fred’s wife stopped struggling. She sat up, looking down at Ben in the dirt. Both of them were brown with the garden soil and Ben was sweating through his mask.
“Ben Hackett, what are you trying to do?” she sputtered through the earth on her face.
Ben released her legs and looked up at her. He did not say anything. She stood up, putting her foot in the empty leg, pulling the drawers up under her skirt. That was where he had been trying all this time to put them. Damn it!
Ben got up dusting his clothes. He followed her across the garden into the front yard.
“Wait here,” she told him.
When she returned, she carried a basin of water and a towel.
“Wash the dirt off your face and hands, Ben Hackett,” she directed, standing over him, wearing the pink drawers.
Ben did as he was told to do. When he finished washing his face and hands, he slapped some of the dirt out of his pants.
“It was mighty nice of you to bring the towel and water,” he thanked her.
“You are halfway fit to go home now,” she approved, pinning up her hair.
“Good day,” Ben said.
“Good day,” said Fred’s wife.
(First published in Transition)