“When we get to high school, I want you to call me Ericka,” I say, taking off my tan leather work glove to wipe the sweat from my brow. I’ve been blabbing to my best friend, Luke, all day because A) talking makes the time go by faster, and B) I’m a jabber-jaw; but I might as well be talking to one of our cows. Luke just sort of moseys along down the row of tobacco next to me, nodding every now and then and chomping on his bubble gum. He has been totally unsympathetic to almost every gripe I’ve had today, from the sad state of my grubby fingernails to how humiliating it is to have to pop a squat in the weeds every time I have to pee. But this is serious. “Did you hear me, Luke? I’m for real. It’s Ericka.”
He nods and swings his tobacco knife at the base of the huge stalk in front of him. I hate talking to his back, his white T-shirt soaked through so that I can actually see the freckles spotting his shoulder blades, but unlike the rest of the day’s conversations, this is one thing I really need him to hear me on.
“Luke Foster!” I shout, stamping my boot in the dirt.
“What, Ricki Jo?” he says, exasperated. When he jerks up to look at me, sweat drips down around his clear blue eyes and his sandy blond hair falls across his forehead and sticks there. I fight the urge to step into his row and push it back, mostly because I’m in making-my-point mode, but also because once he stretches up to his full height of six foot two, there’s no reaching it while maintaining my dignity.
So, calmer, I repeat myself: “When we get to high school, I want you to call me Ericka.”
“Yeah, great, whatever, Ricki Jo,” he says, pulling a bottle of water out from the back pocket of his jeans.
“E-rick-a,” I correct, pointing my dirty tobacco knife at him and arching the prissier of my two eyebrows.
He smirks in response and swallows. “We aren’t in high school yet.”
“It’s to-morrow!” I say.
“Then to-mor-row,” he mocks, “I’ll call you Princess E-rick-a. ’Til then, it’s plain ol’ Ricki Jo.”
I roll my eyes and grab my own water bottle, totally not expecting a guy with a simple name like Luke to understand where I’m coming from. I’m starting HIGH SCHOOL. First impressions are important and double names are, I don’t know, babyish. It’s not that I hate my name, but Ricki Jo doesn’t have that… swagger. It doesn’t have the sophistication that Ericka does.
I pull my glove back on and stretch, pushing my arms up and my chest out, willing my tiny frame closer to the blue sky. Squinting against the sun, I can’t help but feel defeated. So. Much. Tobacco.
Cutting is the pits. I mean, nobody likes spending her free time working with her dad, her little brother, and dirt-covered men of varying ages. But cutting tobacco? A nightmare. First of all, Kentucky in late August boasts temps in the mid-nineties with a hundred percent humidity, so, yeah, it’s hot. Second, the tobacco is at full size, meaning each stalk is weighed down with sticky green leaves every bit as long as my arm and as wide as my hips. Bent over just about the entire day, a girl like me can expect sore shoulders from swiping at the thick base of the tobacco with a short knife, a sore back from hefting the chopped-off seven-pound plant upside down, and entire-body aches from then heaving said plant onto an inch-square splintery stick… a stick she is squeezing between her legs the entire time in some sort of sick balancing act.
“You gotta be kidding me,” I grumble, noticing a splinter in the meaty part of my palm. I wipe my knife on my T-shirt and dig into the flesh with the tip, the splinter both a major annoyance and a welcome distraction. “I hate—hate—cutting tobacco,” I gripe to no one in particular. (If I’ve said it once today, I’ve said it a million times, so I’ve kind of lost my audience.)
“Me, too,” I hear from behind me. Surprised, I turn around to see my little brother, Ben, struggling, his brow knit in a combination of fury and despair as he teeters down my row, dropping sticks for me to eventually load up with tobacco. “I wish I were playing video games.”
I can’t help but smile. Misery truly does love company, even if it comes in the form of elementary-school-aged monsters. Most summers, I’m the one dropping sticks (a way easier job), but this morning my dad decided that Ben is “of age,” so he’s been dragged to the fields for tobacco initiation and I got lumped in with the guys to cut.
“Back to work, kids,” my dad says sternly, appearing out of nowhere. Ben’s shoulders droop as he wobbles away like a miniature tightrope walker, the long gray sticks bouncing over his little eight-year-old forearms. Before bending down to start my next stick, I give my dad my most exaggerated eye-roll/heavy-sigh combination, to which he responds with his age-old don’t-push-it expression before stepping over to his own row.
Fuming, I reach for the stick at my feet; however, this is the precise moment that a small black garter snake slithers out in front of me. I do what any normal fourteen-year-old girl would do: scream my head off, dance in spastic horror, and throw my tobacco knife into the dirt—completely missing the snake. I look to Luke for help, but he’s laughing hysterically, which really gets my already hot blood boiling. Wrists on sweaty forehead, breathing totally out of control, I walk around in a circle until the disgusting little reptile slithers away.
I am—officially—over it.
“Ugh! I hate this job! I hate this job!” I shout.
“Then go drop sticks with your lil’ brother,” Luke calls over from his row, a not-so-cute smirk playing all over his lips. “Cuttin’ is man’s work, anyway.”
I glower at him, pick up my knife, and carry on.
At Luke’s farm I’m the lone female, since his older sister, Claire, got pregnant last fall. She and I used to gossip nonstop to pass the time, but her brothers aren’t so chatty. I really could’ve used her this summer, too. If she were here, she’d tell me which teachers are cool and which are jerks, she’d give me advice about how high school is different, and she’d totally get why I’m basically freaking out. I swipe at the stalks in front of me and try to put myself in her shoes. Would I rather be changing a diaper right now or cutting tobacco? Hmmm…
At the moment it’s a tough choice, but in reality, the tobacco eventually all gets cut, and quitting time always comes. But not for Claire. She’s 24/7 now—all baby, all the time. She was actually pretty popular in high school, but most of her friends jumped ship when she started showing. A couple of jocks started mock-interviewing her for Teen Mom, this MTV show about underage girls getting knocked up. Luke says she took it all really well, that she was strong and just laughed ’em off, but if it taught me anything, it’s that high school is scary and that I should get in good from the beginning.
Which is why I’m so nervous. Which is why I want to make new friends, and be popular… or at least not unpopular. Which is why I need to make a really strong first impression tomorrow. And why I’m totally beyond ticked off about this god-awful farmer’s tan!
As I bend, cut, lift, and spear, I’m fit to be tied. It’s five o’clock in the afternoon and the sun has not quit. I’m red from its rays, I’m red from slapping at bugs all over me, and I’m red from my temper. As I lift yet another huge stalk of tobacco up and spear it onto the stick between my legs, I can’t help but be mad. Even this doggone tobacco is taller than me! Even tobacco has hit puberty!
“I don’t see why we’re helping y’all out, anyway!” I holler to Luke while rolling my white T-shirt sleeves up onto my shoulders for the millionth time today. “We don’t farm anymore. My dad took a factory job. This sucks!”
A low voice growls too near. “We didn’t ask for your charity.”
I turn and see Luke’s dad standing over me, a mean scowl on his face. I can smell the alcohol on his breath and see Luke in my peripheral vision, stepping quickly into my row, alert. The father and son couldn’t be more different. Although they’re both tall, Mr. Foster has that man weight on him that, at fourteen, Luke hasn’t grown into yet. Luke is dirty, wearing muddy boots and jeans and a once white T-shirt—I probably look exactly the same—but his dad wears coveralls stained from chew and dip, no shirt underneath, an old flask sticking out of one pocket and a faded handkerchief out of the other. Basically, Luke’s clothes were clean when we met at the barn this morning, and his dad’s weren’t.
“We’re happy to help,” my dad says, coming to the rescue, my row suddenly the life of the party. Mr. Foster grunts, spits, and ambles off. Luke cuts a couple of stalks near me, all former teasing and eye sparkle gone. He mumbles an embarrassed “Sorry” and finishes off my stick. I roll my eyes and shake my head, totally annoyed.
“Yeah, real happy,” I mumble.
My dad’s hand lands firmly on my shoulder and I look up. “Watch that smart mouth, young lady. I can always lower it to five dollars an hour instead of six,” he threatens, staring me down until I finally break eye contact.
I march over to grab my next stick with all the silent rebellion I can muster, my dark blond ponytail sweat-soaked and smacking me on the shoulders.
Why are we even out here?
My dad farmed his whole life, but this winter he got a job at the new Toyota plant in Georgetown, about a half hour away. With the government buyout and outrageous lawsuits against Big Tobacco, farming isn’t a stable way to make a living in Kentucky anymore. My dad’s always talking about all the vacant land around our county nowadays that used to thrive, but “a man’s gotta provide for his family,” so he gave it up. A lot of guys think he sold out, but when he first told us, I was happy as a lark! We’d still have cattle, a garden, and a small orchard, but no more tobacco. It meant he’d have to work nights, but he’d get a steady paycheck, no matter what the market did with the price of our state’s cash crop… and, more important, it meant that I was permanently off the hook from planting, pulling, setting, suckering, topping, cutting, housing, and stripping tobacco. Deliverance!
Or so I was led to believe.
Yet here it is, August, and although I’m getting paid now I’ve been a little tobacco fairy all summer long, flitting around the county on grudging wings. We’ve helped the Taylors, the Fischers, the Motts, and the O’Caseys. My dad is “too old to start sleeping during the day,” so he catnaps here and there and zombies himself from farm to farm, dragging Ben and me along in his shadow. I don’t know if he misses the farming itself or the idea of being a farmer, but I really wish he’d get over his identity crisis. Get a Porsche! A toupee! A tattoo! If you’re gonna do a midlife crisis, do it right!
I swing at the base of stalk after stalk, pushing each of them over like Godzilla storming through Tokyo.
I hate—
Swipe!
hate—
Hack!
hate—
Cut!
hate my life!