“Ricki Jo, get over here,” my dad shouts. I squint up at him through watery red eyes, cranky all over again. We’re helping Luke’s family house the tobacco we cut a few days ago and I am less than thrilled.
Housing is about as much fun as cutting. After the tobacco sits out in the field for “three dews,” we load it onto the trailer and haul it to the barn. The men shimmy up, climbing higher and higher into the old wooden rafters, and plant themselves for a long day’s work. At the bottom, the smallest of us grab sticks, laden with six heavy tobacco stalks each, and pass them up. Then the men above pass them up and up and up, dirt and small leaves falling with each pass. The guy at the top levels each stick horizontally so that it fits right across the rafters and the leaves hang down straight to cure.
I would like to hit puberty sometime this century, but right now I am thankful that I’m too small to be up high in the barn. The only problem with the bottom position is that it gets really dusty in here when we house and I end up sneezing my head off… which is why my dad brings along a white surgical mask for me to wear.
“Dad, no, I’m okay,” I protest… then sneeze.
“Wear it,” he demands, and then pulls himself up into the barn. I grudgingly pull the stretchy part over my head and pinch the small metal strip to fit over my nose, effectively trading my dignity for sinus relief.
I meet Luke’s gaze and can tell he’s trying not to laugh. “That mask drives me crazy, Ricki Jo,” he teases quietly. “Really sexy.”
I take a swing at him, but he’s up in the rafters in the blink of an eye, laughing down at me.
“What’re we waiting for?” Mr. Foster hollers down gruffly from above.
I grab a stick and pass it up, and even though it’s super heavy, I try my best to stab Luke, who reaches for it like a hot potato.
“No goofing around, kids,” my dad’s voice warns.
And we settle. Grab a stick and pass it up. And pass it up. And pass it up.
I miss the days when Luke’s older sister, Claire, worked with us—back when I wasn’t the only girl and had somebody to talk to, and to look up to. I miss the days before she was pregnant and stuck—stuck in this town, in this life. I grab a stick and pass it up. Pass. Pass the time in a steady rhythm.
When the trailer in the barn is half empty, my dad yells down to me, “Ricki Jo! You and a couple boys go get another load.”
Gladly. I’m out of the barn, mask off and hair down, before he changes his mind and sends someone else. I climb up into the seat of my dad’s John Deere tractor and wait ’til Luke and his older brother Paul hop onto the empty trailer hitched behind me.
I complain a lot about working, but I actually love driving the tractor. It’s a powerful feeling, and even though I have to completely stand, pulling up hard on the steering wheel while putting my entire body weight down on the brake to stop the dang thing, I feel in control. Nothing but waving bluegrass hayfields on one side and cattle-specked rolling green hills on the other. Put-put-putting over the fields, in absolutely no hurry, I soak up the sun and have a lot of quiet time to daydream while the boys lie stretched out on the empty trailer, exhausted.
I follow the gigantic wheel treads leading back to the front field, pull up to the row where we left off, kill the engine, and lock the brake.
“We’re already here?” Luke groans.
I turn around in my seat and look down at the two boys, covered in dirt, sweat, and pieces of tobacco. Luke has one arm behind his head and one thrown over his face, blocking out the sun. Paul hops off the trailer and heads for the tobacco, while I climb down from my perch and up onto the trailer next to Luke.
“Wake up,” I say, singsong.
“Just five more minutes,” he groans.
I touch his forehead and giggle when I pull it away to see a finger-shaped white spot fill in red again. “You got burnt.”
“Sunscreen’s for sissies,” he replies. Then he moves his arm a little and squints up at me, a mischievous look on his face. “You hungry?”
“Starved.”
“Let’s go,” he says and springs to life. I follow him in the dirt, his footprints nearly twice the size of mine. Luke tells his brother that we’ll be right back and I hear Paul mumble something about “kids.” Whatever. He can kill himself in the tobacco field if he wants, but I’m going with Luke.
Where the dirt ends and the grass begins, we head toward a small wooded area. I’m hesitant, worried it’s going to be some kind of gross boy-type surprise like a dead squirrel or something, but Luke motions me on. I step between a couple of walnut trees and see it in the shade—an orange cooler with a white top.
“You’ve got food in there?” I exclaim.
Luke nods smugly. “Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Mom made some for all the guys up at the barn, but I swiped a few just for us. And a couple of Cokes. We gotta hurry, though.”
Hurry we do. I don’t know if it’s the fact that we’re sneaking around or that we’re truly famished, but I start laughing as I watch Luke inhale his PB&J.
“You look like some kind of monster!” I giggle.
He starts shoving the food into his mouth, getting jelly all over his face, and growls and claws the air like a wild animal. I can’t help myself; I fall down laughing, and Coke comes out my nose.
“It burns!” I cry. “Stop! It burns!”
I roll over on the ground, howling. I have a sharp pain in my side and my cheeks hurt. Luke plops down next to me and we sit back to back, propping each other up. As we catch our breath and finish our snacks, I figure this is as good a time as any to get the 411 on David Wolfenbaker, aka my future husband.
“How well do you know that guy Wolf?” I ask as nonchalantly as possible, taking another bite of my sandwich.
“Why do you wanna know?” he asks, suspicious.
I shrug my shoulders against his and swallow. “I don’t know. I mean, he’s kind of friendly.”
Luke spins around to face me and I fall back, the solid weight of him gone from behind.
“You like him,” he states.
I steady myself, take another bite, and nod, although I can’t really look at him. It feels weird talking about boys with Luke.
He looks away, too, and I flick my eyes over his face, trying to read his thoughts in the deep creases across his forehead. He takes a minute, then looks back at me. “Let’s just say I’d play ball with the guy any time, but I’d never let him date my sister.”
“Would you let him date your best friend?” I ask teasingly.
He looks down at his Coke, then drains it, stands, and crunches the can under his foot. When he looks down at me, it’s like he’s explaining why two plus two equals four. “They call him ‘the Wolf,’ Ricki Jo,” he says, “and it’s not just because of his last name.”
I pop the last bite of my sandwich into my mouth and drain my own Coke. He crunches my can for me, then tosses them both back into the cooler. The last thing I want to do is get back out in the field under the blazing sun, but things seem to be getting just as uncomfortable in our wooded hideaway. I follow him back to the field and jump up on the trailer as he joins Paul, throwing a full stick over his shoulder, the two of them looking like those old caricatures of hobos who carry everything they own tied to the end of a stick.
We work wordlessly for the next half hour, the guys passing the full sticks up to me, me arranging them against the back of the trailer, in an easy rhythm. I think a little bit about what Luke said… and a lot about Wolf’s heart-stopping grin.
Obsessing over a boy makes the time fly. I grab the last of the load and hop down, my head in the clouds and my smile unfamiliar out in the tobacco fields. I heave myself up onto the tractor and get her going again. As the tractor roars back to life, I still can’t wipe the grin from my face. Ricki Jo as she is now may not be able to snag a guy like Wolf, but the new and improved Ericka will be. I just need to upgrade: Me 2.0.
As the steering wheel slides back and forth through my fingers, loose like it’s got a mind of its own, I guide us through the fields and up toward the barn, giddy at the thought of no more tobacco ’til it gets colder. No more gum-stained fingernails or farmer’s tan. Not another whiff of this stuff ’til strippin’ season. That’s two full months to metamorphosize.