Passing Through Midnight (18 page)

Desperately, she wanted to do something, needed to do
something. Not as a doctor, but as any woman would go to the aid of her
child.

When he could, Gil looked back at Dorie for help. She was
as white as a snow-cone cup. He looked then to one of his neighbors and
asked, "Have you got anything to wash this off with? He's skinned his
knee."

Dorie's head turned as if it were automated, and she
watched as a woman grabbed up a fistful of clean paper napkins from a
picnic table and then bent to soak them in an ice chest. She was taking
the dripping wet napkins to Gil when Dorie ordered her to stop.

"Please," she said, swallowing hard around the lump of
fear in her throat and extending her right hand. "Let me."

"Dorie, it's all right. You don't have to. It's just a
scraped knee," she heard Gil saying, though she could barely see him
anymore.

Her attention was focused on Baxter's bony little knee and
the serosanguineous fluid drying on it. She went slowly to her knees
beside Gil, and with a feather-light touch, she dabbed at Baxter's
injury, palpating the joint by second nature. It gave her no little
satisfaction to see the blood leave his knee and cling to the paper
napkins. Her hands trembled less, and she started to breathe again.
When she was finished, she blindly handed the wad of blood-tinged paper
to Gil and looked up into Baxter's eyes.

"Good job, Dorie," he exclaimed, beaming through the last
of his tears at her. "That didn't hurt one little bit."

"Well, not you maybe," Gil said, his eyes on a still-pale
Dorie. She looked at him then away, as if in shame, and got to her
feet. "What do you say, Bax? Are you going to live or should we go home
and miss the music?"

"My knee's burnin', Dad."

"Fair enough. We go home."

"Ice cream could cool it off, I think."

"Think so?" Gil asked, humor in his voice.

"Never can tell," his young son said wisely.

"Then it's worth a try anyway, huh? Dorie? We're going
over to get ice cream. Would you like some?"

"No. Thanks," she said, smiling at them, coming slowly
back to the party. She watched them walk away from her, feeling oddly
numb inside, then turned to find the helpful neighbor lady standing
nearby, watching her. "Thank you for helping," she said.

The woman smiled at her kindly. "Would you like to sit
down for a minute. You don't look so good yourself."

"Thanks. I'm fine. I'll just… go back there,
and sit," she stammered, feeling foolish and self-conscious. Walking
back to the blanket in the shade, she tried to look on the bright side
of things—at least the Colby gossip mill would have plenty of
grist to grind if she decided to stay in the area permanently.

She was quiet and distracted during the rest of the
evening. The Tumbleweed Chorus and the Sweet Adelines were the best
barbershop groups she'd ever heard. The community orchestra played a
number of old favorites before a local dance band took over the small
gazebo to play "Feelings" and "Proud Mary", among others, upon request.

"You're not still brooding about this afternoon, are you?"
Gil asked, his voice a soft whisper in her ear as they sat back to
front on the blanket and swayed together gently to an oldie but goodie
Conway Twitty ditty.

She nodded and shook her head at once, not eager to
discuss it.

"I was proud of you," he said. "Overcoming fear takes a
great deal of courage."

"Oh, Gil, no. It wasn't like that at all. Anyone here
could have done what I did."

"Not everyone here has been through what you have."

"But I thought I was putting it behind me. I thought I was
beginning to forget. To get normal again. To feel again."

"Maybe you feel too much. And maybe…" he
hesitated, unsure of how to go on.

"What?"

"Maybe it's not so important to forget or to put what
happened behind you. Maybe… maybe it would be better to
remember, to think about it. Make it real in your mind and not like
some horrible nightmare that didn't really happen. Maybe it's more
important to make it a part of your life now, today. Accept it as a
part of who you are, make it something you can live with."

She bent her knees, closed her eyes, and leaned her head
back against his shoulder, but she didn't say anything. What could she
say? What he said made some sense, especially in light of the fact that
her old plan wasn't working. But how did one take such ugliness and
evil into their heart and transform it into something good and
beautiful? she wondered. The difference between recognizing a bridge
and actually crossing it could be a long, painful fall into hell.

The music went on, and they remained comfortable but
reflective in each other's arms. Gil was wishing he hadn't said
anything. Dorie was wishing that he didn't know what he was talking
about… but he did. He featured his pains in pictures on his
family room wall. He saw them in the faces of his children. He lived with
them every day as he toiled in the fields.

"What did you study in college?" she suddenly remembered
to ask. "What was it you were going to be, if it wasn't a fanner?"

"That was a long time ago," he said passively.

"I know. But what was it?"

"It was a pipe dream."

"Please. I want to know."

He sighed loudly and waited a long time before answering.

"I was going to write The Great American Novel. Follow the
path of Steinbeck and Hemingway." She turned in his arms to look at
him. "If you laugh, I'll break your nose again," he said, too
vulnerable to break even the tiniest smile.

She stared at him with her mouth open for a whole minute.

"Why on earth would I laugh?" she asked, flabbergasted.
"All this time you've wasted. Gil, you can still do it. You can still
be Steinbeck. You could be better than Steinbeck. Do it. Write."

"Dorie, don't start. It's too late."

"Never is too late." She sat on her legs to face him.
"Gil, if you want to write, you should write."

"I don't have time to write."

"Well, you don't have to sit down and do it all at once.
Write when you want to. Better yet, make it one of your damn chores,
every day for an hour or two. There's time for that. There's time for
everything, if you want it bad enough."

"I'm too old to start writing now."

"What?" She contorted her face in utter disbelief and fell
over sideways onto the grass. "And I thought my excuses were good!
You're a born writer, Gil. You have a fabulous imagination."

Supporting himself with his forearm, he bent over her,
holding his index finger straight and strong in front of her face.

"Stop it. I don't want to talk about this anymore. It's
old news. Gone. Over with. Get it?"

"Got it."

"Good," he said, righting himself, crossing his arms over
his chest, glad to have the final word for a change.

"You could do it," she whispered to him minutes later. He
glared at her. "You could." He got up to go find Baxter.

They returned together a short while later, each with
sparklers in both hands. Gil handed her one, and the three of them
waved them in the air until they fizzled out. Then they cuddled on the
blanket. Fletcher and
that girl
were talking with
their heads together a few feet away. They all watched the short
fireworks display that marked the end of the day.

Early July was, without a doubt, the most exciting time in
Colby that Dorie had yet experienced.

Caravans of harvesters drove into town and the surrounding
area and began to reap the miles and miles of golden wheat.

They were teams of migrant workers who owned combines to
harvest crops, or worked for large companies who owned the combines.
They started their work in midsummer by harvesting the winter wheat in
the South Central States, moving north all the way to Canada to harvest
the spring wheat and other grains that ripened later in the summer and
fall.

Some pulled small trailers and brought their families
along. Some came alone. Some lived out of the backs of their pickup
trucks, and others rented motel space in town.

They worked hard and kept to themselves, gleaning the
grain from dawn till well after dark sometimes, sending truckload after
truckload of wheat into town to the elevators to be weighed and stored
or weighed and dispatched by train to the mills.

The people were interesting enough, but it was the huge
combines that fascinated Dorie. Huge. Sometimes working four in a row,
side by side, in the same field. They could each cut and thresh an acre
of wheat in seven minutes. And she was itching to operate one.

"Please, please, please," she whined to Gil, who was
trying to ignore her. "There are other women drivers, and I promise I
won't try to get the corners. I won't back it up. Not for anything, not
ever. Please."

"Thanks for the lunch. I'll see you at home."

"Gil Howlett!" She wanted to stamp her foot but couldn't
make herself do it. "Show me how to do this or… or I'll ask
that man, Ed, to show me how to work his." Ed had spotted Dorie hanging
on the fence the day before watching the operation and had stopped to
talk to her. "Ed
likes
me. Ed said I was a pretty
little lady."

"If
Ed
takes you into his cab, I'll
have him replaced," Gil said matter-of-factly. He screwed the cap back
onto the thermos and handed it to her.

"Aw, come on, Gil. You've already told me how it works.
About the blades and the cutting bar, the conveyers, the threshers, the
fans, and the storage tanks. You move the bar back and forth and up and
down to make it go and work the pedals the way you do on the tractor. I
can do it."

"Dorie, this isn't a game. This wheat is ready now. We
don't have time to be playing around out here. Not to mention how
dangerous these machines are if you don't know what you're doing." She
could see how ear-nest he was being. It wasn't a me-man, you-woman
thing. It was his business, his livelihood he was talking
about—and his very real concern for her safety.

"All right," she said, giving up at last. She kissed him
on the cheek and patted his shoulder to show him that she understood,
then turned to leave. "I'll go home and…
knit
something, I guess."

He watched her walk away with her head and shoulders bent
in defeat. Even if she could knit, she'd enjoy it almost as much as she
enjoyed housekeeping and cooking, he speculated. Her interest in
farming wasn't in the traditional role of the woman, but it was an
interest. She liked the machines and the way they worked and the power
she felt when she operated them. He understood that. She didn't have
conventional interests because she wasn't a conventional
woman—which was part of what he loved about her.

"Oh, all right," he said, feeling he'd once again been set
up. "One sweep back and forth and then you leave."

"Aw, you're the best," she said, running back to fling her
arms around his neck.

"The best what?" Patsy? Jerk? Fool? Idiot?

"The best man I've ever met in my whole life," she said,
kissing him soundly on the mouth.

He put up with it for a minute or two because he didn't
want to hurt her feelings—and because he loved kissing her
back, but then put a stop to it, setting her away from him.

"You, on the other hand, are a pain in the ass," he said,
putting his work gloves back on, wanting it made perfectly clear.

She nodded. She grinned.

She followed him up into the glass-enclosed cab. Many of
the cabs were open to the air, but Gil's combine was fairly new and had
air-conditioning. Some of them even had stereo tape players in them,
but his didn't.

She wiggled in the seat to get comfortable and to ease her
excitement, while he curled himself into a small corner of the cab to
be out of the way.

"Move the bar up and the blades go up, down and they go
down," he said.

"I know that."

"Then put in the clutch and start her up."

Oooh, truly huge it was. The blades were lethal looking
from where she sat, swiping and cutting and swiping again without
hesitation. It was a dangerous machine. She concentrated hard to keep
it whacking in a straight path, not daring to look down at what
happened to the wheat after that.

"Relax. You're doing fine," he said, watching her face and
the operation at the same time.

"I don't want to screw anything up."

"You won't. You're doing fine."

"We're awfully high. Are those blades sharp, or do they
work like scissors with something else down at the bottom?"

"Kind of like scissors, but they're sharp enough."

"They look nasty."

"They can be."

"Uh-oh. Here comes one of the trucks. Is our tank full, do
you think? How do we dump it into the truck?"

The dump and the rest of her harvesting experience were
uneventful. She'd done it and was pleased with herself, if somewhat
wobbly-kneed when Gil stopped long enough to let her disembark.

"Happy now?" he called over the sound of the motor.

"What?"

"Are you satisfied now?"

"I wasn't petrified. Just a little nervous. It was fun."

"What?"

"It was fun for me."

"Absolutely not! I'm not getting one for you. Go home."

He didn't walk the distance between the two farmhouses
that night, he drove. And he didn't make love to her in his usual
fashion. He started stripping his clothes off at the front door, pulled
her into bed with him, cuddled close to her as he would his favorite
stuffed toy, and fell fast asleep. She closed her eyes and smiled and
dreamt of a velveteen rabbit that was loved so much and so hard, that
it became real.

"How much longer will they stay, do you think?" she asked
the next morning during a brief conversation about the harvesters.
Still in her bathrobe—a new coral-colored summer robe with
sexy slits up the sides—she sat on the steps with Gil,
drinking coffee, soaking up the warm morning sunshine, watching
Fletcher drive off in the truck with Baxter at his side, to feed and
check on the cows by themselves.