Rosemary Dunn Moeller
Certain Stress
Giant round hay bales are possibly the most perfectly shaped object on the farm. But then there’re old silos. Old cement silos and old brick silos, those tubular expressions of forethought. And the barn defies simple naming—a triangle, a square, a rectangle. But she was looking at rugged chaotic shapes of aging obsolescence today, not seeing the beauty she often admired. Now seemed impossible.
She kept staring at the barn, knowing it wouldn’t clean itself out all on its own. Moving heavily in oversized overshoes, she opened the huge sliding door to the east, walked back to the bobcat and set the front loader on scraper, inexpertly and fearfully going forward, pulling up prairie grass roots with old graveled dirt until she got to the barn door. There the smell of calves and cows hit her again.
She needed to be able to clean out the barn. She needed to be able to use the equipment, keep up the machinery, take care of the animals. After thirty years of avoiding jobs, she needed to do them, now, timely, correctly. She began to move the bobcat forward when she hit the side of the door, knocking it off the grooves. It hung; swung crazily toward her. She raised her hands over her head to helplessly protect herself from the old cracked wood when the loader popped up, her feet having left the pedals guiding the hydraulic lifts. She and the engine quit at the same time. The door rested on fewer bent pulley tracks than needed, and the front of the loader for the moment. She got down, walked back toward the farmhouse, looked back at the barn, decided to phone for help and cursed indiscriminately.
Inside, in the living room, on the davenport, a stuffed-head voice spoke after three retching coughs that rattled his lungs. (This rattle, another kind of warning, something to strike him dead if he doesn’t take better care of his health.) “Don’t worry, honey. Cory’ll get the stalls cleaned later. Thanks for getting the chores done.”
And tomorrow, next month, coughing and fevers aren’t good for farmers who have chores outdoors every day and winter coming. She signed a contract at the school for a year at a salary the farm couldn’t survive on, let alone pay their essential hired hand. Mechanical knowledge had moved up to imperative from boring. She’d taught some of the laziest, slowest farm kids who could do all this work without raising an eyebrow. If she could learn enough Western History and Literature to teach it, she could learn to use gear shifts, clutches, grain vacs and welders. Just one thing one day, tomorrow something else. There had to be YouTube videos on this stuff, and she had to learn quickly after avoiding all opportunities to do much mucking around the farm. She also needed to keep all her fingers attached to her hands, so cutting up the cabbage required concentration. Now.
END
Rosemary Dunn Moeller, author of "Long Term Mates Migrate Great Distances" has had stories published in "Stories From the Farm and Ranch", "The Quilt Book", "The Green Sheet", "Pilgrimage" and many others. She and her husband divide their time betweeen Cape Cod MA in the winter and their farm on the prairie in the summer.