loria didn't say another word about leaving. Each morning seemed to be a little colder, and while there was no threat of an imminent frost, a sense of urgency prevailed. John William was anxious to get his wheat to the miller in Centerville, not only to have his own supply of flour and grain set aside for his newly acquired family, but also to pay the wages earned by the crew he'd hired to bring in this first crop. Each day, the men worked past the threshold of darkness, returning to the house too exhausted for their accustomed evenings of supper, drinks, and card games.
After the second week, four of the men John William hired left to fulfill obligations to other farmers, leaving just Big Phil and Lonnie to help bring in the remainder of the crop.
Just after breakfast one morning, John William stood in the kitchen doorway, hat in hand, and announced that he needed a favor.
“What?” Gloria asked suspiciously
“Now, John,” Maureen said, casting a disparaging look at Gloria, “we're all family here. Asking for help isn't like asking for the moon. What do you need?”
“Another set of hands.”
“Gather up as much as your hand will hold,” John William said, demonstrating by filling his palm with a generous bunch of newly cut wheat.
“Like this?” Gloria held up a scrawny bunch—probably no more than twelve stalks—clutched in a hand that seemed to mirror her sullen attitude.
“Only if you want to make this last till it's time to plant again.” He reached over to unclench Gloria's fist, placed his own cut bunch into her grasp, and curled her fingers around it. “There. About like that. Enough that you can get a grip on it, not so much that you're gonna let any drop.”
“I think 1 have the idea,” Gloria said with an exaggerated tone of understanding.
“Good. Now transfer it under your arm, hold it tight against you. Just like that. Now, take another handful, hold it with the rest until you have a nice big bundle. Good, now take a piece of twine,” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a length of string, “and wrap it ‘round.”
“Then tie it off?”
“No. If you hold it tight enough, you'll just need to tuck the end under, like this…no…here, let me…” John William leaned in and helped Gloria guide the end of the binding twine under and around itself. It was the first time he'd touched her since the night she'd said she was leaving, and he half-expected her to flinch. He was pleased when she didn't.
“And we'll do this all day?”
He chuckled. “Time will fly. You'll see.”
For this day's labor, John William had given up his seat driving the reaper and chose instead to walk behind the machine. He had cheerfully handed the reins over to Big Phil, who seemed only too eager to climb up and master the rig. Lonnie worked behind them, cutting the missed stalks with a scythe and bundling them in seemingly one motion.
“See him?" John William said, gesturing toward Lonnie. “Before you complain about the labor, look at that and realize it could be a lot harder. I spent my childhood workin’ alongside my father. Hired out.”
“There's worse ways to spend a childhood,” Gloria said.
The newly formed sheaves were unceremoniously dropped in the wake of the reaper, but when three or four were formed, John William showed Gloria how to stand them together, each supporting the other, so they could dry.
“You see why you need to make the bundles strong?” John William said. ‘They need to be able to support each other.”
On they worked throughout the morning, stopping only for swigs of gingered water from the stone jug that rode alongside Big Phil on the reaper's seat. At the first break, there was some hemming and hawing and searching for a suitable cup so that Gloria, too, could drink, but thirst overwhelmed her and she simply grabbed the jug from John Williams hand and swigged away like the rest of them. She followed her swig with a satisfied swipe of her sleeve across her chin.
Then they were off to work again. They made an interesting crew. Big Phil rode the reaper, occasionally looking over his shoulder to share witticisms and wisdom.
“Know why some dogs just won't hunt?” he'd ask. And just as the others braced themselves for some great truth, he'd answer, “'Cause they're lazy.”
This made Gloria laugh and John William groan and Lonnie grumble that if he had half a dollar for every time he heard someone fall for that one, he sure wouldn't be here choppin’ wheat alongside no potbellied philosopher and greenhorn farmers.
Somehow, John William's prediction about time passing quickly proved to be true, but by noon every inch of Gloria's body—from the tips of her fingers rife with tiny cuts to her blistered feet—called for a time of respite. The ache in the small of her back intensified each time she stooped or stood, and her right arm was sheathed in pain. The decision to leave Maureen home to tend to the children had been made with the understanding that, come noon, Gloria would walk back to the house to nurse Danny and Kate. But now such a trek seemed far too heroic an effort, and her breasts felt none of the heaviness she associated with mealtime. Instead, she dropped her last bundled sheaf and asked, “Can we eat now?”
“Hungry, are you?” John William flashed her a smile full of understanding. “Maureen sent somethin’ with us. I guess we can break.”
He called out to Big Phil, who willingly called a halt to the team and jumped down, bringing Maureen's wicker basket with him. Lonnie swung his scythe through one more handful of wheat, bundled it, and steadied it against the sheaf Gloria had just dropped to the ground.
John William took the familiar frayed quilt from under the reaper's seat and spread it, flinging weeks’ worth of grass and dirt into the air. The massive noon meal of that first day of harvest had diminished, being replaced by a loaf of bread, a crock of sweet apple butter, and cheese, but to Gloria it seemed a feast.
“Cheer up, darlin',” John William said, mistaking the exhaustion on her face for disappointment. “When 1 saw Maureen this mornin', she was pickin’ out a chicken I suspect she's plannin’ to fry up for supper.”
It didn't take long for the last morsel to disappear. Lonnie unhitched the team of horses from the reaper and took them to drink from the creek at the far edge of the field. He wasn't more than five steps away when Gloria saw the real reason he volunteered for the job—a silver flask he'd been sipping from all morning. Big Phil sat propped against the overturned basket and declared he would rest his old eyes for just a minute while the horses got watered.
“I thought we were all so desperate to get this done,” Gloria said. “If we all have enough time to take a nap, then maybe you can just finish up without me.”
“Calm down, darlin',” John William said. “The body has to rest a bit if it's to be any good at all. And since we have to wait for the horses to get back anyway…” His final thought trailed into silence as he stretched himself out on the quilt, flat on his back with his hat covering his face, just as he had every afternoon of their journey together.
So, just like every afternoon of their journey, Gloria was left alone with her thoughts as she sat, bolt upright on another corner of the quilt. Just next to her was a little patch of some wildflowers that had miraculously escaped the whirring of the blades. She picked one, then another, and worked their ends together. She picked another and another, finally making a chain long enough to fit over her head, like a necklace. She lifted one of the blossoms and scrutinized the color. Lavender. Maybe he would notice that it just matched her eyes.
Until now, it always seemed as if life was like this chain— each moment, each man, a link stretching on and on until suddenly it was over. That had certainly been true for her mother. The final link, the final cough.
But now Gloria wondered if life wasn't a little more like what she'd lived this afternoon. Maybe people didn't pass through your life, weighing down your past like so many rings of iron. Maybe she and Danny and Kate and John William and even Maureen had been scooped up by some giant hand—maybe even by God—and brought together, held close and tight and wrapped and tied. Maybe life wasn't a chain of moments and people strung along, but a bunch of them, tossed together chaotically and imperfectly to be set against one another, leaning, depending, pulled from the safety of their soil and roots to become something better.
The thought of it made her smile. Made her want to stay, because though her body ached and her fingers bled and her skin was soaked with sweat, she felt today like she belonged. Like she had never belonged anywhere ever before. She wanted to stretch her foot and nudge John William right now, to announce her conclusions and ask him to let her stay, but the imposing figure of Phil snoring softly nearby stilled her impulse.
She sat quietly, staring at the wheat, wanting desperately to talk to him. About anything. She missed him.
Had this been an afternoon on their journey, John William would have roused himself from his nap and settled in for a Bible reading, and the remaining stalks of wheat bowing in the breeze reminded her of one of the stories he'd read, about a man who'd had a dream about wheat. His name was Jonathan? Jehoshaphat? Jericho?
“John?" she asked, softly at first, then repeated it until she got a grunt in reply.
“What was the name of that man in that Bible story who had the dream about the dancing wheat?”
John William brought his hand up to tip his hat away from his face—-just enough to give Gloria a puzzled, impatient look. “Dancin'?”
“Remember, all the wheat was dancing around all the other wheat—”
“It wasn't dancin',” he said, propping himself up on one elbow The look he gave now was one of affection and indulgence. She loved the thought that she had pleased him.
“It was Joseph,” he continued. “And the wheat was bowin’ down to him because he was about to rise up in power over his brothers. They weren't happy about that, so they—”
“All right, all right, I don't need the whole story. I just couldn't remember the name.”
“Why were you wonderin'?”
“No reason,” Gloria said, shrugging. “The wheat just reminded me of it, and I couldn't remember.”
“All right.” He gave her one more suspicious glance before lying back down and balancing his hat over his face.
The afternoon was tinged with just a bite of autumn, and the last of the summer insects droned along the margins of the clearing. Phil's snores added to the symphony, and John William's breath was heavy and regular. After a few moments, Gloria felt her own eyes growing heavy Half of the quilt was there—empty and inviting—and it wasn't until she was stretched out, lying on her stomach with her face buried in her arms, that she realized this was the most intimate position she'd ever shared with John William. Truth be told, this was the most intimate position she'd ever shared with any man. At first she was tense, worried about what he would think, worried that she would offend him, but soon sleep edged its way in to quiet her thoughts.
Then she heard his voice.
“Hmm?” she said, taking her turn at giving him an indulgent yet cranky glance.
“I said I had a dream about wheat once.”
“Really.”
“It had to be a few years in the future, because Danny and Kate was old enough to be walking, but not too big. And the wheat was grown high—'bout up to my waist.”
“That's high all right,” Gloria said.
“And I guess they wandered off or some thin', because I couldn't find ‘em. They wasn't tall enough to be seen over the wheat, and I was just tearin’ through the fields, callin’ for ‘em.”
“Did you find them?” Gloria still refused to lift her face from the nest of her arms.
“I woke up and walked straight over to make sure they were all right.”
“Were they?”
“Of course.”
“That's good.”
A silence settled around them once again, and Gloria dozed in and out. At some point she felt like a spectator in John William's dream, saw him striding through the fields, searching, calling. And then she wondered.
“Was I there?" she said.
“Where?”
Gloria propped herself up on one elbow and turned her body toward his.
“In your dream," she said. “Where was I?”
She watched him sigh before he brought his hand up to lift his hat from his face. He turned his body to mirror hers. His brow furrowed before giving way to a full and joyous smile that drew Gloria to him like no embrace ever could.
“You were right beside me, darlin',” he said, “callin’ out their names.”
It was a moment, Gloria thought, that should have taken her breath away Such affirmation. Such invitation. Instead, she felt it settle within her.
“What do you think it means?” she asked
Big Phil interrupted with a yawn befitting his name and a satisfied belly scratch. “If you ask me,” he said, grunting as he hoisted himself off the ground, “it means that you two better keep them kids on a leash once they're old enough to walk.”
John William and Gloria had been smiling at one another, and now they burst into comfortable, relieved laughter. In the distance, the soft jingle of the horses’ harness signaled an end to the noontime break. Rested and revitalized, they roused themselves to resume the day's work. There were, after all, only three acres left.
The harvest was in before dark.
I will arise and go to Jesus,
He will embrace me in His arms;
In the arms of my dear Savior,
0 there are ten thousand charms.