They had plenty of crusts here on the farm. Which was a very good job, because there were a lot of mouths to feed. And sometimes Charlie felt like it was his personal responsibility to feed every single one of them.
Like all the other farming folk in the area, children provided much of the labor required by their farming operation. At the age of three, Charlie had joined his three older brothers in routinely doing chores - helping his mother around the house and his father around the farm. By the time he was six, he had a four-year old sister who was given the responsibility of assisting their mother with chores inside the house, while he and his next oldest brother did most of their mother's outside chores - cutting and stacking firewood; managing the goat herd of twelve or so animals to keep the very large lawn "mowed" by rotating the stakes; milking the goats and the milk cows; feeding the chickens, ducks and rabbits, and watering the livestock.
No sooner had he mastered all that, than he’d reached the age and size that meant he was expected to take care of the farm's horses and mules. Along with learning to work the draft animals, he was also taught how to operate, maintain and use the farm's gasoline-engine-powered machinery and vehicles. He turned over his previous chores of maintaining the goat herd and cows to his next youngest brother. By this time his parents had nine children - seven boys and two girls.
And then they moved another family in.
Walter and Jewel and their four children took up residence in an old house on the farm, Walter working hard to keep the farm’s buildings in good repair and Jewel pitching in with the house-keeping. They were good friends from the church, and mostly good to have around.
The not-so-good part was Walter and Jewel’s son, Wendell. There weren’t many who believed that Wendell was good to have around.
Charlie could see Wendell now, carrying out his favorite past-time of doing nothing-in-particular-apart-from-no-good. Right at that moment, as Charlie raced between his chores around the farm and school, where he was excelling right now, and the church which had been a haven for his whole life, it irked him just a tiny bit to see that Wendell was back, stretched out on the veranda of his parents’ house as if he owned it.
‘Home from your travels, Wendell?’ he called, panting only a little as he ran toward the bigger house in the corner of the farm, by the county road.
Wendell didn’t comment. He never did comment when anyone asked where he’d been on his little trips away. He ran off, upset his parents, came back, upset his parents. The pattern was always the same, until the day they’d told him to leave for good until he could sort himself out. Presumably, he’d done some sorting.
Wendell simply stared at him with narrowed eyes, then nodded. ‘Hey, Charlie,’ he called after a moment. ‘What are you running for?’
‘I’ve got news!’
Charlie held up his school books in explanation, even though that wouldn’t mean much to the older boy. School and Wendell hadn’t really agreed with each other, once he’d got in with the wrong crowd and stopped being the model student he used to be.
‘We should go for a drive later. Celebrate your good news,’ shouted Wendell.
Charlie grinned as he skidded toward the back door. That might even be fun. Heck, any kind of driving was fun, and the faster the better, though his recent racing attempts had brought attention from law-enforcement officers and, even worse, from their neighbors, who began to lodge complaints to his parents that he was endangering children and livestock with his fast driving. Charlie knew they were right, and vowed that he would be extra careful to slow down to a safe speed when he spotted youngsters or animals, or passed through areas where they would most likely to be on the road.
But a quiet lane, a backroad, with Wendell urging him on – well, that could be arranged.
The screen door banged behind him as he ran into the house. ‘Mom, Dad! Are you here? I’ve got something to tell you!’
His mother appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Goodness, that sounds exciting. Your father is fixing the tractor. Why don’t you go and help him?’
‘Well, I am better with machinery than he is,’ said Charlie with a cheeky grin.
‘I meant so that you could tell him your news first.’ As hard as his mother tried to sound affronted, she couldn’t hide her smile. ‘Go on, off with you.’
‘Don’t you want to know what it is?’
‘I’ll hear it later.’
Grabbing an apple in the orchard, Charlie set off at a trot again, wending his way across the farm to the tractor shed from where the sounds of clanging metal and muffled curses were emanating.
‘Dad, I have something to tell you,’ he cried triumphantly.