Literary Fiction, 60K
To keep his college scholarship, a preacher’s kid must make it through a summer missionary trip without anyone learning his secret.
He passed the hay field on his way. It wasn’t much of a field — maybe a few acres. He had worked the field once during a summer he spent walking behind a hay wagon, lifting bound bails of weeds and alfalfa and heaving them into place. With little effort he learned the “hay kick” — the knee lift used to move the 100-pound bails. He had a choice of positions. Drive the truck, stack or heave. Newcomers were usually the younger guys, so they had to heave first. Adam was heaving.
No one really worked there for the money — nor for the worn holes in the knees of their jeans, the sunburned noses or sore muscles. No one liked the farmer. It never meant intelligent dissertations or even nice conversation. It seldom meant anything more than simple, back-alley gutter talk. In fact, they looked on anything else with disdain and disgust — as though some great sin had been committed. Males from all walks of life worked there, but any resemblance to status in town dropped behind the hay wagon. You accomplished your rise in the hay field ladder by hardy laughs, foul language and simple hard work. And the status didn’t pass unnoticed. Those tenured hands eagerly accepted their positions of influence. It was their duty — part of their role.
Sometimes the heat of the afternoon sun baking a Midwestern hay field proved too much, and they said nothing. They walked silently beside the hay wagon, quickly hoisted the dry, dusty bails. No breezes evaporated the sweat during those stifling days. A saturated shirt grasped chest and back, clinging greedily, trying to suck more moisture. Once finished, they gathered at the farm cooler — a spigot sticking out of the ground. A backyard treasure — the highlight of the workday — tapped into the cool waters seeping out of the well deep below them. Once again the talk would rise. No matter the names called or the number of bails heaved — all had been forgotten. Faces were rinsed and necks sprayed. Bits and pieces of dried grass got swished from cracked lips. Tobacco chunks were removed and renewed. All returned to normal around the spigot. The field foreman called the newest crew member a pecker head, and the favor was returned with crueler language.
Along with locker rooms and possibly backyard basketball courts, the hay fields yielded the closest form of male bonding known in town. The stubby grass fields offered complete release from normal living constraints. They said anything. Discussed everything. Used all the dirty names they knew and even ones they made up. Belches and burps abounded. No genital parts were spared the wrath and humor of the witty field foreman. They worked, but no paycheck equaled the complete and utter pleasure. Later, when the youthful men aged into solitary figures lost in a crazy world, memories would drift to those pleasures shared working on the hay fields.
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