Tessie D

It’s starting to get cooler during the day, and for all the misery that we have to endure in the summer, there is nothing more beautiful than Texas in September and October.

Since I was starting to get a little stir-crazy in the office, I decided today that I would take a walk down the road, just along the dairy fence line during my lunch break. Some of the dairy hands looked at me, and a few waved.

I walked up the lane, passed the dairy barn. I could hardly hear the hand’s shouting over the sound of the cows mooing and clanging around in the corrals.

I reached the gate and stepped cautiously over the cattleguard, careful not to slip and fall. I’d heard of a kid in school who was trying to run across a cattle guard and broke his leg when his foot slipped in between the metal rows. I turned left onto the dirt road and walked along the side of the road, as close to the fence line as I could.

The midday sun was shining directly overhead, so I had little shade and no shadows, but the air was cool, and the further I got from the dairy, the quieter it became. A couple of trucks hauling round bales passed me by, kicking up the chalky limestone dust of the caliche road that crept into my nose and made me sneeze. I could hear the rumble of the tires on the road for a while after it’d passed.

Someone was out on the tractor, cutting down the sudan in the front 100. The stalks stretched out in front of the tractor were tall and dry after months of little rain and unbearable heat. The landscapes and the labor… Whoever it was would finish the cutting today, and tomorrow would rake and probably get a little bit of baling done. By Saturday, the field would be dotted with at least 200 large, tightly wound bales, arranged in at least four rows up near the barn, each as long as a football field.

When I got to the stock tank, I turned around and started back toward the office. I could do this again tomorrow, going the other direction. Then again, the day after that.