Tessie D

Angel stops by the office now with all the other hands to eat his lunch. He stays for half an hour to chat and “cool down.” 

He and the other hands usually mostly do all of the talking. They talk about the dairy and which heifers were especially onery that morning. What needs to be done in the afternoon. They talk a lot about sports.

I don’t tend to say much at lunch. I just sit and eat and listen.

I save my talking for the morning, when it’s just me and Angel eating breakfast. He mostly talks then, too. He talks a lot about his future and what he wants for himself. The life that he wants to build.

I haven’t been able to think that far into the future. I used to, but since Baby died, I haven’t much seen the point.

But, when I listen to Angel talking about his future, I do think more about what I’d want for my own. I’d love to live in a house that I didn’t have to share a roommate. I’d love to be able to take a shower whenever I wanted and to walk around in my underwear, if I wanted to. I’d love to know that there’s money in the bank and to just be able to shop for groceries without having to think about whether there was enough in the bank to cover it. I’d love to be able to put some money aside for my birthday so that I could buy a new outfit rather than having to shop for clothes at the resale store. I don’t tell Angel any of this. He has big dreams and mine seem so small and insignificant by comparison.

His life has been so different from mine. The other day, he said that farming was the nobelest profession there was. He compared it something out an 19th century British novel. I don’t know about that. All I’ve ever seen of farming is a lot of hard work and money earned and lost entirely because of chance and bad luck. Nobody can control when if it’ll rain. Or, if a cow gets black leg and dies before spreading it to the herd. Or, if the tractor breaks down. Or, the price of diesel goes up.

Sure, there’s a beauty in working for yourself. For getting up in the morning when everyone in the world is still asleep. Walking out into the field and smelling the dew still on the grass. Picking a sunflower as wide as your palm from the stalk.

Those moments though don’t drown out the sound of the creditors calling every hour of the day. They don’t help you sleep at night when the air conditioning has gone out again and there’s no money to get it fixed so you eat ice crushed up in the blender and sweetend with Kool-aid so that you can tolerate how stifflingly hot the house is.

I don’t say any of that. We have lived such different lives.