At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [22]
Farley walked around to the back of the truck. “Your tiller broke?”
Lori turned an accusing gaze to her mother. “We have a tiller?”
“Oh . . . you mean that thing that attaches to the back of the lawn mower.” Lindsay tried to sound vague, and avoided Lori’s eyes.
“I’ll fix it for you,” volunteered Farley. “Ten dollar.”
“Um, no, thanks. It’s fine.” Cici, too, avoided Lori’s eyes. “Besides, Bridget is in charge of the garden. Let’s get this thing out of the truck.”
“Got to get your peas and taters in by St. Paddy’s Day,” observed Farley, and swung down the tailgate with a clatter. “Lot faster to use the tiller.”
Lori’s expression soured. “Why do I feel I’ve just been had?”
Bridget came out with a pie wrapped in aluminum foil as Cici and Farley reached the front porch with the sander. “It’s apple and currant,” she told him. “I’ll put it in your truck.”
Farley touched his cap brim. “Kind of you, ma’am.”
“Aunt Bridget,” Lori challenged darkly, “did you know we have a tiller?”
Bridget looked perfectly innocent. “Why no, dear. I don’t believe I did.”
Farley collected his soda can from the porch rail where he had left it, and spat again. “Supposed to make sure you know how to use it.”
Cici smiled patiently. “I’ve used a floor sander before, Farley.”
“Knew a man cut off his toe with one, once.”
“I’ll be sure to wear shoes.”
He looked skeptical. “You got a long cord?”
“One hundred feet.”
“Got to ground it.”
“Grounded.”
He gave a grunt that sounded neither convinced, nor happy. “Here’s an extra belt, and some replacement pads.” He handed them to her. “You know how to replace a belt?”
“I’ll bet I can figure it out.”
He grunted again, and then turned to Bridget as she came back up the steps from placing the pie in the front seat of his truck. “Supposed to tell you Burt Shaw is coming next month. You want to get on his list?”
“Who’s Burt Shaw?” Bridget asked.
“Sheepshearer.”
Lori, forsaking the matter of the tiller, exclaimed, “Are we going to shear the sheep?”
Bridget looked uncertain. “I suppose we have to. After all, it’s been two years.”
“Oughta have good fleece by now,” observed Farley, gazing out over the meadow where the sheep nibbled the new spring grass. “Lotta money in fleece.”
Lori was immediately interested. “Really? How much?”
“Heard about a girl out on Route Twelve that pays ten to fifteen dollar a pound.”
Cici said, “How much does it cost to shear a sheep?”
He shrugged. “Fella charges by the head. Course if it was me, I’d do it myself.”
“I don’t know . . .” Bridget still sounded uneasy.
“Is it hard?” Lori wanted to know.
“Nah. Just like skinning a cat.”
All four women on the porch were silent at that, none of them wanting to ask just what, exactly, he knew about skinning a cat.
“Well,” Bridget said after a moment, “I guess I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks for bringing out the sander,” Cici said.
He spat politely into the can once again and held out his hand. “Ten dollar.”
Lindsay dug into the back pocket of her jeans and found a ten-dollar bill, which he carefully arranged in his billfold alongside several others. The ladies had learned to ask for multiple tens whenever they went to the bank, and to keep them about their persons at all times, just in case they needed help from Farley.
Lori walked Farley to his truck. “Say, Farley,” she inquired thoughtfully, “how many pounds of fleece would you say a sheep has?”
He lifted his hat, scratched his head, spat again into the can, and spent a moment gazing thoughtfully into the distance. “Dunno,” he admitted at last.
“Oh.”
Then she had another idea. “Do you know anything about cleaning out ponds?”
He followed her around the house, down a flagstone path now half obscured by brown leaves and dried mud, through a winter-ravaged flower garden,