Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [86]
“What time is it?” Caleb asked me.
“I don’t know. It’s too dark to read my watch.” Caleb’s narration had been so engrossing, night had fallen without my noticing. I’d also forgotten how miserable I was digging the ditch. I could barely see what I was doing. Still I kept shoveling. It didn’t seem as though the two hours I’d committed to could have ended so soon. Caleb made no move to leave either. We’d gotten a nice rhythm going. Some unspoken bond, also, seemed to have yoked us to each other; the very muck seemed to have endeared itself to us, embracing our boots with its soft gooeyness.
We continued until the last feeble light drained from the gray dusk and I could see Caleb only as a hulking mass. It was I who finally gave in. “Well, I think it’s getting too dark to see what I’m doing.” He agreed, but neither of us was anxious to leave. We quit as if reluctantly, dragging our shovels back towards the house. There was a moment of uncertainty as I turned to exit. Swathed in darkness, we stood quietly a few moments gazing up at the stars. They were unusually bright tonight.
“Listen!” Caleb grabbed my arm. I couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. “It’s the train.”
Yes, it was. In Pleasant Valley, thirteen miles away—so still was it this chill, starry evening. We flashed each other quick smiles and went our separate ways.
Caleb and I had never had a chance to work together like this. If I were lucky, maybe the next person to saunter by would be his disgruntled brother, Jed. Maybe that would fix something.
Eighteen
Birth
Late one gray winter’s afternoon as I walked back towards the house from the Millers’, I noticed that the wind seemed to have shifted. It was coming from a more southerly direction, and I could feel its warm caresses against my cheek. I stood a moment, relishing the feeling. In the slanting light of dusk, everything had taken on an eerie cast, gray and violet, misty, with hills and rills, pools and puddles, and—what was that? I now heard a strange sound. It was soft and very high-pitched, yet a bit wild and jangly, like melodious rubber bands. It had a faint hilarity to it. I was later to ask Mr. Miller what that sound was.
“Peepers,” he said. “Baby frogs.”
A great cyclical turning of events, it seemed, was under way. The saga of life was rapidly being recapitulated. Tadpoles were growing legs and springing forth again from the ooze.
Amid this whole scene of percolation and restlessness, I felt new life brimming up inside of me. I could almost sense the capillary action, little threads growing together and closing the chasm that winter had opened up. The outward turning triggered an inward turning. I was coming out of my funk.
One brisk sunny day, Amos and Caleb walked into our yard leading an eighteen-hundred-pound workhorse that, they informed us, their dad had decided to lend us for the next growing season. I would be able to plow my own garden this year. He also gave consent for me to plow under the pasture behind our house so that I would not have to travel so far to plant pumpkins and sorghum. Mabel, the horse, was twelve years old, somewhat enfeebled, and surpassingly tame: perfect for breaking in a novice like me.
Under Caleb’s watchful eyes, I got started. The plow skittered on the surface until it took hold. Down dove the point of the curved blade and up went a wave of grassy sod, rising, curling over, and crashing silently in a chaos of disintegrating clods. I tried to follow a straight line along the edge of the field but began to swerve left.
“To go the direction you want,” Caleb said walking beside me, “Push down on that side like you would if you was steering a car.” Huh? How did he know that?
I put a little pressure on the right handle of the plow and, sure enough, it righted. After I got the hang of steering again, it was like water-skiing on chocolate. I swayed and bounced