Life in the country was proving more complicated and expensive than Blair had imagined. Fortunately, he had resources, and fortunately, he had Harry. Otherwise he would have walked into a dealer and paid top dollar for a piece of new equipment, plus oodles of attachments he didn’t need immediately and might never even use.
The green and yellow John Deere tractor beckoned to more folks than Blair. Bidding was lively but he finally prevailed at twenty-two thousand five hundred, which was a whopping good buy. Harry did the bidding.
Harry, thrilled with his purchase, crawled up into the tractor, started her up, and chugged over in first gear to her gooseneck, a step-up. She’d brought along a wooden ramp, which weighed a ton. She kept the tractor running, put it in neutral, and locked the brake.
“Blair, this might take another man.”
He lifted one end.“How’d you get this thing on in the first place?”
“I keep it on the old hay wagon and when I need it I take it to the earthen ramp and then shove it off into the trailer, backed up to the ramp. I expand my vocabulary of abuse too.” She noticed Mr. Tapscott, who had purchased a dump truck. “Hey, Stuart, give me a hand.”
Mr. Tapscott ambled over, a tall man with gorgeous gray hair.“’Bout time you replenished your tractor, and you got the best deal today.”
“Blair bought it. I just did the bidding.” Harry introduced them.
Mr. Tapscott eyed Blair. As he liked Harry his eye was critical. He didn’t want any man hanging around who didn’t have some backbone.
“Harry showed me the roadwork you did out at Reverend Jones’. That was quite a job.”
“Enjoyed it.” Mr. Tapscott smiled. “Well, you feeling strong?”
To assist in this maneuver, Travis, Stuart’s son, joined in. The men easily positioned the heavy ramp, and Harry, in the driver’s seat, rolled the tractor into the gooseneck. Then the men slid the ramp into the trailer, leaning it against the tractor.
“Thank you, Mr. Tapscott.” Blair held out his hand.
“Glad to help the friend of a friend.” He smiled and wished them good day.
Once in her truck, Harry drove slowly because she wanted the ramp to bang up against the tractor only so much.
“I’m going to take this to my place, because we can drive the tractor straight off. Then you can help me slide off the wooden ramp. Wish they made an aluminum ramp that I could use, but no luck.”
“At the hunt meets I’ve seen trailers with ramps.”
“Sure, but those kinds of trailers cost so much—especially the aluminum ones, which are the best. My stock trailer is serviceable but nothing fancy like a ramp comes with it.”
She backed up to the earthen ramp. Took two tries. They could hear Tucker barking in the house. They rolled off the tractor, after which they pushed and pulled on the wooden ramp.
“Well, how are we going to get it off the bank?” Blair was puzzled, as the heavy wooden ramp was precariously perched on the earthen rampart.
“Watch.” Harry pulled the gooseneck away, hopped out of the truck, and unhitched it. Then she climbed back in the truck and backed it over to the old hay wagon. A chain hung from the wagon’s long shaft, a leftover from the days when it was drawn by horses. She dropped the chain over the ball hitch on her bumper. Harry wisely had both hitches on her trailer: the steel plate and ball bolted into the bed of her truck for the gooseneck and another hitch welded onto the frame under the bed of the truck, with its adjustable ball mount. Then she drove the hay wagon alongside the embankment.
“Okay, now we push the ramp onto the wagon.”
Blair, sweating now despite the temperature, pushed the heavy wooden ramp onto the beckoning platform.“Presto.”
Harry cut the motor, rolled up her windows, and got out of the truck.“Blair, I spoke too soon. I think it’s going to snow. We can put the tractor in my barn or you can drive it over to yours and I’ll follow you in your truck.”
As if on cue the first snowflake lazed out of the darkening sky.
“Let’s leave it here. I don’t know how to work one of these contraptions yet. You still gonna teach me?”
“Yeah, it’s easy.”
The heavens seemed to have opened a zipper then; snow poured out of the sky. The two of them walked into the house after Harry parked the tractor in the barn. The animals joyously greeted their mother. She put on coffee and dug out lunch meat to make sandwiches.
“Harry, your truck isn’t four-wheel drive, is it?”
“No.”
“Hold those sandwiches for about twenty minutes. I’ll run down to the market and get food, because this looks like a real snowstorm. Your pantry is low and I know mine is.”
Before she could protest he was gone. An hour later he returned with eight bags of groceries. He’d bought a frying chicken, a pork roast, potatoes, potato chips, Cokes, lettuce, an assortment of cheese, vegetables, apples, and some for the horses too. Pancake mix, milk, real butter, brownie mix, a six-pack of Mexican beer, expensive coffee beans, a coffee grinder, and two whole bags of cat and dog food. He truly astounded Harry by putting the food away and making a fire in the kitchen fireplace, using a starter log and some of the split wood she had stacked on the porch. Her protests were ignored.
“Now we can eat.”
“Blair, I don’t know how to make a pork roast.”
“You make a good sandwich. If this keeps up like the weather report says, there’ll be two feet of snow on the ground by tomorrow noon. I’ll come over and show you how to cook a pork roast. Can you make waffles?”
“I watched Mother do it. I bet I can.”
“You make breakfast and I’ll make dinner. In between we’ll paint your tack room.”
“You bought paint too?”
“It’s in the back of the truck.”
“Blair, it’ll freeze.” Harry jumped up and ran outside, followed by Blair. They laughed as they hauled the paint into the kitchen, their hair dotted with snowflakes, their feet wet. They finished eating, took off their shoes, and sat back down with their feet toward the fire.
Mrs. Murphy sprawled before the fire, as did Tucker.
“How come you haven’t asked me about taking BoomBoom to the Knickerbocker Ball?”
“It’s none of my business.”
“I apologize for not asking you, but BoomBoom has been helpful and for two seconds there I found her intriguing, so I thought I’d take her to the Waldorf as sort of a thank you.”
“Like buying the groceries?”
He pondered this.“Yes and no. I don’t like to take advantage of people and you’ve both been helpful. She met someone there that I went to college with, Orlando Heguay. A big hit.” He wiggled his toes.
“Rich?”
“Um, and handsome too.”
Harry smiled. As the twilight deepened, a soft purple cast over the snow like a melancholy net. Blair told her about his continuing struggles with his father, who had wanted him either to be a doctor like himself or go into business. He talked about his two sisters, his mother, and finally he got to the story about his murdered girlfriend. Blair confessed that although it had happened about a year and a half ago he was just now beginning to feel human again.
Harry sympathized and when he asked her about her life she told him that she had studied art history at Smith, never quite found her career direction, and fell into the job at the post office which, truthfully, she enjoyed. Her marriage had been like a second job and when it ended she was amazed at the free time she had. She was casting about for something to do in addition to the post office. She was thinking of being an agent for equine art but she didn’t know enough about the market. And she was in no hurry. She, too, was beginning to feel as if she was waking up.
She wondered whether to ask him to stay. His house was so barren, but it didn’t seem right to ask him just yet. Harry was never one to rush things.
When he got up to go home, she hugged him goodbye, thanked him for the groceries, and said she’d see him in the morning.