Chapter 8

Summer

“Just remember what I told you, if you hit a rut, hold that wheel tight and jump on the clutch, the tractor will stop herself, ok?”

Lanh nodded; her long ebony hair pulled into pigtails bobbed as she nodded her head.

“And don’t let the steering wheel spin in your hands, the spoke will come around and dislocate or even break your thumb or fingers, ok?”

Again, she nodded her head vigorously, eager to get to work.

Ralph was worried. He allowed Lanh to talk him into letting her bale hay for the first time. She cut it with the ancient side cutter and did quite a nice job. She even cut the frontage alongside the highway and trimmed out the ditches. She was out there at once to rake the hay into neat wind rows, beautifully straight and even. Then she watched it day by day like she watched her pregnant cows, until it was dry enough, then she got the tedder out and fluffed the wind rows, an important part of preparing her crop, and she realized that hay is a cash crop. She did a remarkable job of getting the hay ready for bailing. Now she wants to get the old International Harvester baler out and bring her crop in.

This is something Don has been doing since he was nine, but he had been driving a tractor since he could reach the pedals. Lanh just started driving a tractor three months ago. None the less, she was approaching the job with an eagerness that surprised Ralph. “No sharp turns when hauling a bailer and a wagon, work the field like a Zamboni works the ice, big wide turns.”

“Yes poppa, I know.”

When did she first call me poppa? Ralph wondered. “Ok, take it easy, nice and slow, and don’t forget you have a crew back there, listen for them in case there’s trouble. And stay clear of the PTO shaft! We don’t need you getting your arms ripped off.”

She looked back on her “crew” which comprised Kim-ly standing on the hay wagon and waiting anxiously for Lanh to get going so she can start drinking the beer that she brought. Lanh leaned over in the tractor seat and gave Ralph a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you for worrying poppa.” Then she straightened up, set the choke and throttle, stepped down on the clutch, turned the key, and hit the big starter button. The tractor coughed to life and the rough rattling roar slowly smoothed out as the engine warmed up. As it did, she eased in on the choke until the motor was running smoothly and Ralph gave her a thumbs up.

Just as she was getting ready to ease up on the clutch, Tam appeared and climbed up on the right footboard, then propped herself on the right fender like Don did when Lanh was first learning to drive the tractor. Tam was wearing a non la, the traditional Vietnamese conical hat, and she held one out to Lanh, who slipped it on and tied the chinstrap ribbon under her chin. “I didn’t look Asian enough for you?” she asked Tam, squinting her eyes to make the epicanthal fold of her eyes more pronounced behind her thick glasses.

“It’s all about tradition,” said Tam as Lanh put the tractor in gear. Years ago, someone had mounted a horn of an old Army Jeep on the tractor, and Lanh loved it because it sounded like the roadrunner from the cartoons. Lanh gave two quick beeps to warn anyone in the area that she was going forward: “Meep! Meep!” and with that, she eased out the clutch, and they began moving out into the fields. She was pulling the old, faded red baler, and behind that, she pulled the large green hay wagon where Kim-ly and Ralph sat.

Finally, she got out to the field and, looking back over her shoulder, saw Kim-ly had set up a lounge chair on the hay wagon and was enjoying a cold drink. “I wish we had a kicker,” muttered Lanh. The kicker launches hay bales from the baler into the air to land in the hay wagon. They would land generally right where Kim-ly was sitting. Ralph was sitting next to Kim-ly. He came along to make sure that the girls had this under control. It wouldn’t do to bean poppa with a square bale of hay.

Finally, they reached the field that Lanh had cut and prepared for this moment. She pulled up to a windrow and stopped, lowered the three-point hitch, lowering the baler intake tines to the ground. She engaged the PTO, and the baler came to life. Squeaking and groaning, it began scooping hay even before Lanh put the tractor in gear. Tam hopped off the tractor with an encouraging “you got this” and stepped back to the hay wagon and climbed on with Kim-ly and Ralph.

Soon they were really bailing hay! It took Tam and Kim-ly a half dozen bales to figure out that the best way to get the bale on to a neat stack after it came off the conveyer and drop onto the trailer was to do it together. These bales weigh fifty pounds. Each girl could deal with one, but it was hard work. If they both grabbed the hay bale and carried it to the stack, the job went much easier. Ralph laughed and helped the girls learn the ropes; he had never had so much fun bailing hay in his life. Twenty-five years ago, he bailed a field of hay with the beautiful young girl that would eventually become Don’s mom, which was fun too, but for a wholly different reason.

They finished up the row, and Lanh made the turn and lined up the feeder tines of the bailer with the next windrow perfectly. Not a straw of hay was missed as she scooped the hay into the bailer. As the stack grew higher, it became more difficult for Tam and Kim-ly to lift the bales, and Ralph took pity. “If it’s too much for you, if you can’t do it, I can get Don when he gets home from your momma’s restaurant, and he can get it for you.”

That was the exact right thing to say. Tam pushed the brim of her hat back and said, “We’re just getting organized Mr. Campbell. We’ll be done before Don gets back from his shift at the restaurant.”

Ralph chuckled. “If you insist, now let me give you a hint, when the stack gets too tall, build a step to stand on. Let’s see how you can stack them bales.”

Tam and Kim-ly went back to work, grabbing the bales as soon as they came off the conveyor and lifted them into place, the job getting easier as they learned to work together. “We should mention this at the dojo,” chuckled Kim-ly.

“I’ve heard worse ideas,” said Tam. She and Kim-ly study martial arts due to attacks in their past. Now there will be no more drunken frat boys stalking their nightmares anymore.

Lanh made her next 180-degree turn and Ralph hopped off the hay wagon and stepped out in front of the tractor and waved his arms for Lanh to stop. With a long “MEEEEEEEEP!” to tell her crew she was stopping, Lanh brought the tractor to a stop and disengaged the PTO, silencing the bailer, then shut down the engine. Tam shut off the boom box on the hay wagon and the three hopped down and huddled around Ralph.

“You girls are doing incredible!” Ralph gushed as they gathered around him. “I never would have guessed you have never worked a farm before.”

The girls were hot and sweaty, and each one had a huge grin. “It’s the hats,” kidded Kim-ly as she gave Tam an elbow in the ribs. “They give us the agrarian superpowers of our ancestors.”

“Well, you keep on doing like you’re doing, and you’ll have one of the best harvests we’ve ever produced. The bales are good and tight and will fetch a good price.”

“We’re just trying to kill a warm summer afternoon,” said Tam.

“I’m impressed, Little Bit,” he said to Lanh, “when you’re done, just drop the trailer behind the tractor shed and drop the bailer by the door, I’ll have Don put it away later.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lanh, grinning in embarrassment that her boyfriend’s dad used his pet nickname for her in front of her sisters. She won’t hear the end of this. She looked at Tam and Kim-ly, who were looking at her with evil glee. Somehow these non la hats made her sisters look even more sinister.

As Ralph headed back to the farmhouse, the girls returned to their posts. Kim-ly sneered at Lanh and said, “Little Bit? That’s so cute.”

“It’s starting already,” muttered Lanh as she fired up the tractor and set the PTO. The grinding of the bailer drowned out Tam and Kim-ly’s calls of “Let’s go Little Bit!”

Lanh eased out on the clutch and the work resumed. It was easier now for Kim-ly and Tam because Ralph wasn’t on the hay wagon with them. It’s not that he wasn’t a nice guy, he was a tremendous fellow, it’s that he worried about them and would get in the way.

It was a beautiful summer afternoon and even though the three sisters had been working together their entire lives, this was the best teamwork they have ever shown and the first time that little Lanh stepped out as “team leader.” As they moved farther and farther away from the farmhouse, all three girls stripped off their shirts and began working in their bikini tops they wore under their shirts. The sun was hot, the breeze was refreshing, and the work was dry and dusty. Soon all three girls were covered in sweat and dust and were loving it. All were enjoying a chance to get out, do something they’ve never done before on a warm summer day.

Finally, the hay wagon was full, the hay was stacked up to seven feet high, and Tam and Kim-ly climbed on top of the hay for the ride back to the farmhouse. They quickly dropped off the wagon, and Lanh backed the baler into the tractor shed, parking it where it normally sits just to prove to Don and Ralph that a girl can do it. As she unhitched the baler, Sandy came out of the farmhouse and asked, “How many bales did you get?” Sandy is Ralph Campbell’s “lady friend.” She was widowed like Ralph and was the pianist at the church that Ralph and Don attend.

Unaware that they should have been counting, they counted five bales high, six bales wide times eight rows equal two hundred and forty bales the girls put up. Lanh did the math in her head: 240 bales at 50 pounds each. “That’s six tons!” she grinned.

Tam and Kim-ly sagged at the realization of all the work they put through. “Holy shit,” groaned Kim-ly.

“That’s right, six tons of hay, good job girls,” smiled Sandy as she wrote the figures on the back of an envelope.

“Where’s Mr. Campbell?” asked Tam.

“He’s ahhh ... indisposed,” said Sandy.

“The bikinis?” asked Kim-ly, suddenly realizing how skimpy her bikini top was. Her tiny shorts didn’t help project an aura of innocence, either.

“Ahhh ... yeah,” smiled Sandy as she headed back to the house. Sandy raised four rowdy, righteous girls by herself. Putting up hay in a bikini was dusty and scratchy, but not unheard of. But Ralph wasn’t prepared for the Nguyen sisters.

Lanh decided she needed to wash off and cool down, so she told her sisters, “I’m going back to the pond to wash off this dust, wanna come with?” and soon, after hooking up the small home-made flatbed trailer to the tractor, all three were heading back to the pond, bottles clanking in the cooler, boom box blasting the top forty.

It was still early in the afternoon, and it was warm and sunny back at the pond. They pulled up to the floating dock and hopped off the tractor and trailer, and walked out to the end of the dock. The floating dock was merely a dock made of wood planking on top of several empty plastic fifty-five-gallon drums. Pulled up on shore was a ten-foot rowboat and a canoe. It felt strange walking on the dock because it rolled and rocked as you walked on it, but they got to the end, a large eight-foot square area where Lanh loved to go fishing. Looking in the water, she could see the blue gills and “sunnies” swimming in and out of the shadow of the dock.

“I’m going skinny-dipping, who’s with me?” called out Kim-ly as she pulled off her dust covered bikini top.

About the same time, Don returned home from a shift at the Nguyen family restaurant. He was mostly bussing tables and washing dishes, but Duong was working on Don’s knife skills and training him to work in the kitchen. With the lunch rush over, Mai sent him home. “How did the haying go?” asked Don.