Chapter 30

After testing Dennis on the equipment, Randy turned him loose in the hayfield to mow. Since hay wasn’t a primary crop for Randy, his mower was a small older model, and he figured it would take all week for Dennis to mow the 250 acres. Randy would be busy all that time and more, cultivating the thousand acres of corn. Rains after planting had packed the soil and now the early corn was high enough to cultivate without covering the plants.

Dennis was thrilled to be out in a field on his own, driving the tractor and mowing hay. He kept his goggles and mask on as the mowing raised the residue of the hay and was almost as bad as the dust in the corncrib had been. Dennis was happy about the work he’d done there. Randy estimated they’d salvaged well over 1,000 board feet of salable lumber and had put up an advertisement on Craigslist and other sale boards. He’d had a dozen calls over the weekend!

Dennis was also thankful for the hat he’d bought on a whim. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, the day got hotter. Soon, he’d taken off his work shirt and drove in just his T-shirt and bibs. By noon, he could predict the T-shirt would go soon. As he turned to make another pass the length of the field, he saw movement at the edge of the field. It was still too far away to tell what it was, but gradually, he could see a small vehicle and three people. At 300 feet away, Dennis began to get excited. It wasn’t so much that Lana and her two sibs were waiting for him, but that he’d recognized them from the length of a football field. He carefully shut down the mower and tractor, then dismounted from the open seat. He mopped his face with his bandana as he approached them.

“Lunchtime, worker boy,” Lana shouted. “You look so much like a ... a farmer in your overalls and straw hat!” The kids all laughed. Dennis plopped down where they’d spread a blanket and had a picnic set out.

“Wow! I can hardly believe it’s lunchtime already. I completely forgot to pack something this morning.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Mom took lunch out to Dad and we came to join you,” Lana said. He glanced at the ATV they’d arrived on.

“Is it legal to drive that over here?” he asked.

“Yeah. The whole farm would be shut down if we couldn’t get from field to field. Even I can drive this on the roads. Technically, Nils shouldn’t drive it for another year, but he does anyway,” she said. She handed him an egg salad sandwich and a Dr Pepper. “You need sunblock before you head back out on the tractor. Mom told me to make sure you used some.”

“I didn’t even think of that when I took my work shirt off. I was planning to get rid of the T-shirt, too. I could have been fried to a crisp.”

“Mom took sunblock to Dad, too. You’d both have been burned. You need it in the fields, even when it’s cloudy.”

Dennis accepted the bottle of sunblock and started smearing it on his arms and face. Then he paused long enough to unfasten his bibs and pull off his T-shirt. He started coating himself again.

“Here. Let me,” Lana said. “You’ll never reach your back.” She took the bottle and began rubbing the block into his back and neck. Dennis’s heart rate sped up. He had to remind himself this was Lana and not one of his girlfriends. Regular girlfriends. She was doing a very thorough job of applying the sunblock. She moved around to his front and made sure his face and ears were covered, then started down his neck and onto his chest. He could see her shoulders rising and falling as her breathing also got deeper. “Here! You can get the rest!” she almost shouted as she reached his abs. She handed him the bottle and quickly went to supervise Nils and Sofia in cleaning up the picnic.

Dennis refastened the straps on his overalls and stuffed the T-shirt and sunblock in his carry pack attached to the tractor seat.

“Thank you for bringing lunch. And sunblock,” he said hurriedly. “I need to get back to work now, though. I’ll see you later.” He climbed up on the tractor.

“I’ll be back at 4:30 to help get the tractor covered and take you back to the house,” Lana said as he started the tractor. He waved and swung the tractor around to head back up the field.

One thing about being alone for four hours with no one to talk to and only the tractor for company was that it gave Dennis plenty of time to just think. He’d spent the morning thinking about his girlfriends. He spent the afternoon thinking about Lana. Even as sweat trickled down his back, he could remember the touch of her hands as she smoothed the sunblock on his skin.

If things had been different. If his dad hadn’t lost the farm, Dennis would have been riding the school bus with Lana for the past ten years. Their families would have been closer, sharing games on Friday night and going to church together on Sunday morning. He and Lana would have grown up together. Maybe they’d have played together. Maybe...

The tractor had already been fueled in the morning and Dennis went straight to work. He did remember to put sunblock on his arms when he removed his outer work shirt. Lana and her sibs showed up again for lunch and she applied sunblock to his back and then continued around to the front. She quickly swept across his abs to his beltline and then practically ran from the field to take the kids back to the house. Dennis mounted up and worked for the rest of the afternoon before she showed up to take him back to the farm.

The same was repeated on Wednesday, only Lana did not seem to rush as fast when it came to touching his chest and abs. When she was finished applying the sunblock, both teens were panting a bit. Dennis found himself thinking about Lana a lot.

“Okay. You should have no difficulty at the doctor’s office this morning,” Dot said. “Brenda, it’s so nice of you to volunteer to take Dennis to his appointment.”

“When the seniors made their gift, they specified transportation as needed,” she said. “I’m happy to be needed.”

Dot and Peg headed to work and Dennis got in Brenda’s car for the trip to Dr. Sachs’ office.

“Look! There’s two buckskins and a chestnut out there,” he said excitedly.

“What? Oh. Wow! I never even thought about getting excited about that kind of thing. Well, I mean not since I was like two and pointed out every cow and animal we passed,” Brenda said.

“I never saw them when I was two. I can’t wait to get the other eye done,” he said. Then he snorted, shaking his head. “It’s dumb.”

“No, it isn’t dumb, Dennis. It’s refreshing. It reminds of all the things I shouldn’t just take for granted in my life,” Brenda said, reaching for his hand.

“Um ... I didn’t mean that, exactly. I don’t mind when someone is surprised that I’m amazed by things. Like I recognized Lana the other day when I was at least a football field away from her.”

“That’s great!”

“Yeah. But what’s dumb is that I get caught up in a fantasy. Seeing with one eye is so much better than it used to be that I keep imagining that when the other eye is fixed, I’ll have like x-ray vision. Or it will be like having a bionic eye that lets me zoom in on things. It’s, like, what kind of operation will they think of next?”

“You’d be the envy of all the boys in school. Looking right through a girl’s clothes while you walk down the hall. Standing outside the locker room watching right through the wall while we shower. Looking to see if Ms. Jameson wears underwear.” Ms. Jameson was the freshman and sophomore English teacher and one of the reasons boys in those grades couldn’t concentrate.

“Yeah. Well, I’m happy I don’t have to look through walls to see my girlfriends. It would be fun, though, to shower with you all, now that I can see,” he laughed.

“Well, the touch method wasn’t bad, was it?” Brenda responded.

“It’s wonderful.” Dennis lapsed into silence as he thought about Lana putting sunblock on him. Brenda didn’t need x-ray vision to tell what was happening in his pants.

“Things are looking good, Dennis,” Dr. Sachs said after his exam. “You’re remembering to wear goggles?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve been in some pretty dusty places on the farm lately. This week, I’m mowing hay. I use a respirator mask, too.”

“Good. I wish you weren’t being exposed to so much, but as long as you are careful it should be okay. Remember, your eye is still healing. Contaminants can slow or even reverse that process. I’d like you to continue the prescription eyedrops for another week, but I want you to step up the number of times a day you use saline to flush your eyes. Keep a bottle with you all the time, and if you feel an irritant, don’t wait to use the drops.”

“I’ll do that, sir.”

“The first thing I examined when I brought you in was your prescription. The optometrist should have a new lens for your left eye shortly. It has gotten stronger since the operation, which is just what we want to see,” Dr. Sachs said. “By the time you come in for the next procedure, it should be stabilized. This lens should do fine for the next three weeks. Then we’ll test again before we do your right eye. You’re still on for it, aren’t you?”