Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Father Webber got to the farm later than
usual. Not that Lucas was waiting for him, or expecting him. It was
just that Lucas was a creature of habit, and he’d gotten used to
the priest arriving in the early afternoon. That was all.
As it was, Lucas was actually watching for
the school bus to drop Alex off by the time the priest’s battered
sedan appeared on the dirt road. And the man who stalked up the
hill after parking the car did not look like the mild priest who’d
been helping out for the last week or so.
“Bad day?” Lucas asked quietly.
The priest looked startled, then snorted.
“Bad week, month, year…but, yeah, an extra-bad day.” He made a
face. “Sorry. It’s not your problem.”
“You want to spend some time with Rascal? She
could cheer you up. Or would you rather work some of it off?”
“Work it off?” The priest’s expression was
blank.
“Yeah. You know…when you’re mad about
something, you can, I don’t know, hit a punching bag or something.
Like that. Work it off.”
The priest looked like he’d never really
considered that approach before. Probably he didn’t get angry very
often. Maybe he wasn’t even angry now—it wasn’t like Lucas was an
expert at reading people’s expressions. “Sorry, I just thought…we
can just do regular stuff if you want. Just the chores. I’ve got
the barn cleaned out, but you could check the water, and there’s
the afternoon feeds to measure out…”
“No. The ‘work it off’ idea…that sounds good,
actually.”
“Yeah?” Lucas cast an appraising gaze at the
priest. The man was lean enough, but he looked like just what he
was: someone who spent most of his day sitting on his ass. He
probably wasn’t going to be a whole lot of actual use, but at least
maybe he’d feel better afterward. “Okay. Excellent. Alex is
supposed to help me, but he’s been trying to squirm out of it for
days.”
He pulled his leather work gloves from his
back pocket and started around the side of the barn. The building
was from an earlier time, back when hay was stacked and stored
inside instead of being covered in plastic and left in the fields.
And since Elise preferred the smaller, old-fashioned bales, saying
that they made it easier to feed different kinds of hay to
different animals, the farm still used the barn in the ways
originally intended. There was an earthen ramp built up along the
far side of the building so that wagons could access the loft, and
that was where Lucas led Mark now.
“Grab those gloves, there,” he said,
gesturing to the heavy gloves by the door. “They’re probably pretty
stiff, but you’ll get them loosened up quick enough.”
He swung easily onto the first of the wagons
parked inside the loft. “The idea is to stack these pretty tight,
and not spread out all over the place—we get a bunch of different
kinds of hay in here and we need to be able to get at the one we
want, not have it buried under a bunch of the wrong kind. I’ll toss
a few bales down and show you how we stack them, and then you can
come up and toss them down to me for a while.” Once the first few
bales were off, it wasn’t that hard to throw the rest down off the
wagon, so hopefully the priest would be able to handle it. Lucas
climbed up to the top of the tightly stacked bales, unwedged a few
and tossed them gently to the wooden floor of the loft.
“They weigh about seventy pounds each,” he
said as he jumped down and landed next to the bales. “And they’re
pretty scratchy, so you need to keep long sleeves on, even if it’s
hot.” He didn’t bother to mention how the little bits of hay would
stick to sweaty skin and work their way under even the tightest
cuffs. Let the priest discover that itchiness for himself. “If one
breaks—like, the twine comes off—pile the loose hay over by that
trap door. And make sure you don’t leave any twine in the hay. Some
of these animals will eat anything, but it might not come out too
well. And if you see or smell a bale that seems a bit funky, toss
it off the other side. Sometimes things get caught up in the baler,
but we don’t want them rotting and spreading whatever it is to the
rest of the bales.” Lucas had helped on a farm when he was in high
school and still remembered the half-snake he’d found embedded in a
bale then. Hopefully the priest wouldn’t make any discoveries quite
that gruesome.
He showed the priest how to stack the bales.
“Tight, now, ’cause this is the bottom row but we’re going to be
ten or fifteen bales up by the end and we need a strong foundation
or the whole thing will fall down.” When that was clear, he nodded
at the wagon. “Okay, now climb up there and start tossing them
down. The farther you throw them the less carrying I have to do, so
feel free to work off a little energy. But don’t throw yourself
right off the wagon. It’s a long way down.”
The first bale sailed over Lucas’s head and
almost hit the wall of the barn. He looked back toward the wagon.
“Okay, then,” he said with a grin. “This might be just what you
need.”
The priest grunted as he sent another bale
flying, and Lucas didn’t have any more time for chatting. They
worked in companionable silence for about half an hour, until the
wagon was empty and they were both covered in sweat and
hayseeds.
“Good work,” Lucas said as he picked
something dry and brittle from the corner of his lips. He meant it.
The priest had performed a lot better than expected.
“Are we done?” He sounded almost
disappointed.
“We don’t have to be. There’s another wagon
in the back, and two more out in the field. We’ve been going slow
because I thought I’d be doing it mostly myself, so there’s not
much more baled. But there’s more cut and dried that I could bale,
and I could check the weather and maybe cut again tonight. If that
breeze keeps up, and the heat? It’ll only be a couple days to get
it dry…” He caught himself. “Sorry. You don’t want to do this every
day. It’s a crappy job. But, yeah, if you want to help me with that
wagon in the back…”
“I can help you with more than that,” the
priest said firmly. “You were right. This is just what I
needed.”
“Wait and see if you still feel that way
tomorrow,” Lucas said. “You’re going to be sore. This works muscles
you aren’t used to using. There’s this one spot right between your
shoulder blades…” But Lucas didn’t think he should keep talking
about that. It wasn’t right to be thinking about the priest’s
shoulders, or his back, or how the sweat was sticking his shirt to
his skin and probably trickling lower, working past his belt and
down into… “Okay. Yeah. I’ll go get the tractor and pull this wagon
out, and then we can get going on that second load. Alex is
probably already here, doing the easy chores down in the barn. I’ll
see if I can get him up to help with this.”
It wasn’t that they needed the assistance,
but Lucas was suddenly back to feeling shy around the priest. Not
because of the past, although that was certainly never too far from
his mind, but because of the present. The priest was…well, despite
his present appearance, the best word Lucas could think of was
“clean”. He hadn’t been soiled by the world the way Lucas had,
hadn’t been weak enough to let himself be dragged into the mud and
filth. He was clean and Lucas had no right to even think about him
in any way that might sully him.
On his way down to the barn, he stopped at
the hose and turned it on, letting it run to cool down. “Alex,” he
yelled. “You here?”
The boy’s head popped out from the feed room
door. “Hi. I’m measuring up the evening feeds.”
“Yeah? That’s about a ten minute job, right?
So you’ll be up to help us in the loft soon?”
“Father Mark’s helping you?” Alex’s
expression was strange.
“Yeah. He’s doing your job, and doing it
pretty well. But you should be helping too.”
“Well, if he’s so great at it…”
“What are you being pissy about?” It wasn’t
just Alex’s usual good-natured-laziness—this was something
different.
The kid said, “He’s spending a lot of time
out here lately, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, I guess he is. Is there a problem with
that?”
“He’s checking in on me? Is that it? Making
sure I’m okay? Because I can’t help noticing that he’s usually here
a good while before I show up, and then he’s usually spending most
of his time with you, not me.”
“It’s not all about you, Alex.” Lucas stepped
a little closer and looked back over his shoulder to make sure the
priest couldn’t hear. “Except for it is, a little bit. Because he’s
taking serious heat for getting involved with you, for helping you
out after Father Terry told him to back off. He hasn’t given me a
lot of details, but they’re not happy with him, Alex. The church,
or whoever. And your dad is still after him too. It’s not your
fault or anything, but I think you could cut him a little slack.
He’s not out here checking on you, he’s out here looking for a
little peace. Is that so hard to understand?”
“A little peace, or a little piece of ass?”
Alex raised his eyebrow and waited for Lucas to catch up.
“Oh, come on!” Lucas snorted after a moment
of stunned silence. “You really think… He’s about twenty miles out
of my league, Alex! Like, he’s not even…” Lucas made vague gestures
with his hands trying to express how far apart he and the priest
were. “All that stuff I said about you, about you and me being
impossible? It’s the same for me and him, except for about twice as
far apart and he’s an adult and smart enough to realize it.” He
shook his head. “You’re crazy.”
“And you’re na?ve.” Alex stepped back toward
the feed room.
“So come up and chaperone,” Lucas said,
trying to keep his expression serious. “Father Mark can spend time
with you, I can spend time with you—everyone’s happy.”
“You go on ahead,” Alex said. Then he added
with a sneer, “Are you planning on doing your cool-down trick with
the hose? Make sure you don’t just get your head wet. He’s been
having such a hard time lately, he deserves a bit of a treat,
doesn’t he? Give yourself the full wash-down. You can win the farm
wet T-shirt contest any day, right?”
The longer this went on, the less funny it
was. “Get over it, Alex.”
“Yeah.” Alex’s expression wasn’t surly
anymore. Now it was sad. “I really wish I could.” With that, he
turned and disappeared into the feed room.
Lucas thought about following him, but he had
no idea what to say. And maybe this was for the best, in a weird
way. The kid might be completely wrong about the priest, but if
being jealous of that helped him get over his crush, maybe it would
be good. Alex could stop mooning over Lucas and find someone his
own age, someone else pure and sweet and ready to take on the
world. And the priest would, if there was any justice in the world,
soon be back to his regular life.
And Lucas? He’d be left behind.
Which was how it should be, he reminded
himself. He bent over and let the cool hose water run over the back
of his neck and up through his hair. When he’d been released from
prison, they’d made it clear that he was still serving out his
sentence, he was just doing it in a different environment. So Lucas
would be left behind, and he’d do his time. And when that was
over?
He shook his head, the cool water spraying
over his shoulders and down onto the grass. It would never be over.
He’d done what he’d done, and there was no time machine to make it
better. But he’d at least have the decency to make sure he wasn’t
dragging anyone else down with him.