"Ollie"

 Ollie

            The field was lush and green, with tall grass ready to be cut for the season. He looked out on the 26 acres of what would become hay for the cows and took in the view. He sat there on his tractor, thinking of all the friends he had left in the city years ago and how they would never see such beauty as this. The wind had a gentle breeze that made the field look like a green blanket rippling through the air. This was the one field he liked to mow, as it was on top of the mountain that slowly declined toward the valley below that it overlooked.  There was a brook that sat at the bottom of that valley that he swam in during the hot summers. Looking down and along the valley, he saw it was lush with trees and patches of fields ready to be cut. It was a beautiful site, he thought, would be a perfect sight for a house, dismissing the thought of how hard it would be to reach this spot in the winter. Most rural town dirt roads were rarely plowed in the winter, as most homes on them were owned by folks down in the city who were hardly up in the winter.

            “I suppose I need to start mowing; the field won't mow itself,” he said from atop his tractor. Sitting on an Oliver Row Crop 66 proudly, the only one in the county. Everybody else had a John Deer or International tractor, but hot him, and he would brag about this any chance he got. The tractor was old, from the early 1950s, but it was in great shape. It stood out from the others with its yellow nose, red rims, and olive-green painted body. If it weren’t for the red rims, most folks would quickly pass it off as a John Deer. So he kept as much original design as he could so as not to have folks mistake it.

            He was ready to go, thinking to himself, the grass isn’t going to cut itself. He popped the PTO into gear with a hard thud, putting the transmission into second gear and engaging the clutch. With the PTO engaged, the mower was powered and attached to the back end of the tractor like a trailer. He was off, mowing away in the spring sun of upstate New York.

            Every time he was out mowing in the spring, he thought how funny it would be to mow designs into the fields. He knew that most planes that flew over were most likely heading or leaving one of the big cities around New York. It would give them something to talk about when people would ask how their flight was. When he first moved up from the city and was still this asshole kid just starting at a summer farm job, he always had wanted to carve out penises in the field, only for his amusement, though. However, over the years, he became a decent young adult and is now an adult. Volunteering for the community, helping with being a volunteer firefighter, and following in a career he never thought he’d be in when he was that asshole city kid. He was proud of the person he’d become.

            A couple of hours later, he was done mowing and then off to the barn, a couple miles away down that dirt road along the top of the mountain. As he pulled up to the barn, he saw Bill getting the hay tedder ready. The piece of equipment that would take the hay he just mowed and put it in the rows needed to bale it all up.

            “Hey Bill, how’s it going?” he said, jumping off the parked tractor.

            “It's not too bad, Tim,” he said while connecting his tractor's PTO to the tedder.

            “I mowed down all 26 acres. If the sun stays out for a couple of days and the wind keeps up, it should be ready to bale up in a couple of days.” Tim said.

            “Well, it's all good, “Bill replied, “but if I keep clipping rocks in the fields, there’ll be no tedding of the fields with no teeth on the equipment, as somebody didn’t go out picking rocks during thaw time.”  Looking at Tim with disappointment.

            “Hey, it was too cold and muddy out there. I don’t need to be catching a cold or the Bird Flu stuff.” He clapped back with a smug smile, knowing that would annoy Bill. He liked working with Bill. He’s been helping up here on the farm since he moved up here, as they were neighbors. Tim was always finding ways to annoy Bill and get him going about some nonsense. Once, he tried to convince Bill that his chewing tobacco was tea leaves that a French woman stomped on, giving it flavor, knowing that Bill wasn’t that dull. It’s all in good spirits, he thought to himself.

            “How in hell would you get the Bird Flu around here? You going to make out with a crow or something?” he side-eyed Tim with a half-crooked smile.

            Tim stood there next to Bill, noticing how much bigger he was than Bill. Here is a man who was born into farming and has been doing this all his life, looking like a skinny office clerk. In comparison, Tim was born in the city and hadn’t seen a real farm until his mid-teens. As a freshman in high school, he was tall and muscular enough to play defense on varsity lacrosse. He towered over Bill, but he knew just because of that didn’t mean Bill wasn’t a weak man in any sense. He’d seen Bill lift equipment most folks couldn’t ever do and manhandle cattle like ragdolls.

            “Well, if you don’t need me for anything else, I’ll be heading out. I am sure Sally most likely has dinner made.” Tim said.

            “No, it should be good for this afternoon. If I can get the girls in from the field, I will start the milking. Hopefully, the equipment is all cleaned and ready to go,” Bill explained.

            The girls, he thought to himself, that was how Bill talked about the cows. Thirty-five of them are all Holstein cows, black and white sticking out like a sore thumb in the green fields. Though in winter, with the snow, they blend in better to hide from a sasquatch attack; he chuckled to himself at the thought.

            “Alright then, see you tomorrow,” Tim said, disconnecting the mower from his tractor, which was his daily driver around the farm.

            Riding along the county-paved road, Tim admired the view of the road that ran parallel to the brook. The water was so clean-looking, tempting him to jump in and cool off after mowing in the sun. He fought off the alluring temptation of the brook calling to him with its diamond sparkles from the sun's reflection over the little waves. These brooks up here were the headwaters for the Delaware River. All that happens up here ends up in Delaware Bay and goes into the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the farm fields in and around these headwaters were cleared in the late 1700s, and the logs floated down the river to Philadelphia to be sold as lumber. Men from up here would ride the river down to sell their lumber and then travel back up here via horse and carriage. What a rugged way to live, he thought.

            He turned off the county paved road onto a dirt road with the tractor. The road he lived on, in the valley, he could see from where he was mowing five miles away. The dirt road lay flat across the valley, leading up the hill in a sharp, ninety-degree turn. He had to shift the tractor into a lower gear to make it up the incline into his driveway. It was a steep driveway off the road that was already steep. He hated the driveway because, in the winter, it would turn to ice and, at times, impossible to drive a vehicle up. He would slit and land on his ass way more than he cared while trying to walk up it during those times.

            As he walked through the door, he was instantly overwhelmed by the smell of his favorite, sloppy joes. “I’m home,” Tim yelled out.

            “I’m in here,” Sally called out from another room.

            “OK,” he replied while trying to scoop out a mouthful of food with a big wooden spoon from the cast iron pan. “Damn, that’s fucking hot,” murmuring while simultaneously blowing air over the food in his mouth. It was straight lava, and he knew it would be, but that urge to scoop it out of the pan was too great to resist.

            “Did you just burn your mouth again?”  Sally asked while walking into the kitchen from the other room.

            “Yes, very much so,” he said, half blowing out the words to try to keep his mouth cool. He knew his reward for this fire-breathing act would be those stringy bits of burnt skin on the roof of his mouth for the next day or so. Was it called skin in his mouth? The thought hit him.

            “Have you learned your lesson yet? I mean, there should be only a certain number of times one does that before stopping. Continuing it is called insanity,” Sally laughed.

            He loved this lady, her sarcasm, humor, and the way she could shut down any man in a drinking contest. This was unique in itself, as she was a petite blond with a hell of a sailor's mouth. She could look like a beauty queen in any outfit, but she downplayed her looks when complimented. They had met after he moved up from the city in high school. He came up at the end of tenth grade, and she was in ninth. They’d pass each other here and there, in school, at parties, and with various mutual friends. She had been dating a guy since middle school, so he never paid that much attention to her. He did always admire her beauty, though; one thing as a teenage boy was you always admired or checked out the hot girls.

Most of the kids he went to school with upstate had known each other since kindergarten. However, because he was from the city and had moved up there so late, he was out of the social loops of many of the other kids. They all knew him but didn’t know him beyond the city kid, so not a lot of dating occurred in his last years of high school. But a couple of years after they graduated, that changed. He saw Sally at the local grocery store and said hi, and that led both of them to this point, very much happy and in love.

            “So, did you get all the mowing done for Bill today?” she said with a smile.

            “I got most of it done; I’ll probably head back tomorrow after work and see if he needs anything else done.”

            “You know, you’re going to end up burning yourself out working two jobs, especially having one of them not put money in your pocket most of the time.” With annoyance and disappointment in her eyes.

            “I’ll be fine,” he responded with a sparkling smile, trying to remove the annoyance within her. “Besides, I get paid with fresh milk when helping out on the farm. All that tasty milk and milk fat for making B_U_T_T_EEERRRR!” he sang out the butter part while throwing his hands in the air like he was singing at a concert.

            “Um, you’ve never made butter with fresh milk fat. And if you wanted fresh butter, why are we buying store-bought? I can see you now in your Daisy Dukes churning away all afternoon.” She chuckled and winked at him.

            “I’d be hella fine looking out there in the sun, looking like a cover model for Butter Weekly!”

“I am sure you might find an audience for that somewhere. Maybe you can get an advent calendar with different deep-fried dabs of butter-flavored nuggets.”

“Um, say what, “ he responded with a puzzled look. “Deep fried dabs of butter?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Just like deep-fried Oreos, but with dabs of butter in different flavors. One can be cinnamon, one sugar maple, and maybe put a spicy one in there like red pepper.”

Now, his mind was racing with ideas about deep-fried dabs of butter. A carny food cart

traveling upstate New York fairs selling yet another deep-fried something or another. Butter galore everywhere, people lined up midway through the fair awaiting the creamy, crispy sweetness of fried butter, or spicy, he thought. Maybe he even won dairy awards throughout the Northeast, ribbons all over, and a butter crown to show off while driving his tractor in the tractor parade at the county fairs.

“Don’t even think about it, mister!” she exclaimed quickly with a giggle. “We are not going to start some silly business. I know that look!” She always knew that look.

“But the fame—we could be the butter bandits of the north,” he said, deflated.

“Well, when you start churning fresh butter, we can discuss it then, but for now, we have store-bought butter you can use.” She turned to walk away, “Get your dinner before it gets cold.”

“Umm, do you remember it was lava still?” he replied, the sting still in his mouth, as he watched her walk away into the other room. “It’ll be lava for hours!”

Later that evening, he was relaxing out back, lounging in a chair on the porch in the

backyard, looking up at the night stars. Laying there, he thought of how wonderful it was to see such a night sky and how lucky he was. Being from the city, this was something he hadn’t seen to its fullest until he moved up here. While lying there, he again thought of all the people in the city who would never have this view or opportunity to see this. The universe and its vastness sucking him in as he stares away into its depths.

“Hey! Space boy,” Sally called out as she walked out onto the porch from inside the house. “Whatcha thinking about?”

            “Nothing really.” He replied.

            “Well, you know it’s getting late, and you have a real job tomorrow morning.”

“I know, geez. You don’t have to ruin the evening.” He laughed, knowing that he would rather mow fields all day away from people. Riding away on his pride and joy tractor.

“Well, we need the money, so there’s that to consider. I know you haven’t liked being there for the last several years. Why don’t you work for the state instead.”

“I don’t know.” But he did know. He’d known for a while now.

Ten years ago, he got the itch to flat-out help people in addition to being a volunteer firefighter and applied for a deputy position with the county sheriff’s office on a whim. Lo and behold, they hired him in his bewilderment. Here is a kid from the city, doing stupid city kid shit back in the day, getting hired as a deputy. Boy, if his friends from that past could’ve of see him the day of academy graduation, they would’ve been giving him all sorts of shit going that route.

            But times have changed; being an officer isn’t as prestigious as it had been in the past. Now, people looked at you with suspicion and contempt; some were afraid to even be around you or look at you as well. It wasn’t fun anymore, he thought to himself. He’d like to believe that he at least was one of the good ones amongst so many bad apples out there, believing in the “Golden Rule” even as drunks cussed him out or speeding idiots were being cited. Going to the state wouldn’t cure that; it would just expose him to more people to deal with. He could alleviate it with a desk job, but he liked being out and about, just like being on his tractor mowing the fields. He needed to be free to the wonders of mother nature.

            He looked over at his love, admiring the moon glow off her cheeks as she lounged on the other chair. She lay there looking up as well, enjoying some tea. At least, he thought it was tea. It could be whisky, as she did love her whisky, but it was a work night, and she didn’t partake in that on a work night. She had her job to go to as well, molding the minds of the youth into proper contributing adults of the future. However, with the way society is going. Any kids getting out of school and into college to be productive adults in the vast world gave him serious doubts. If they didn’t take in the world around them and focus on fixing current events instead of being the next TikTok star, the world would fall like the Roman Empire.

            “Now, what are you thinking?”

            “The Roman Empire,” he replied.

            “Um, with the glorious beauty of the universe above you, you’re thinking about that?

            How about putting effort into seeing a shooting star or something.” Winking at him.

“Yeah, I guess I can. But I have everything I have ever wished for sitting right next to me.” He said sheepishly, “That beauty right there,” as he nodded to the tractor glittering in the moonlight.

“Oh, you ass!” she replied.

“I’m just kidding; you are my wish in the shooting stars. No need for any other wish.” As he leaned over to kiss her, she leaned in as well. Right when they made contact, the chair about gave way under him, inflicting a moment of induced panic and slow freefall, though he did catch himself before going ass over kettle. They both laughed wide-eyed, staring at each other, thankful he didn’t head butt her in the process. He gave her a long, deep kiss, grateful she was in his life, his rock and beacon of light in a dark world.

The next morning, he was up early, ready for the day. He stood in front of the mirror, dressed in his uniform. A dark grey uniform, pressed and neat with the collar brass, badge, and his name, displaying the only silver sparkling contrast of the uniform. On his right arm, just below his shoulder, was the American flag, and on his left was the department patch, both downed in grey. He didn’t much like that, he thought to himself; he missed the older uniforms with some color, where the flag was red, white, and blue, and the department patch was the colors of the county seal. The vest under his uniform gave him an odd boxy look at his chest and back, but he knew it could someday be a lifesaver. However, he hoped not to find out.

He walked out of the bathroom and saw that Sally was still sleeping. Walking over, he kissed her on the head as he did every morning; he heard her sleepily moan as she turned over. After adjusting his utility belt, he grabbed the keys to the cruiser and wandered out the back door of the house into the dark morning. He stood on the porch that they had been lounging on a handful of hours before. Taking in the fresh morning air, he thought he heard the yelping of some coyotes out there somewhere in the darkness, most likely chasing down some prey and, of course, the smell of fresh-cut hay. A scent he loved and most likely was of his producing the afternoon before.  

He walked over to the garage and lifted the bay door open, thinking that someday he should put a motor on the door. It was a pain in the winter to get out of the cruiser every time to open and close the door. He slid into the patrol car, adjusting his utility belt so his sidearm wasn’t interfering with the seatbelt clasp. The vehicle manufacturer had explicitly designed this car to assist with protecting and serving, from suspension to motor horsepower to vomit-proofing the rear seat and divider, but never considered a driver wearing a full utility belt of items to try to latch the seatbelt. He thought maybe they took this into consideration in a newer car, knowing his cruiser was as old as his tenure in the department.

He turned the key and started the engine. With that, the vehicle's dash and radio system lit up, his lifeline to the county—a simple radio that would supply him with any information he needed on vehicle stops, a person's inquiry, and calls he was en route to.

He reached for the mic, “758 County.”

Quick static, “County on 758.” The voice crackled over the radio.

“758, 10-8 over,” as he called himself in service.

“County 758, show 10-8 at 04:58. Safe shift 758, county out.” The voice crackled out.

He turned on the cruiser's headlights, and they lit up the tractor. It was shining bright as can be, with the headlights showing the details of the sixty-plus-year-old tractor. For its age, it looked great and well taken care of; he hoped that when he was that old, he’d still look that great.

He pulled the car up to the tractor, “Well, see you this afternoon, Ollie; we’ll hit up some more fields.” The yellow nose of the tractor just stared at him.

Then he drove off, taillights illuminating the steep driveway as he rolled down it and away into the darkness.