On Sunday morning Garrett again arrived at the church before us. He met us at the door and we all entered together. In the sanctuary Garrett sat between Josh and me. As we waited for the service to begin Garrett whispered that he hadn’t been to a church service since he was ten. I assured him that the service was easy to follow and to just do what the rest of us did.
Throughout the service I could sense Derek, who was sitting on my other side, growing more and more nervous. Once he whispered to me, “Greg, do I really have to do this?”
“Yes,” I whispered back. “You need to do it to protect Garrett.”
“Do I have to use that word?”
“Yes, because that’s what happened.” He gave a big sigh and nodded.
By the end of the service Derek’s left leg, next to my right leg, was jiggling up and down uncontrollably, and as we rose to leave, he took my hand, something he hadn’t done since Grandpa’s funeral, while Garrett observed, “Well, church wasn’t so bad. Maybe I’ll come again.”
When he finished greeting his parishioners, Reverend James invited us again into his office while Teddy went to play with some of his friends. In the office was a tall, broad man in a business suit. He had thinning hair and a serious expression, but his eyes appeared kind and thoughtful. The minister introduced him as Superintendent Barkley. The superintendent shook hands with the four of us and then we all sat in a circle, with Derek between me and Josh.
“Derek,” said the minister, “Can you tell Mr. Barkley exactly what you told me yesterday?”
“I’ll try, sir,” Derek replied and began. When he got to the “F” word he hesitated before blurting it out with an anxious look at Mr. Barkley, whose expression of thoughtful interest never wavered.
When Derek finished, Mr. Barkley asked the question which I had not yet heard answered. “Who was the boy, Derek?”
Derek looked down and asked, “Do I have to tell you?”
“Yes, and I’ll tell you why. But first I want to explain something. There is a difference between tattling and legitimately telling. Tattling is when a situation doesn’t concern you and nobody is hurt. Telling is when somebody has been or can be hurt if you don’t do it. I understand that there is a strong prohibition among students about tattling, and rightly so. But the reason you have to tell is because, if you don’t, Mr. Browne’s reputation and future could be seriously hurt. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, sir. I think I do.” Derek paused and then very quietly said, “The boy’s name is David Tolliver.”
“Can you tell me anything about him?”
“Well, he’s in eighth grade and he’s…he’s…he’s a bully. He and his buddies pick on smaller kids all the time.”
“Were his buddies there when he confronted you?”
“No, sir. He was alone. I kinda wanted to hit him but I didn’t want to get in trouble.”
“And you were right. No point getting yourself in trouble when hitting him wouldn’t really have solved anything anyway.”
Mr. Barkley turned to the rest of us. “Reverend Richards has told me about the conversation you all had yesterday.” Looking at Garrett he continued, “I want you all to know that I have the utmost confidence in you, Garrett Browne. Although this is your first year, I’ve already heard many fine things about you.
“When I get home I shall call David’s parents and tell them that I want to see them and David in my office in the high school first thing tomorrow morning. I think I can take care of this fairly easily, but if you, Derek, or any of the rest of you hear of any more slurs on Mr. Browne’s reputation or have any trouble at all with David, I want you to come directly to me. Agreed?”
We all agreed. As we shook hands Mr. Barkley held Derek’s for a moment before saying, “I saw the galley proofs of the school art magazine the other day, and I read your story. Congratulations.”
“Th…Th…Thank you sir,” Derek stammered and we departed. Outside the door Derek emitted a big, “Whew!”
“Glad it’s over?” Josh asked.
“You bet! But now I’m worried about what David and his friends might do.”
“I suspect,” I said, “that Mr. Barkley will take care of that too, but if you have any problems at all, you tell us right away. Understand?”
Derek nodded. We collected Teddy and drove out to the farm where we had dinner together. We were all relieved, even Teddy, who had been very aware of the tension over the last few days. The conversation covered many subjects, but the name David Tolliver did not come up.
After Garrett had left and the boys had gone to bed, Josh said, “I sure hope we were right to go to bat for Garrett. After all, what do we really know about him and his relationships except with us?”
“Nothing,” I replied thoughtfully. “But it’s too late now. I guess we just have to hope we did the right thing.”
When Derek left for school in the morning I reminded him of what I had said and then waited anxiously until he returned. As he came up the drive that afternoon I could see he was smiling. He bounced up onto the porch and said, “David got suspended for a week for bullying me and threatening Mr. B. All the kids I know thought it was about time he got nailed. So I guess that’s the end of it.”
Indeed it was. When a chastened David returned to school he was very quiet. He and his friends avoided Derek and there were no more problems.
In early May we began the plowing and planting as usual. I knew that both the tractor and the truck were getting old and assumed at some point I’d have to do something about them, but we got through the planting with no problems.
Meanwhile, Teddy had discovered that he liked to play soccer. There was a school team and, when the coach realized the team was a player short, he asked Teddy if he would like to give it a try. Teddy asked me and I told him it was fine, so he began going to practices after school. One day the coach asked him to try playing in the goal, and Teddy took to it at once. He seemed to have a natural aptitude for anticipating where the ball was going to go two or three passes before it got to him. And he was fearless, a trait which I never would have attributed to him. He had no qualms about throwing himself on the ground even right in front of a charging player who was kicking the ball. He got kicked a few times, at least once in the face, and he never flinched. From that point on and, in fact, until he graduated from high school, he was his team’s keeper and leader.
At the end of the second week in May, the school arts magazine came out, with Derek’s story on the front page. He received a lot of praise from his classmates, his teachers, and even some high school kids who saw him in the hallways. At such moments he was rather shy but he was also terribly pleased and he continued to write each evening, usually forgoing any games that were in progress in the kitchen.
In the third week in May, it began to rain… and rain… and rain. We had just finished planting the large garden and were getting ready for our first cut hay. Since we needed some rain for the crops to grow I wasn’t worried. I knew this was only temporary, but we had planned to go camping over the Memorial Day weekend and were all disappointed when the trip was rained out.
Josh and I had decided to get promise rings for each other, so we went to the jewelry store in Lancaster and asked the jeweler to make identical Irish knot rings for us. He agreed, named a price, and measured our ring sizes, all without questioning why we wanted them. We returned to the store the day before graduation, tried on the rings, paid for them and happily departed.
Graduation was held the Friday of the third week in June. Josh and I both graduated with honors. Before we left for the school auditorium, Derek took pictures of us in our blue graduation gowns. Derek and Teddy sat with Garrett and cheered loudly for each of us as we crossed the stage.
While there was a graduation party after the ceremony, Josh and I preferred to spend our time with the boys and Garrett, so we had our own party in Garrett’s garret. After we ate a late supper, Josh said, “Greg and I want you all to witness something.” He took out his ring and I took out mine. As we placed them on each other’s ring fingers we said aloud a promise we had memorized, vowing to remain together for life and to take care of each other forever. Of course, it wasn’t a wedding and I’m not even sure we would have been ready had such an event been possible, but we saw it as declaring our love to each other and sealing it with the rings. Derek took more pictures before we all, even my brothers, drank some celebratory wine.
We didn’t leave until 1:00 am. Arriving home, we fell into bed. Josh and I were so tired we just snuggled happily together and quickly dropped off to sleep.
In the morning we slept in a little but it was still very difficult to get up and do our chores. Since it was raining — again — I decided to take the boys to town to do some shopping. Halfway to Lancaster the truck broke down.
We sat for over an hour in the pouring rain until a neighbor drove by and asked if we needed help. I told him what our problem was. He invited us all into his car and drove us to Lancaster, where I went to the garage and asked for a tow. I gave our truck keys to the tow truck driver and we waited in the coffee shop while he went to get it.
An hour later we saw our poor truck being towed backwards down the street. We ran to the garage and, dripping wet by the time we arrived there, went in to find out what the damage was. The mechanic took one look at the engine, shook his head, and closed the hood.
“Your truck’s dead!” he said. “You threw a piston through the engine head. The whole engine would have to be rebuilt and that would cost you a lot more than getting a new used truck.”
I asked him where we might get one and he said he’d ask around. He thought there might be something in Berlin. When I called Josh to come and get us he came immediately and suggested we have lunch in town and talk about the situation.
Over lunch Josh said he thought his father might loan us some money for a truck. I told him I thought the trust fund would probably take care of that if it wasn’t too much. Then we talked about what we wanted. The boys wanted an expanded cab so we could all ride in the truck. I wanted a stick shift, since Grandpa had convinced me that it was better for our uses. We realized we probably couldn’t get both in a used truck and we concluded that we’d just have to see what was out there.
Back at the farm I contacted the lawyer who was our trustee. He said he thought that buying the truck was something that could come out of the trust because we couldn’t keep farming without it.
The rains continued, and I began to worry. Would the potatoes and carrots and onions and beets rot in the ground? What about the other vegetables? How would the hay do without sun? That summer I learned a couple of valuable lessons in farming. The first was that I couldn’t control the weather, so we’d have good years and bad years. To date we’d been fortunate, but it seemed as though our luck had changed. The second lesson followed on the first — that in good years we had to lay aside enough both in crops and in cash to get us through the bad years. Of course Grandpa had tried to teach me both those lessons, but I guess I was a slow learner.
I recalled a sermon that Reverend James gave that summer about Joseph and how, during the seven years of plenty in Egypt, he had set aside enough food so that when the seven lean years came nobody starved. It was a good lesson to learn young while we were still resilient and still had some money we could fall back on.
Of course, most of Teddy’s soccer games were rained out, and when he did play he came home covered with mud. Sometimes the only features I could make out were his eyes and his teeth; everything else was mud.
About three weeks after the truck broke down, just when I was beginning to wonder if the mechanic was really trying to find us a new one, he called, saying that he had found a Ford truck of about the same vintage as ours but with only 23,000 miles on it. He told us where to find it and we immediately drove to Berlin.
We found the house on the outskirts of the city. I rang the front doorbell and a small woman opened the door. She must have been at least 85. She was less than five feet tall, thin, and wrinkled. Her gray hair was pulled back in a bun. She looked exactly like the witch I had imagined when hearing the story of Hansel and Gretel as a child, even to the wire-rimmed glasses.
She invited us all in and, before anything else, she poured us glasses of lemonade. While we drank she told us that the truck had belonged to her husband who had died eight years earlier. She had never driven the truck but she went out every so often and started it to get the oil flowing, and she made certain there was enough anti-freeze in the radiator. She asked what we needed the truck for so I told her about the farm and our work. She seemed quite impressed that we were managing the farm alone.
Then she said something that excited me. “I never drove that truck because I never learned to use a stick shift on the floor.” It sounded like a dream come true. We went out to her garage and she opened the door. I saw immediately that the dark green truck was indeed the answer to my prayers. It looked hardly used. The upholstery was like new and the finish was unblemished. With her permission I got in and started the truck. It started at once and purred like a contented lion.
Anxiously I asked her how much she wanted for it. She named a price which I thought was much too low and reluctantly I told her so. She smiled and said, “Well, it’s more important to me that Seth’s truck goes to a good home and gets used by somebody who needs it. I really don’t need the money. I know I could get more for it, but I don’t want more. You boys take it.”
Gratefully I gave her a $100 deposit and told her we would be back in a little while with plates for it. We went to the Registry in Berlin, registered the truck, returned to her house, put the plates on the truck, and drove away. I stopped to fill the tank and check the oil, and then we drove to the farm, proud owners of our new truck.
I called the lawyer who said he would put a check in the mail to her. We were back in business.
The only problem was that it was still raining. Each day we did our chores but there was no way we could work outside except on the very infrequent dry days, when we did our best to weed and hoe. The vegetables grew, but they were quite scrawny. The hay grew for a while; it seemed to like the rain. But I knew that was probably temporary. I was most worried about the root vegetables — the carrots, the beets, the onions, and the potatoes. Every day when the rain wasn’t too bad I let the cows out to pasture, but there were days when we had to feed them in the barn, and our hay supply was diminishing.
One day I pulled up a potato and found it had begun to rot. There was nothing we could do except wait.