farm girl story

Caitlin Leah Keeler
Fiction Writing 2
Chris Rice
30 January 2006
Farm Girl
Nancy’s bus ride home from school takes 45 minutes. In movies, the cool kids always sit in the back of the bus, but it doesn’t make any sense for her, since all her friends get off way before she does. When she sits in the front, she can use the time to read her library book. When she was in first grade and first starting to read she saw how important the skill was going to be for her, so she trained herself not to get sick from reading on the bumpy bus.
Nancy puts her book back in her knapsack once the bus turns off Charleston Rd. She gives herself the last 10 minutes to watch out the window and transition from the fantasy world of her book to real life: forest, the Riddles’ house, the Riddles’ barn, cornfield, soybeans, corn, shooting range, forest, corn, alfalfa, grandma’s house, pasture, home. The bus drops her off at the bottom of the driveway. She looks up at the house and sees her mother gesturing from the kitchen window, so she crosses the road and gets the mail from the mailbox before walking up the driveway to the back porch, and into the house.
She walks from the front door through what is still called “the new room,” even though her parents built it 10 years ago. It’s full of deer heads and file cabinets, as both her parents use the space as an office. Everyone else, including Nancy, walk right through to the kitchen, the room where the life of the house is centered. She drops the mail on the huge pocked maple table her great-grandfather made her parents when they were married. There is no way to move such a large piece of furniture into the room; Nancy figures her father put the table in the middle and built the house up around it. Her mother is by the stove, stirring a sauce for the casserole. She asks Nancy how school was today. Nancy, a bit distracted by sorting the mail, says, “Um, it was fine. Some of the girls in Hermitage are throwing a party tonight. Can I go?”
Her mom pours the sauce out of the pan and over the casserole. “I'm sorry honey, but your brother needs the truck. He’s going over to Pete’s tonight so they can get a good start on his corn tomorrow morning. You know how hard those boys have to work while it’s still dry. And besides, I need you to help me clean the house—my Sunday school class is coming over tomorrow night.”
“Fine, then,” Nancy says huffily, standing and picking up the envelope and 2 catalogs addressed to her. “I'm going to take a nap. I have a headache anyway,” and she stomps down the basement stairs.
Sometimes Nancy feels like her basement bedroom is ostracism from the rest of the family, but really it’s a self-imposed exile. Ever since her oldest brother Stan got married, there’s been an empty bedroom upstairs. Even before that, she could have shared with baby Tina. But she feels her own space apart from the family is important for her sanity, especially since she started high school.
It’s always cold in the basement, so Nancy immediately crawls under her down comforter in its brightly colored cover. Her mom threw a fit when she requested it. Mom thinks down is patently old-fashioned, and she only believes in bed coverings that can be stuffed into the washing machine and dryer. But Dad is always cold when he sleeps too, so he got a good deal through his buddy Doug, who’s a chicken farmer. He asked the supplier whom he sells his chickens to, and they hooked him right up. Her dad also got Nancy her job last summer through him, catching his chickens.
It’s kind of an anachronistic job, as most chicken farms these days are factories. But Nancy thinks Doug is a forward thinking guy- instead of making his operation bigger, he kept the coops and pens his father had. All his neighbors laughed at him, but now that “free range” is the newest rage, he’s making much more money than they are with many fewer hens. And if you’re a teenager who knows Doug, you can get paid much better than McDonald’s, too. Lots of girls at school wouldn’t dream of doing it- it’s filthy dirty work, and the chickens are ugly and noisy and pecky. But it suited Nancy- she thought it was fun to sneak in at dusk, just when the chickens were starting to roost, and grab their little legs, or collect them from a catcher and hand them off to someone else who stuffs them in the crates to be driven to the slaughterhouse. There were lots of cute boys, and any teenager likes to go out with her friends after dark- even if it is a filthy chicken coop instead of a movie. And coming home from work that dirty, with the big wad of cash stuffed in her jeans pocket made Nancy feel like she’d really accomplished something.
Nancy had saved up her money all that summer and bought a laptop at the beginning of school. Now she crawls under her covers, puts on her earphones, and plays MP3s while she opens her mail. Her parents keep ignoring or throwing away the college catalogs. They just can’t understand why she wants to get a business degree; they think it means she doesn’t want to work on the farm. She thinks it would be much easier if she didn’t love the farm so much. She wanted to be one of those rebellious teenagers who hated their parents and moved off to the city and became rock stars or lawyers in skyscrapers or something. But she can’t fathom leaving the open fields of Pennsylvania. She belongs here.
But she isn’t willing to do it her dad’s way. He runs his farm the same way his father had, and his grandfather had, and he is completely unwilling to change in any way, even though they keep loosing more and more money and relying more and more on the government. There was a huge family argument when Stan took out a loan to buy fancy new drying equipment—but in the end, they make more money drying other people’s corn now than they do selling their own.
And she certainly isn’t willing to stay here her mom’s way. The thought of her life revolving around food and cleaning is even more abhorrent to her. It seems sometimes the only time her mother leaves the house is to take lunch out to the men in the fields. And with two older brothers helping Dad, Nancy was the girl mom had been waiting for to help her get the living room tidy and help with the dishes. Nancy doesn’t mind helping out so much, but she thinks she’s too much of a tomboy to let it be her destiny. And she HATES doing the dishes.
She opens the envelope last. It’s a letter from Penn State, saying they’ve received her application. She really does need to tell her parents about this. Soon. Maybe at dinner tonight. She hears her mom calling over her music. “NANCY! Dinnertime! Bring up a can a root beer for your father!”
Nancy sighs, rolls out of bed, and leaves her room. Along with her room in the basement, there is a refrigerator, a stove, and a bunch of counters and cabinets from the old kitchen. Rather than throw away all the old appliances when they redid the kitchen, they set them up in the basement next to the washer and dryer. They’re hardly ever used, but Mom does her canning down here in the summer, and they use the fridge for things like cases of pop, which would take up too much room in the good refrigerator upstairs.
Dinner’s a fiasco- baby Tina spills her milk, Her brother John and his friend Pete end up coming in halfway through and expect to be fed, too. Nancy considers asking them to give her a ride to the party, but decides it’s not worth it. It will be too hard to find a way home, and Mom always has a million things for her to do Saturday morning. She decides lunch tomorrow will be a better time to tell her parents about the letter. If she works hard in the morning, Mom will owe her. And besides, Tina has a play date, and that will be one less distraction.
Nancy’s Saturday morning chores actually turn out to be not so bad. Her mom doesn’t keep her cooped up indoors, but sends her out to mow the grass. Nancy fires up the mower, and cuts the grass all around the house first. As soon as she’s done with everything that can be seen from the kitchen windows, she pulls her book out of her pocket. Her mom thinks she does a much worse job when she reads, but mowing is so mind-numbingly boring she can’t imagine getting it all finished without some distraction. She wishes she could have afforded an iPod with her computer- she’d mow daily then!
It’s before noon when Nancy comes in all grassy, assuring her mother that she did the edges and she’s taking a shower right now. Standing in the shower, she remembers her friend Justine staying over for a sleepover and how confused she was by the taps. Even though the left says H and the right says C, the hot water comes out the left- no one is quite sure how Dad twisted the plumbing, but it’s definitely a homemade setup. When they redid the kitchen, Mom made Dad hire someone for the plumbing. When she’s done, Mom is in the kitchen filling up the thermos. “Your brother just called, he and Pete are staying out there, and so I need you to run lunch down to them.”
“But Mom—“
“They took the truck last night, so you’ll have to take my car. Mind you don’t spill the ice tea, the lid doesn’t stay on tightly.”
“Did you pack enough for me? Or are you going to wait for me to come back?”
“You hurry right back and don’t eat any of the boys’ food. We’ll eat when your father comes in.”
Nancy sighs, picks up the cooler and the thermos, and stomps off to the car. When she gets back she sees the four-wheeler parked in the driveway, so she knows Dad is already home. Sure enough, they’re just sitting down to eat when she comes in. They’re talking to each other, but she’s so nervous she can’t focus on their conversation. She sees their words hanging above their heads in little bubbles like a cartoon. Then there is a panel that’s empty. She says quietly, “I got a letter from Penn State today. I want to go to their Agribusiness School.”

The leaves of the trees rustle outside the window. She thinks about how this is such a moment of truth, the important conversation becoming an actuality. She’s starting to think on her own, to make big decisions about her life, and Dad stands up and walks away from the table. He needs to get back to the fields, to get as much done as possible while it’s still dry- the forecast calls for rain the day after tomorrow. Mom is still sitting across from her, staring. She pays attention a little bit longer, but then is distracted by the sound of a truck going by. So Mom too stands up from the table and runs to the window to see who it is.
“That looks like Moser’s truck,” she says, pushing back the lace curtains and peering out. “I wonder what he’s doing up this way. He must want to talk to your father about something. Or he could be up to see the McCormick’s. He should be out on his combine- it’s supposed to rain the day after tomorrow.”
Nancy rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I wonder if he has something to talk to dad about,” she sneers sarcastically. “Good luck with that.”
“Honey, we can talk about this college thing in the winter when it’s snowing and there’s nothing else to do. Right now we’re too busy with the farm- your big plans can wait- you don’t even graduate until the spring, after all. Now, come help me with these dishes.”