Paroled on Love

by Hestand, Rita

  "Oh sure, it's down here, we only have two in the house. This one is for us boys and you, but we aren't in there very often. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm Jeremiah."

  "Leah." She nodded.

  "We'll be working together." He informed her.

  "Yeah I heard." She gave a quick ineffective smile.

  He opened the bathroom door for her, "You can put your stuff in the little cabinet behind the door there." He told her. "It's all for you."

  "Okay." She unloaded her toothbrush a razor and her comb and brush.

  "I don't know whether dad told you or not, but girls aren't allowed make-up unless they are going to town or to a dance."

  "He told me, but I didn't understand the reason for it.. Why?" She turned to look at him with a frown.

  "Because the kind of work we do, it gets hot and sweaty and your make-up would probably run and look awful by the end of the day, so unless you are going somewhere you won't need it here."

  "Wow, you sure have some strange rules here. But that's no problem for me, I don't use much."

  "Most of them are for your own good, but I think you'll see that it's just common sense. Besides, it doesn't look as though you would need much anyway."

  "Okay, whatever." She shook her head.

  "It's really not as bad as you might think. Give it a chance." He offered.

  She shrugged. "I guess. You go to school?" She asked curiously.

  "Yeah, I'm in my first year of college, but I'm off for the summer, so I'll be here until you leave."

  "College huh? What are you studying?"

  "Agriculture, mostly."

  "Naturally." She scoffed.

  She glanced at him again. It wasn't that he was ugly, but instead of tight fitting jeans and snug t-shirts, he wore regular fitting jeans and a t-shirt too. He was tall and thin, and when he smiled he was cute. But not her type. She went for hot guys, not dorky farm boys. Still, she'd be nice and try to get along. He was muscular and well built though.

  She went back to her room and finished unpacking.

  Overalls and no makeup, she'd look just like they did, hicks.

  A little before noon she went downstairs and Carol was cooking and getting ready to set the table.

  "I can do that," She told her as she came into the kitchen.

  "Fine darlin'. There will be six of us at the table." She told her.

  Leah passed out the plates that were stacked on the counter, and the silver ware, and she began helping put the food out too.

  Carol gave her a couple of looks. "You help your mother a lot, hon?"

  "N-no, my mother is rarely home, neither is my dad. I help our maid though." Leah told her. "My mother doesn't do housework of any kind. It's beneath her, I think that's what she told me once, when I asked why we needed a maid."

  "That's sweet of you dear. To help the maid."

  "She does the work of my mother so I sort of treat her like she is my mother." Leah told her. "We're pretty close."

  "You must miss them a lot?" Carol asked her turning to watch her.

  "My parents? No, I'm used to not seeing them very often. They travel a lot. Actually, I don't see them enough to miss them." She told her. "I do miss Gloria, our maid though."

  "That's a shame. Too many times we get kids in here that say the same. It's rather heartbreaking if you ask me."

  Leah shrugged, "You get used to it."

  "Well around here, I’m home all the time and you can call me Carol, or Mrs. Douglas or hey you. I answer to them all." She chuckled.

  Leah looked at her. She was pretty lady even if she was overweight. She had shortish blonde hair and blue eyes and they danced when she talked. She'd never seen eyes with such expression before, she reminded her of Gloria.

  "Have you been doing this long?" Leah turned to ask her.

  "Doing what?"

  "Having girls and boys out here to work with you?"

  "Oh yes, several years now. Of course it wasn't always with the same courts. Different ones in the area. You see, sometimes we could use an extra hand, and there are so many that don't want to hire on, so we started this program with the courts in the area. It seems to help us and the kids. We enjoy meeting new people and we hope we have helped a few along the way."

  "Helped them, how?" Leah asked innocently.

  "Open up, and talk about their troubles and feel better about themselves. Now days too many parents don't communicate with their children. We think this is where society has gone wrong. Kids are buried in electronic because their parents won't talk to them or notice them. Here, we've got all the time in the world to talk and try to understand."

  These people, these backward people thought they'd teach her something? Wow! But she wouldn't mock them.

  Chapter Three

  Leah sat through the lunch watching the three sons and parents talk to each other and share their morning together. It was a new experience. Was it some kind of show they were putting on for her benefit. She wondered. Well, she'd be here twelve weeks, she'd soon find out.

  Mr. Douglas showed her around the farm after lunch and she realized her duties were going to be numerous and she'd have a lot to learn. She was up to it. She could handle anything, and staying busy made the time pass faster.

  By that afternoon she was hot and tired and glad to be able to sit on the porch and relax.

  Jeremiah came by and joined her. "So what do you think of the place?"

  "It's big and there's a lot of work to do."

  "Yeah, but it's not like you punch a clock or anything. You just do what you have to do and before you know it, it's the end of the day. Of course I'm used to it. It might take you a while to get used to it." He informed her.

  "So, do you get along with all the kids that come out here?" She asked.

  "Mostly, yeah." He studied her a minute.

  "But not all?" She looked at him.

  "No, not all. There was couple, this one guy he never would open up and just be himself. Tried to act like a tough guy. I don't know why. I wasn't fighting him or anything. He just couldn't believe we were for real. I guess he came from a real tough situation." Jeremiah sighed. "Then there was a girl, she sure had a chip on her shoulder. She went to juvenile when she left here. Some refuse to get along and do what is required."

  The family dogs ambled up to Jeremiah and he pet him. "Hello Hobo. What have you been up to. You stink, you need a bath. Want to come along and watch me bath him." He asked.

  "Sure, why not." She nodded.

  She followed them toward the barn, and he got out a big metal tub and filled it with water from the hose that was connected to a faucet in the ground.

  Jeremiah took some big bar of soap and began wetting the dog down and soaping him up. The dog shook and made a mess, but Jeremiah didn't get angry, he just laughed and kept on washing the dog.

  When he rinsed him the dog shook the water off and he let him out of the tub. Jeremiah watched him run off, shaking the water from his body.

  "You call him Hobo?" She asked.

  "Yeah, he just wandered into our yard one day about five years ago and we decided to name him Hobo. He's a good dog, but we sort of spoiled him."

  "I never had a pet."

  "You're kidding." His eyes rounded on her now, staring. "Why not? Didn't you like animals."

  "Actually, I always wanted a puppy. But my mother wouldn't trust me to take care of it. They didn't like animals."

  "We make pets out of a lot of our animals."

  She chuckled. "Your brothers, are they married?"

  "No, they are both engaged though. Cal will marry before Christmas, and Will won't marry until next summer."

  "Are they much older than you?"

  "Cal's twenty-five, and Will is Twenty-Three."

  "And you?"

  "I'm twenty." He explained.

  "You have a girl?"

  "No not yet."

  "Sounds like you are looking though." She smiled.

  "I always look, but I guess I'm looking for someth
ing special. Kids today are spoiled a lot. Kind of a turn off for me. I don't know, just haven't found anyone who fits."

  "Your father says you are popular with the girls." She kidded him.

  "I usually end up being their buddy, not their boyfriend."

  She nodded.

  "How about you? Do you have a boyfriend?"

  "Not really, I mean, he's the one that got me in trouble. He stole a car. I was with him when he did it. He wasn't my boyfriend, but I lived in the same house with him. He was sort of doing me a favor. When my parents kicked me out, I stayed in his extra bedroom. We hung out together. Bad choice, I guess. But I was grateful for the room. I'd have called Jack the Ripper my boyfriend if he'd give me shelter."

  "So you didn't actually do anything, he did?" Jeremiah asked.

  "I knew what he was doing. So I guess I was guilty too. But how can you turn a guy in that gives you a place to live when you don't have one? I couldn't see me doing that. I owed him. And I didn't have any way of paying him."

  "I can understand that. At least you admit it. Why did he steal it?"

  "Something to do. When they took him in I found out he had been arrested several times for the same thing."

  Jeremiah looked at her strangely. "I don't guess he worked for a living or anything."

  "No, he was going to college for a while, until his parents found out he was partying all the time. His parents helped him until he got caught." She defended.

  "Maybe if he'd have worked he wouldn't have had the time to steal the car." Jeremiah said and walked off.

  She glanced at him, wondering why he suddenly became unfriendly.

  What he had said bothered her to some degree, deep down, she knew Jeremiah was right, but still he had no right to judge Leroy. Leah appreciated the fact that Leroy gave her a place to stay, rent free, with no strings attached. But he'd have done it for anyone, not just her. That's why she hung around him, he was kind of nice at least to her, at the time.

  Again at supper everyone gathered around, talking and trying to include her in the conversation too but she didn't want to talk, she wanted to see if they were staging all this for her benefit. After all, they weren't the Walton's.

  Or were they?

  As she lay in her bed that night, she wondered about these people. They had a lot of strange ways, but she had to admit, some of the tension inside her subsided.

  The next morning was different though, Carol knocked on her door to wake her up, and deciding to try to get along with everyone, she got up and got dressed, washed her face and went downstairs for breakfast.

  They always said grace at the table. That was new to Leah too. Her parents leaned more to the agnostic type. She hadn't thought about the religious side of her family in a long time. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. Only, she knew there was a God, and that Jesus would save her from her sins. So she couldn't really call herself agnostic. It was just another thing she didn't have in common with her folks.

  "Now Leah, we are all here for you, so if you have a problem with work, or don't know how to do something, feel free to ask. We don't mind telling you at all. We find that if we work together, there is less stress and no one will be mad if you mess something up a few times. Most do that because they aren't used to farm work." He explained.

  "Alright, thanks." Leah nodded. "So if I spill something, you won't chop my head off?"

  They stared at her then each other.

  But she did one thing that kind of startled everyone, after breakfast, she helped Carol with the dishes. This wasn't part of her job, but she was a girl and figured someone should help her. After all, she didn’t' have a dishwasher and her family was kind of big.

  Jeremiah waited patiently for her to finish and then taking a pail, they went outside toward the barn.

  "You'll collect the eggs from the chickens now." He told her. "Ever done that before?"

  "No." She felt out of her realm.

  "Okay, come on, and watch me. After today, you'll do it alone."

  She followed him. The henhouse was in back of the barn. Half of them nested and the other half were scattering about the yard.

  "Pick up the empty nests first. It gives the others time to move away. If they don't, just gently reach under them, they'll usually stand up or move away when you do, and take the egg."

  "Do they only have one egg each?"

  "Most of the time, but every now and then Henrietta there on the end might have two." He motioned to the big red chicken at the end.

  She nodded. She watched him move down the line of nests and he gently lifted the egg away. The chickens didn't seem to mind.

  It looked simple enough.

  But she ended up practically running when one hen flew out of her way. And she cracked several eggs trying to get them out. Jeremiah was patient and didn't laugh at her, but encouraged her. "You'll get the hang of it."

  When they took the eggs into Carol, she was laughing and happy to see them. "Just set them on the counter, I'll put them away in a sec."

  "See ya," Jeremiah told her.

  "Now, you ever milked a cow before?"

  "Milked a cow?" She shrieked. "Heavens no…"

  "Well, you will learn here. Come on."

  He took a stool down from the wall of the barn and brought it beside him. He stopped at the first stall. "This is Clarabelle. She gives a good pail of milk each morning. Now watch what I do, and how I do it."

  "Okay." She bent to watch him as he sat on the stool and took his hands after warming them by rubbing them together and placed them around the utter. "Just gently pull at an angle and squirt it into the pail. Don't pull too hard, but hard enough to get the milk out."

  He demonstrated several times. "Now, you try."

  She sat down on the stool and warmed her hands, then reached to pull on the utter, nothing happened.

  "Pull at an angle, a little harder."

  She did so and the milk squirted out. She laughed aloud. "Wow…I don't believe it. I’m milking a cow!"

  He laughed with her. "You sure are. Now keep doing that until the pail is nearly full."

  She nodded. Clarabelle gave her an appreciative look every now and then.

  He watched her for a while, then went to another stall and was working while she milked. She was fascinated at how it all worked. She'd never done anything like it. What was even stranger, she liked it. She felt like she was doing something worthwhile here. Of course she wouldn't be telling them that.

  When she had nearly a pail full, she stopped and looked for him. "Okay, now what?"

  "Take the pail into the house and set it on the counter and come back out."

  She nodded.

  When she set it on the counter Carol glanced at her, "So how did the milking go?"

  "I'm a natural, Jeremiah says." She smiled.

  "Good. Some make the dangdest messes." She chuckled.

  She went back to the barn, "Now what?"

  "Now comes the dirty work."

  "Yeah, what?" Leah challenged.

  "Mucking the stalls out." He looked at her and handed her a rake and a shovel.

  "How do I do that?" She asked innocently.

  He showed her what she had to look for in the hay on the floor of the barn stalls.

  "You pick up all of their poop and put it in that wheel barrow." He told her. "Try not to take all the hay around it too."

  "Yuck, poop?"

  "That's what it is, alright." He smiled. "But don't worry, most of it is dry so it's not hard to find. Use the rake to sift the hay through and the shovel to pick the poop up and into the barrow." He told her. Then he demonstrated how it was done.

  She grimaced, this was not what she wanted to do, but she had no choice and she wouldn't look like some sissy. Determined, she copied his movements.

  After half a day of scooping up, she was tired and hungry.

  "Time for lunch." She smiled.

  "Looks like you have nearly a barrow full, we'll empty after we've had lunch."
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br />   She nodded and followed him in the house. They washed up for lunch and came to the table.

  "So how's it going?" Carol asked her.

  "Fine, the mucking is no fun, but I'm getting the hang of it."

  Jeremiah chuckled then added, "She hasn't complained once."

  "Am I supposed to?" She blurted.

  Everyone at the table snickered. "Most of the others do."

  "Really, well, I came here to work, I'll work." She told them all, and everyone stopped snickering.

  "Where's Mr. Douglas?" She asked when she noticed he wasn't at the table.

  "He had to go over to the Hardy farm and help fix a tractor." Carol remarked.

  "Help fix a tractor? Why didn't he just take it to a shop and have it fixed?" She asked innocently.

  Everyone stared, then trying not to laugh, they explained, "There are no shops to fix tractors, everyone usually works on their own, hon. It's either that or send it back to the manufacturer and wait until they fix it. People don't have time on a farm. They learn quickly to work on their own stuff."

  "Oh." She saw how stupid her question had sounded. "I just thought…."

  She crammed her mouth full of food and stopped talking.

  Chapter Four

  When her and Jeremiah went back outside she stopped him. "Why did your dad go over and help the other farmer?"

  Jeremiah looked deep into her eyes now and smiled with a sweet kind of understanding, "Out here, that's what people do, help each other. If they didn't, things wouldn’t' get done. It's like you, you don't know much about farm life, so I'm helping you. Dad knows a lot about fixing tractor's he's had some real lemons as far as tractor's go. Everyone around here knows he knows how to work on them. You see, he had no choice, he had to learn how to fix them if he wanted them to work. So people call him when they have a bad problem, because they know he's probably worked on that same thing and knows how to fix it. But it's how things work in the country. Your neighbor can save your life, your farm, your kids. And you call upon them when you need help. It's like…the American way."