Something Ive Been Meaning to Tell You

have some good laughs. He used to bring two, three of the kids but he quit that. I know why. They’d tell on him. Then he quit coming himself. She lays down the law. But he gets it back on her, doesn’t he?”

    Aunt Dodie did not get a daily paper, just the weekly that was published in the town where she had picked us up.
    “There’s a mention in here about Allen Durrand.”
    “Allen Durrand?” said my mother doubtfully.
    “Oh, he’s a big Holstein man now. He married a West.”
    “What’s the mention?”
    “It’s the Conservative Association. I bet he wants to get nominated. I bet.”
    She was in the rocker, with her boots off, laughing. My mother was sitting with her back against a porch post. They were cutting up yellow beans, to can.
    “I was thinking about the time we gave him the lemonade,” Aunt Dodie said, and turned to me. “He was just a French Canadian boy then, working here for a couple of weeks in the summer.”
    “Only his name was French,” my mother said. “He didn’t even speak it.”
    “You’d never know now. He turned his religion too, goes to St. John’s.”
    “He was always intelligent.”
    “You bet he is. Oh, intelligent. But we got him with the lemonade.
    “You picture the hottest possible day in summer. Your mother and I didn’t mind it so much, we could stay in the house. But Allen had to be in the mow. You see they were getting the hay in. My dad was bringing it in and Allen was spreading it out. I bet James was over helping too.”
    “James was pitching on,” my mother said. “Your dad was driving, and building the load.”
    “And they put Allen in the mow. You’ve no idea what a mow is like on that kind of a day. It’s a hell on earth. So we thought it would be a nice idea to take him some lemonade—No. I’m getting ahead of myself. I meant to tell about the overalls first.
    “Allen had brought me these overalls to fix just when the men were sitting down to dinner. He had a heavy pair of old suit pants on, and a work shirt, must have been killing him, though the shirt I guess he took off when he got in the barn. But he must’ve wanted the overalls on because they’d be cooler, you know, the circulation. I forget what had to be fixed on them, just some little thing. He must have been suffering bad in those old pants just to bring himself to ask, because he was awful shy. He’d be—what, then?”
    “Seventeen,” my mother said.
    “And us two eighteen. It was the year before you went away to Normal. Yes. Well, I took and fixed his pants, just some little thing to do to them while you served up dinner. There I was sitting in the corner of the kitchen at the sewing machine when I had my inspiration, didn’t I? I called you over. Pretended I was calling you to hold the material straight for me. So’s you could see what I was doing. And neitherone of us cracked a smile or dared look sideways at each other, did we?”
    “No.”
    “Because my inspiration was to sew up his fly!
    “So then, you see, a little bit on in the afternoon, with them out to work again, we got the idea for the lemonade. We made two pailfuls. One we took out to the men working in the field; we yelled to them and set it under a tree. And the other we took up to the mow and offered it to him. We’d used up every lemon we had, and even so it was weak. I remember we had to put vinegar in. But he wouldn’t’ve noticed. I never saw a person so thirsty in my life as him. He drank by the dipperful, and then he just tipped up the pail. Drank it all down. Us standing there watching. How did we keep a straight face?”
    “I’ll never know,” my mother said.
    “Then we took the pail and made for the house and waited about two seconds before we came sneaking back. We hid ourselves up in the granary. That was like an oven, too. I don’t know how we stood it. But we climbed up on the sacks of feed and each found ourselves a crack or knothole or something to look through. We knew the corner of the barn the men always peed in. They peed down the shovel if they were upstairs. Down in the stable I guess they peed in the gutter. And soon enough, soon enough, he starts strolling over in that direction. Dropped his fork and starts strolling over. Puts his hand up to himself as he went. Sweat running down our faces from the heat and the way we had to keep from laughing. Oh, the cruelty of it! First he was just going easy, wasn’t he? Then thinking about it I guess the need gets stronger; he