Holding Up the Earth by Dianne Gray

Author:Dianne Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

The first place Anna showed me was the “milking parlor,” where cows had lined up twice a day, every day, to be milked—in the early years by hand, later with electric milking machines. I imagined Rebecca there, scrubbing the brick floor or, working alongside Otto, balanced on a threelegged stool, milk squirting musically into a galvanized steel bucket.

The section of the barn Sarah and I had walked through in the afternoon looked very different with the lights on. Objects that had only been shadows took on recognizable forms. Lined up along one wall were some of Anna’s farm implements. She told me the name of each and explained its use. There was the 1936 John Deere tractor, which she promised to teach me how to drive, the hay rake, the harrow, and the six-bottom plow. She said she had more implements stored in other buildings around the farm, and that she kept them all in working condition, just in case a younger person might want to use them someday. She winked at me when she said that. For a moment, I let myself imagine what it might be like if that person were me—mucking out stalls, milking cows, and planting perfectly straight rows of corn.

Anna stayed below when I climbed the wooden ladder to the hayloft. Empty, except for a flutter of dove wings, the loft was as big as a roller rink or a basketball court or, with the help of an imagined skylight, an artist’s studio and garret.

“Say something,” Anna called up.

“What should I say, say, say?” I asked, my voice echoing back many times.

“Hope,” I said. “Hope, Hope, Hope,” I heard. I said “Hope” again, then “Anna” before the last “Hope” faded away. Then “Hope, Sarah, Anna, Rebecca, Abby, Abby, Abby.”

“Sounds like all the young women of this farm are up there with you,” Anna said.

I quickly climbed down. “Do you think we should check on 568 now?”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

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