I don’t look back at him. I’m not in control of my expression. Or my limbs.
But I feel him when he crosses the porch and stops at my back.
He grunts. “You’re shaking worse than I am.”
My face flushes hot.
I shouldn’t have room for fears beyond those for Hattie. Yet, I’m still worried about shaming the old man.
I swallow hard. “Do you think I’m being ridiculous? Working myself up over a girl I’ve known for just over a month?”
I hate the words even as they leave my mouth. How dare I utter them?
Why should I care what he thinks?
I may not have known Hattie long, but I have no doubt what I feel for her is real. Real and lasting.
So why does my heart sink when I hear my father’s walker stomp away?
But then one of the porch rockers gives an epic creak.
“Come sit with me, son.”
Stunned, I turn, push to my feet, and settle into the rocker beside him.
I glance over, but he’s not looking at me, not waiting for me to explain myself. He’s just staring out over the fields.
I follow his gaze.
The sweet potato harvest is almost behind us. The first tracts we harvested are already carpeted in green with alfalfa, our late fall rotational crop.
The ground we’ve harvested this week is churned up, a rich chocolate brown. Cow egrets strut on their stilt-like legs, picking at exposed insects. We help them by turning the earth. They help us by keeping the pests down.
We’ll start harvesting alfalfa almost as soon as we’re done curing, and most of it will go to cattle farms in the area. Who will also provide us with manure for the spring.
And so it goes.
This cycle is as familiar and easy as my own breath.
But right now, it threatens to suffocate me.
“Did I ever tell you when I knew I wanted to marry your mother?”
I jerk my head to Pop.
“Uh…” I search my memory. Mom was the only one who talked about their early days. She said he’d proposed after they’d dated for one year. “No. I’m guessing a few months before you asked her?”
His chuckle is gruff. “On our second date.”
I blink. “Your second date?”
This I’ve definitely never heard.
Mom told me and Grif about their first date probably a million times. It was December. They were both nineteen. Pop didn’t have a lot of money, so he took her to see the Christmas lights at Acadian Village. They ate poboys, rode the carousel, and got hot chocolate.
“He walked me to the middle of the bridge where you could see all the Christmas lights around the village dancing on the surface of the pond,” Mom used to tell us, blushing as she smiled. “And that’s where we had our first kiss.”
Grif and I grew up cringing and groaning at that story, but it hits me that it sounds a whole lot like my first date with Hattie.
