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She bites her lower lip and stares at me.
“Seriously? Just like that? What if I screw it up?”
“Luckily, there's not a lot of traffic in the orchard,” I shrug. “Now, you have to hit the clutch and the brake at the same time to start the engine. Make sure you’re in neutral.”
She scowls beautifully, her fair eyebrows wrinkling together in the center as she stares at the gear shift, then checks her feet. I see her butt raise up off the seat as she depresses the clutch and brake at the same time.
The engine starts right up, filling the cabin with a manly roar. She gasps with delight.
“I did it!”
“You sure did, darlin'. Now get us into first gear. Then ease up on the clutch and down on the gas at the same time.”
“Ease up on the… down on the…” she mutters to herself, slowly shifting her weight to her right side. Her left hand is white knuckled on the steering wheel as she shifts to first gear then…
The truck lurches, sputters, and dies.
“Oh, shit! I killed it!”
She throws both of her hands up, as though protesting her innocence.
“Try again, Vanessa. Everybody does that sometimes. You'll get it soon enough.”
She pulls an apologetic face and cringes. “Are you sure you don't want to just drive? Maybe if I watch you do it…”
“You’ll never get it if you don't do it,” I tell her gently, plucking her right hand off the steering wheel and placing it back on the gearshift.
Her fingers are trembling, slightly moist. Part of me wants to rescue her from her discomfort, but I know she can do it.
“Okay, okay,” she mutters. She talks to herself while going back through the paces and starts the engine again. I hear the engine spin up as she moves slowly to balance the clutch against the gas, then we move forward a good eighteen inches before the engine cuts out again.
“Shit! Why won't you move!”
This time, she starts again all on her own, even without a word from me. To my surprise, it's absolutely smooth and we start rolling down the row, the engine rumbling confidently like it should.
“I'm doing it! I am totally doing it!” she exclaims.
“Yeah you are,” I grin. “When you feel the engine RPMs get too high you want to go into second gear. You'll just depress the clutch and slide the gearshift down. But you don't have to go too fast… You don't want to run over Tim and Tom again or anything.”
“Again?” she repeats, her brow furrowed in concentration.
“Oh, you can ask Hank about that sometime. No big deal. Stuff happens on a farm.”
“This is great,” she grins, her cheeks pink and dimpled.
We angle toward the road to the very edges of the orchard, then stop. I remind her to engage the parking brake even though we’re on level ground. It's just a good habit.
“We need to clear this for saplings,” I explain. “Branches, boulders… just get them all in the back of the truck and we’ll haul it over to the pile over there.”
She nods, looking around and brushing her forehead with the back of her wrist.
“That's it? Just move the stuff from here over to there?”
I shrug. “Yeah, you'd be surprised how much of farming is moving stuff from one place to another. It'll give you a good workout.”
We spend a good hour chucking rocks into the back of the pickup, working together to move some branches and piles of brush. She's a good worker I notice, uncomplaining and stronger than she looks. After a little while, her blonde hair is sticking in tendrils to her cheeks but she's in good spirits, huffing and seemingly delighted every time she finds a new boulder to kick out of its place.
“Shit, this is heavy,” she huffs, wedging her heel against a rock. “I feel like this is… Oh!”
