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"Time for lunch." She smiled.
"Looks like you have nearly a barrow full, we'll empty after we've had lunch."
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."
He sounded like something out of a farm journal. Leah stared at him a long time, "That's fantastic!" She shook her head. "I've never heard anything like that where I come from. Never."
"It's the way it is out here."
She looked up at him and smiled, "It's kinda nice, isn't it?"
His eyes brightened that she caught on, "Yeah, it sure is. I told dad I didn't want to go to college I just wanted to stay on the farm and work, but he said I needed an education. So I went."
They went back to cleaning stalls, but they talked too.
"My dad's a financial advisor."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, and if people don't take his advice, he just walks off, end of responsibility and he blames them for not heeding his advice. He doesn't stick around to see that they make it."
"I guess that's how business is in the city." Jeremiah told her. "College opened my eyes to other worlds, but, I don't much like them as much as I do right here, at home. My dad's never been to college so he doesn't know how it is. But he's spent a lifetime trying to make a go of this place and to me it's heaven."
"Jeremiah, you go to college, when someone needs help, do you help them?" She asked.
"If I can I do. And if I have a problem, I find someone who can help me. If I didn't I'd never make it through college, I'm not real scholarly."
