Father Time Waits for no Man, or Woman (Cumberland Saga)

Abe was not home when Blain walked Evan back to Walter and Amira's house.

Amira looked at Evan and told him to wash up and grab a quick bite to eat. They had places to go and things to do.

“I don’t wanna go” Evan said, petulantly.

Amira narrowed her eyes and said “I guess that means that Blain needs to keep you longer tomorrow.”

Evan decided that he didn’t want THAT to happen, so he changed his shirt and washed up using the cold water in the bucket by the sink. Then he ate a couple of corn muffins to keep his stomach from screaming.

No dwelling in Copperhead Cove was more than ten minutes of brisk walking away from the main entrance. Evan took the time alone with his mother to rail about the treatment he had been enduring.

“Blain is working me like a Mexican” he carped.

“I don’t know what that means” Amira replied.

“It means he has me doing Mexican work” Evan elaborated.

“I still don’t know what that means” Amira replied.

Evan rolled his eyes. “He has me doing landscaping. Using shovels and moving dirt.”

“Why do you call it ‘Mexican work’?” Amira asked.

“Because that is what Mexicans do” he said, exasperated. “That is all they are good for, cutting grass and shit like that. It is degrading. I don’t know why you aren’t hiring Mexicans to do this shit-work like you did back home.”

Thinking back, Amira realized that Central Americans had been ever-present in University City, driving old-trucks that pulled trailers and tirelessly mowing and trimming and fertilizing and spreading pesticides. Their presence was questioned no more than a flock of starlings or a cloud of tree pollen was.

Amira didn’t have time to answer as they had arrived at their destination, Sarah’s house.

Sarah was standing at a table made from three planks laid across a couple of large wire spools that were standing on their ends. She had bags of potatoes on the ground and appeared to be cutting them into chunks. The chunks were laid out over part of the table in a single layer.

Blain was about a hundred feet away and he was fiddling around with a rotary tiller. Just because Evan’s work-day was over didn’t mean that Blain could stop working.

Sarah’s attitude toward her much-older sister-in-law was still not easy. She considered Amira to be pushy and rude; a blue-jay at the bird-feeder, if you will.

“What do you want?” Sarah asked. Sarah was sure that whatever Amira wanted would be another imposition.

“I want to pick your brains about gardening” Amira said.

“You can ask, but I have a lot of work to do so I cannot show you around” Sarah replied.

“That’s OK” Amira said. “Do you have another knife. I can help.”

Sarah shot Amira a quick look to see if she was being mocked.

Amira wasn’t kidding.

Sarah had another knife in the tool bucket beneath the table.

Amira looked over at Evan. “Unless you want to stand around listening to a couple of old ladies gabbing, you probably ought to go over there and see if you can help Uncle Blain.”

That suited Evan fine. At least Blain had the good grace to be silent when he was working.

Wandering over to the machine Evan where meticulously checking the oil level, Evan said “Hi” as if he wasn’t quite sure how he would be received.

Blain had been paying attention out of the corner of his eye, not sure how this was going to all play out.

“Glad to see ya” Blain replied. “I can use an extra set of hands.”

“What’s up?” Evan asked. The tiller was the first piece of power equipment he had seen at Copperhead Cove other than the chainsaws the men were using to clear timber.

“Your Uncle Sig bought this tiller from a scrap-yard and then he installed Genuine-Made-in-China diesel engine on it. He said the new motor is ‘tight’ and would be hard to start” Blain said.

“He wasn’t kidding.”

Blain had been contemplating tying the tiller to a tree so he could pull the rope-start. The few times he had tried to start it by himself he had toppled the tiller which was now top-heavy. The diesel engine, although small, was much heavier than the defunct gas engine it replaced.

Blain had just checked the oil (again) to make sure it wasn’t dry and he wasn’t pulling against metal-on-metal contact.

Evan looked the motor over. It was as alien as some of the engines on his video games. Pointing at an inconspicuous lever, Evan asked “What does this do?”

Blain looked at the lever and read the small metal tag “Compression Release”.

Pulling the manual out of his back pocket, he said “Let’s see.”

Between using the compression release and Evan holding the top of the tiller against the force of Blain pulling the rope, they were able to get it started.

Blain beckoned to Evan that they step away from the incredibly loud machine so they could talk.

“Do you want to run it?” Blain asked.

“I have the corners of the plot that needs to be tilled marked with flags. Just run it to the edge and then come back over what you tilled to make sure you get deep enough.”

Evan looked at the shaking handles and listened to the hyper-masculine roar of the engine. Why not? It had to beat shoveling shit.

Over at the table where Amira and Sarah were cutting seed potatoes.

"I don't know what I am doing wrong" Amira was lamenting. "I just can't make our food taste anywhere near as good what you served. Especially the potatoes. They just seem so bland."

Amira was serving a LOT of potatoes. It was what Alice could spare.

“Constanze didn’t have a kitchen garden, did she?” Sarah clucked in disapproval.

Amira cocked an eyebrow in the universal “tell me more” sign.

“Every good housewife should have a herb garden to flavor food. Things like mint and pie-plant, sage and rosemary and oregano and garlic….” 

"No. I didn't see anything like that" Amira said in dismay. "And I am not sure where I could get any of those plants to start a herb garden.”  The gardening season was advancing as relentlessly as Father Time himself.

“I can spare some starts” Sarah offered. “They needed to be thinned out anyway.”