Homesick

Monday morning arrived hotter and even more humid. I awake before Carl and Charlie, peering out from under the tent towards the house. It must be after seven, because Uncle Everett is getting into his truck and going to work. We won’t have to face him until supper.
All male adults are intimidating, but Uncle Everett even more so. I don’t see my dad much because he’s at work a lot, but when he’s home he does laugh and relax sometimes. Uncle Everett never relaxes. I hardly ever see him laugh. He’s got a cabinet full of rifles, and every fall he goes out to the “deer woods” and hunts. Uncle Everett is somebody who actually goes out and kills animals in the woods, and runs farm equipment. He rode horses in rodeos and works non-stop. He’s just not a laid-back guy, and to a 10 year old, he can be pretty scary, so I walk softly around him and do as I’m told.
Aunt Bette scolds us about the fire at breakfast, and gives us Uncle Everett’s list of chores. Not much more than what we’ve been doing, so I guess he’s not as mad at us as I thought. I guess we’re off the hook.
The temperature climbs into the nineties, so we take it easy after the chores are done. The fields are dry and dusty, and the farm smells rise with the temperature. The odors and the flies are starting to get to me, and I think more and more about home and Woodbury Heights.
There’s no Trackie’s or 7-11, or any store nearby. Cohawkin road has no sidewalks, it’s rural, and it’s not lined with trees. My Cousin Charlie has no friends close by, just his other cousins, so we don’t have enough kids for a game of baseball or kickball, and the only place to ride bikes is in the fields. Heat, flies, dust and poop of all kinds, and now it’s just plain boring.
I realize that Charlie is a lot different now than just a few years ago. Must be from all the work he has to do and the isolation he lives in. He doesn’t seem to have much of an imagination like I do, and he seems uninterested in toys, even the ones he has.
He does come up with an idea.
“How’s about I teach you how to drive the flatbed truck out in the fields?” he asks.
This sounds like an adventure, so of course I say yes.
Charlie and Carl and I pile into the truck and head out into the fields. When we’re far enough from the house he tells me to get into the driver’s seat.
I do OK for a while. Driving on a straight dirt road at about twenty miles an hour is pretty easy, even though I’m kinda small and can’t see too well over the steering wheel. The steering wheel is huge in my hands, and I can barely reach the pedals. When we come up to one of the gates I forget to hit the clutch or something, and the truck rolls into the fencepost, bending it and part of the gate. In my mind’s eye I blow it all out of proportion. I see a tangled mass of destruction, when in reality it’s just a little dent in the iron gate, and the post can be pulled back up and straightened with some wire. I’m shaking, thinking this is it, Uncle Everett will have my head and mount it on the wall like one of the deer he shot – a trophy: “Yeah, had to shoot the boy, he was too damn dumb for his own good.”
Charlie just laughs the whole thing off, and the three of us put things back in order. As we pull away and head to the house I keep looking back at that gate, and it mocks me and it just doesn’t look the same, and I know for sure that Uncle Everett will know that something happened to it. Charlie tells me that it looks like one of the steers banged into it, so don’t worry. But I will worry, I can’t help it, that’s me.
I’m all shook up, and I can’t relax the rest of the day. When Uncle Everett gets home he makes his usual rounds in the fields. My heart pounds in my head, and I know he’ll come back and ask what happened to the fence. I’m lucky, I guess. He says nothing at the dinner table, and I’m relieved. Charlie was right, we covered our tracks pretty good, no one will ever know.
It will be a really hot night, and the bedrooms are all upstairs, so it’s even warmer up there. I miss my old maple tree, and I miss the lake and the coolness of the woods and the moss on Freund’s cliff. I like coming to the farm. I love Aunt Bette and Charlie, and even though I’m a little scared of Uncle Everett, he’s really an OK guy, but I want to go home. I don’t like the smells, and I don’t like the flies, and I miss my Mom and Dad and Whee-Zee. I want to get on my bike and soar down Chestnut Hill and play war with Paul LaPann and the others, but it’s only Monday night, and I’ve got to be here till Saturday.
What’s worse, even though I’m surrounded by it, it’s the one thing I can’t seem to do anymore: poop.