Fields Of Gold by Marie Bostwick

mean it.”
    â€œFine, have it your way, then. No knives,” he huffed, his eyebrows drawing into a single, bushy line before a new idea brightened his expression. “Say, Morgan! You ever chew tobacco?”
    â€œSeamus, that’s not funny,” Mama accused good-naturedly as she opened the door. I laughed at Morgan’s bemused expression and turned back to give him still another good-bye kiss.
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    Mama drove our Ford like an expert, with superb control and a little faster than you might have supposed if you judged her by the fussy bunch of false cherries she’d pinned to her coat collar.
    Our new used car was a great source of pride to us all and a measure of how well things had gone on the farm the last few years. Crops had been so good we’d been able to make improvements on the farm and buy some modern conveniences for ourselves, though I suspect some of our newfound riches came from the savings Papa had earmarked for my education; there was no need to hoard pennies anymore. We could finally afford to get hooked up to the power lines that ran down the county road, and, first thing, Papa bought Mama an electric mangle. It ironed everything so quick and neat, we got the laundry done in half the time. But the car was the most exciting purchase we’d ever made. I’ll never forget the day Papa chugged up to the house, shouting and honking the news that he’d bought Mr. McCurdle’s Ford at a bargain price. He couldn’t have been any happier if his name had been Rockefeller. It seemed like the twenties were indeed roaring, even in Dillon.
    Though Papa bought the car, Mama was the better driver. He was always too busy looking out the window and exclaiming over the beautiful day or the freshly plowed fields to bother much with keeping his eyes on the road. I was more like him. The passenger seat suited me fine.
    I leaned my head out the window and took in the endless mural of clear, black sky, pricked with stars, felt the spring wind on my face, and smelled the loamy freshness of the newly turned earth and sprouting wheat. I breathed the perfect night deep into my lungs and sighed contentedly.
    â€œWhat are you thinking, Eva?”
    â€œAbout how lucky we are. The night Morgan was born, Papa said he’d bring us luck, and he was right.”
    â€œWell, I think we might give the good Lord some credit, too,” Mama said piously, “but, yes, I think you’re right. We have everything we need and then some.”
    â€œYes,” I agreed, “just about everything.” To myself I thought, There is no point in asking for more. If I sometimes stood outside on a summer afternoon and searched the hot, empty sky for a glint of sun on a sapphire wingspan, or if I woke from a dream crying, my hands clutching the air for something that had seemed so solid the moment before, if the sight of young couples walking hand in hand through town made me cross to the other side of the street where I wouldn’t have to watch, then the sound of Morgan’s chortling laughter as he roughhoused with Papa, or the feel of his soft, cunning hand wrapped in mine pulled my heart back from the heavens and filled the empty places. Most of them.
    Slim had said he’d come back, and he meant it at the time, but I’d always known he wouldn’t. From the first day, I’d prepared myself to be alone forever. Most of the time I succeeded, but the reality of loneliness was a harder road to walk than it had seemed when I’d released Slim to his future. At unpredictable times he would still appear in my mind, waking or sleeping. I could see him, hear him, but that was all. In a way, that was sadder than not seeing him at all. Sometimes, at the oddest moments, moments when I should have been happy, I was suddenly pierced through with loneliness, because, at those times, being happy didn’t seem to make much sense if I couldn’t share it with Slim.
    I berated myself