George Ansbach and Orin Holman may have retired from politics, but they have not fully retired from farming quite yet.
It was spring. Orin had come down from the West Hills to the Plateau to help George and his daughter Becky with some implement maintenance.
When the greases had been applied and the tools put away, the two old farmers sat down on some log rounds near the mouth of the barn, staring out at the steady rain.
Orin pursed his lips. “I don’t know exactly what it is, the rain that stops my work or the lush abundance that the rain creates, but regardless, it’s oppressive. Maybe it’s simply the barometric pressure that pushes its wet hand down upon the crown of my cap. I don’t know. Spring is so much waiting, so much hoping, and really, that’s what winter’s for, looking forward to spring, and then it arrives and the heat of summer afternoons doesn’t sound so bad.”
George taps Orin’s knee. “I wouldn’t have put it any different, Orin. There’s a weight about spring that can surely be a millstone around the neck, a soggy ponderous albatross.”
A long silence followed in which they each heard the music of precipitation, the splashes in the puddles, the plinking upon the tin roof, the natural rhythm of time passing that could be mistaken for distant drumming of machinery. As farmers, being used to working alone, these two were also comfortable with quiet among the gathered. They might have agreed that the silence is a lot like talk, each appreciating the here and now with a sure degree of reverence in the presence of the other.
“Welp,” said George, “I would prefer this to be sunshine, but it’s still a mighty fine afternoon.”
“This,” replied Orin, “is not the first rainy day we have passed together at a barn door. It’s always good to be with you, George, appreciating the now.”
“Hmmm,” George pinched the bridge of his nose. “Orin, I’ve been thinking of cutting loose of this land, turning it over to Becky, but, welp, it’s like not like discarding a worn pair of overalls. It’s another organ in me, a third hand.”
“George, you’re talking the farmer’s credo. Our land is another child, and that being gets under the skin, impossible to let go or fully turn out.”
“With Angeline passed, it isn’t the same.”
“I imagine not, old friend. It does seem to me that Becky is doing a fine job growing into your shoes.”
“She is.”
They sat in their silence longer, appreciating it all when a chance break in the clouds came, startling them, startling the songbirds, startling their vision.
A smile came to Orin’s face. “Will you look at that George! The universe is beaming down on us two sorry farmers.” Two yellow finches flew past them, landing in the nearby cherry tree. Leaves rustled.
George observed. “Well, it is spring.”
Orin’s eye caught sight of something in the graveled barnyard, something not the substance of rock, a glistening of something, round. “What’s that?” he said aloud.
He rose, strolled over to the object and descended down to one knee.
“My gosh!” he exclaimed. “It’s an old Mercury head dime!”
“No!”
So much came storming back to George. “No! I don’t believe it!”
Orin raised his eyebrows.
“Orin, I know exactly what that dime is! It was my allowance back in 1960! A week’s allowance! I liked coins back then. It was a 1944.”
Orin laughed. “Consider yourself fortunate. You made twice as much as I did in my youth!” Orin squinted, checking the date. “Yep, must be yours, friend: 1944.”
George rose, gesticulating, “I was doing chores. My dad just turned the dime over to me in the house and I came out to the barnyard, and inspected the coin in the sunlight. I was in a happy mood. It was Saturday, we were going to town. I was going to buy a comic book, Superman.”
“Of course,” interrupted Orin.
“I later learned I had a hole in my pocket, I was jumping around, chasing the barn swallows swooping down at me beneath the cherry tree. When I got to town with my parents, we window shopped downtown, and then walked into the drug store for Superman and then I reached down into those jeans, I just fell apart. I walked those blocks back and forth, sweating, fuming. I looked in the truck behind and beneath the bench seat. Of course my father used this as a lesson.”
“I remember Wilhelm well, George. Your dad was a tough task master.”
“That is rather true, Orin.”
“Of course,” Orin sighed, “you were a crestfallen young lad is what you were.”
Orin walked back to George and sat down, extending his open palm to his friend.
“Here’s your allowance, son. Now don’t spend it all in one place!”
•••
The City Council is a work of fiction, written by Jim Tindall, appearing every other week in Columbia Gorge News.
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