Gracie called the children to the table and Joe forced himself out of the washroom and took his place at the head of the table. He listened to the children’s good-natured bickering and ate in silence while the rain continued to hammer its rhythm on the roof accompanied by fading thunder. Julie was telling Gracie about the guitar in the Sears Catalog while Debbie tried to talk about dresses and coats. The girls had spent the morning studying the catalog. The boys had spent the morning in the barn and talked about getting the old car from the dump and working on it or at least taking it apart to see how it worked. “I can use some of my cherry picking money for parts if we need them,” Billy was saying.
Gracie noticed Joe ate in silence. He had not shown any excitement when he returned from the cherry factory. He has been too quiet, she thought. Things did not go well. She tried to listen to the children and encourage their enthusiasm, but Joe’s silence worried her. Finally she could wait no longer, “Did you stop at the Co-op” she asked? As she looked to Joe for some hint about what their future would be.
Joe finished wiping the gravy off his plate with a crust of bread, put it into his mouth and did not answer until he had swallowed hard. He looked around the table at the eager faces. They had become suddenly quiet, waiting for the answer, which would predict the nature of the months ahead. “The check was small,” he said looking at Gracie and winching at the disappointment he saw. “Terribly small,” he forced himself to continue, “It won’t even pay the bank. The Co-op can’t pay in full until they sell the cherries,” he repeated the familiar phrase.
He took a swallow of hot coffee. It took a little of the chill from the air and gave him courage to continue to fill the silence that had fallen over the family. “It’s going to be a struggle to pay the loan and get through another year.” He looked at the quiet children and shifted his feet under the table. It seemed a lifetime had passed before anyone spoke. Joe knew they were thinking of the struggle they had come through in the past years. “Will I have to give back my cherry picking money?” Julie asked, trying not to let her voice show her disappointment.
“No, damn it!” he snapped at her, “but you can’t spend it on foolishness. You’ll have to use it to buy your school clothes.” He rose from his chair, jarred the table, spilled his coffee and whirled toward the door. Gracie moved just as fast and met him as he reached the door. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Joe don’t! We’ll manage somehow.”
He hit the door hard with a clenched fist, letting the door slam behind him. The wooden steps jarred beneath his heavy feet and wet sand spun out from the tires of the truck as he propelled it toward the barn, drove through the open barn door, and then creaked to a stop beside the spray rig. He jumped out of the truck, slammed his fist against the side of the old spray rig and growled, “Why do you always have to eat up all our profits? You damn hungry beast, you!” He leaned his head against the gritty rig trembling. Pale pink powder, which had collected on the drum, rubbed off on his hair and fist. He gripped the pipe railing and twisted it as if to wring the bitterness out of himself. The rain hammered on the barn roof and the dark clouds moved toward the east letting blue sky appear on the western horizon.
At last, he raised his head and looked up toward the broken window high in the hayloft. “God, just once I’d like to see a crop so big we couldn’t get it all off!” The wish boiled up from deep inside him. “Maybe then it would pay to feed you,” he growled as he kicked the iron wheel of the old spray rig. The pain it brought to his foot distracted him from the pain in his soul and he sat on the bottom step of the ladder, which led to the hayloft, and nursed his pain.