Three pages in the diary now, and every one turns the year over like a flat rock. Summer and winter and the far edge of fall got wrote down, so this next one come round to spring, the season that don’t decide nothin and gets the whole world doin the most work for the least thanks. The ink runs a little thinner here and there, like the well was low or the hand was sore, which is spring in a man’s wrist all by itself.
Thursday, April 9, 1903
Rained all night and the creek’s up over the foot log, and the ground’s so soft a man can shove a fence post down with one hand and a grunt and no post hole digger at all. I been wantin to git the beans in, but the way this year’s went we aint had two dry days together since the snow left, and Martha said if I wait on the perfect day I’ll be plantin on the Fourth of July with the fireworks goin off over my head. So I told her the beans is goin in today, mud or no mud, and she looked at me like she knowed I’d say it and only half believed me.
Amos, most of the way down the page: “a man waits on the right day to plant and he’ll spend his whole life lookin at a dirt row that aint got nothin in it. the right day is the one you got.”
Got the old mule out and she was smart enough to fight the harness just enough to let me know she’d druther be in the barn, but she pulled straight when I asked, cause a good mule’s like a good wife, she’ll gripe and then she’ll do the work and then she’ll make you feel like you owed her for both. I laid out the bean rows down by the spring branch where the ground drains best, and the boys come behind with the seed and dropped em in hills, and I had to holler at the middle one twice for skippin and puttin two hills worth in one spot.
Amos, near the bottom: “a boy’ll plant seed like he’s throwin at a target, and then wonder why the field come up in patches. but a patchy field still feeds you, and a boy that’s been hollered at twice still drops the seed straighter than he did before.”
By sundown the whole south field was in, and I was mud to the knees and the mule was mud to her belly and we neither one of us wanted to hear another word about beans. But Martha had a pone of cornbread and a pot of beans from the cellar waitin when we come up, and she said she figured if I was gonna plant beans all day I might as well eat some too, which is her way of sayin she’s proud of a thing and won’t say it straight. I’ll take a woman that feeds you over a woman that flatters you every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
