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I’d muster up the might. No way I’d ever share my doubts with Mama or Aunt Carrie. To them, I’d be a rock. Their hope. Six months before my father died, he’d prepared me … “It’s got to be you, Rob. There’s nobody else. It has just got to be you.”
    I blinked at a blue sky.

Chapter
7
    Time for haying.
    Wading through less than two acres of hay, I could feel the green shafts of timothy swishing against my bare feet and ankles, and smell the fresh-cut clover.
    The hay was ripe, ready to mow. Light green, almost a gray. Below, low to ground, the thicker clumps of clover seemed Sunday dressed with flowering balls of lavender and white.
    “A money crop,” I said, “to keep our farm.”
    My shirt was wet with work. Salty sweat was stinging my eyes, so I rested my tall two-handed scythe to rag my face. Seeds stuck to me. Pulling a gray whetstone from a back pocket, I turned the scythe upside down to click a fresh edge on a long curving blade. The sound carried. Another reaper, beyond sight, answered me with his stone, as if tobrag that he was working as hard. It was a sort of summer music, a rhythm, to hear a whetstone strum a scythe.
    I continued to mow, inching forward step by step with every sweeping swing. It felt manly to earn money. Ben, because of his injury, wouldn’t be haying as much. He usual offered seven dollars a ton. But that was delivered to his hay barn. Now, without Solomon, I’d have to chop my price to five dollars a ton because his man George would have to come with their oxen and wagon. By then, I’d have it all down, tumbled into straight windrows, and then piled as soon as dry.
    As I worked, I remembered last summer. My father was haying beside me. He’d nearly stomped on a nest when a swallow fluttered up to scold. Together, we knelt to locate her four young bird-lets, barely hatched. Fuzz instead of feathers. Papa halted his work, fetched a beanpole, and marked her nesting place, to spare the little miracle that happened in his hay.
    “Papa.”
    The echo of his name wafted away, and I stood alone in our hayfield with the cut of a memory.
    As the June sun was hot in a cloudless sky, the mowed hay behind me was drying. Mama and Aunt Carrie come out with pitchforks to tumbleit. In the kitchen, they talked. But here they spoke little. Hour after hour, they worked silent as men.
    At supper that evening, I noticed the tired on their faces. Neither one complained. Perhaps their backs told them that I ached as did they. When we bowed our heads for a Shaker blessing, I saw their hardened hands clenched in grace; they asked for so little, and yet they’d given so much.
    “Bless our food,” Mama whispered with her eyes closed, “and us for Thy service, to Kingdom Hall. Amen.”
    “Amen,” said Carrie and I.
    Supper was beans, boiled eggs, and turnip greens, and milk, given to me by Mrs. Tanner. Soon I’d wring a chicken’s neck, and we’d feast for fair. We ate no beef, no pork, and no mutton.
    “Tomorrow,” I told them as I ate, “I’m taking Daisy away. There’s no other answer. Ben says she’ll never again freshen, and he’s raised more cows than I have.”
    Mama and Carrie stopped eating.
    “Please,” I said, “don’t poke me with questions. It’s for the farm’s good. For us.”
    Inside, my mind harped on the threat of our September taxes. My ears still rang with Mr. Gamp’s warning of the money we’d owe.
    “Robert,” said Mama, “you’ll act right. We trust. So don’t you fret a mite. Do what needs.”
    Aunt Carrie nodded.
    Looking at both of them, I said, “You ladies are Vermont granite. There’s not a farm in the county that can boast of two women, or two men, the such of you.”
    Mama smiled faintly.
    “Yoke us,” she said, “and we’ll pull.”
    After supper, while Mama and Aunt Carrie were ragging the kitchen, I went outside. As it was still light, I walked to the hayfield to sweep another swath. In my hands, the scythe seemed heavier, and its