Delivery day

The most difficult and satisfying of childhood chores

You’re going to need a long-sleeved shirt, gloves, boots and jeans (the thicker the better). You’re going to be tempted to take the long-sleeved shirt off when you get hot–don’t. Same for the gloves. If they’re not the right kind, you’re going to struggle to get your fingers under the bailing twine. Even my dad doesn’t throw hay without gloves, and his hands have the texture and surface density of an old baseball mitt.

If it’s just two of you, one of you is going to need to throw and the other is going to stack. Both jobs have their drawbacks, though we’d all agree that stacking is the harder option. But it also takes more skill–a Lincoln Log project writ large. Time passes more quickly when you’re stacking. The bales need to be stacked to the roof, which means you need to build yourself a hay bale staircase to climb. If you get a short bale, you have to be smart about where you put that because once the stack gets unsteady, it’s dangerous. Try not to think about all this hay toppling. Try not to think about the hay catching fire. Try not to think about how much money it costs. Try not to keep track of how many you’ve stacked, and how many there are to go. 

Come up with some way of keeping going. Ideally, you’re doing this with your sister and the two of you will fall into a rhythm that means you will be able to work for many hours. It’s the same rhythm you find when you jog side by side. Same steps, same breaths, same genetics. People are always mistaking you for the other, even though you’re six years apart. Delight in that–you won’t be together forever, no matter how much you wish it.

Be grateful that you’re unloading beautiful green fescue bales from a tractor-trailer truck and not picking dusty coastal bales up out of the field. The bales you’re handling are so dense and green they make your mouth water on behalf of the horses who will eat it, but they are also monstrously heavy–sixty, seventy pounds. It’s not always consistent, and you can’t always tell by looking at it. Try to pick up every bale like it’s the heaviest one yet–if it’s light, well, then, bonus for you. Except not–you paid the same for this light bale as for that heavy bale. You should want all of the bales to be heavy. But if all of the bales were heavy, your back would’ve been shot hours ago. 

The stack is getting higher now. You’re only five-foot-two, so to get bales over your head you have to deadlift the bale to your waist, then propel it up with your knee until it’s at the height of your head, then let the bale rest on your forearms as you heave it onto the stack. This is all one smooth motion. You have no memory of learning this. No one taught you, you don’t think. Your sister does it exactly the same way. Did she learn it from you? Did you learn it from your dad? 

Your gloves are gone. Your long-sleeved shirt is off. The undersides of your forearms are densely crosshatched with red scratches that will keep swelling long after this is over. Your fingers are so swollen you can’t curl them into a tight fist anymore. You don’t stop for lunch because you know that if you do, you won’t be able to get going again. 

Finally, the last bale comes off the truck. The driver pulls away. You sit on the lowest level of the stacked hay. The barn smells so good it makes you giddy. Or maybe that’s the relief that it’s over. For now. The stack has already started to dwindle. Eighteen horses audibly eating in their stalls. Bales disappear one after another. The sound of the hay grinding between their teeth, a lullaby.