See You in a Hundred Years

I bought the wagon the week before in West Virginia, where it had gathered dust in a barn for years. The man who had taken out the classified ad seemed surprised to find someone who actually wanted it, and who was willing to give him $1,100 cash and haul it away. The problem is, I have no idea how to connect the buggy to the animal now fertilizing my front lawn, an embarrassing truth to admit to a country horse trader in the middle of a deal. After months spent firing outhouse-construction queries into cyberspace, test-milking goats, and peppering the staff at the county farm co-op with questions that elicit either bemused grins or frowns of impatience, I should be comfortable admitting my ignorance. But I haven’t told Marshall about 1900, and I don’t want to now for fear of ridicule―or worse, a lecture. Something in me whispers, No, you can do this yourself.

Perhaps sensing my uneasiness, Marshall, who chomps an unlit cigar, says, “You want me to hitch her up?”

“As long as you’re here, you might as well,” I say, relieved he has given me an out.

At the barn, Marshall slings the harness over Belle’s broad back.

“You pay attention, too,” he tells Heather. “He’s gonna forget something.”

After buckling and cinching straps from Belle’s eyeballs to her tail, he backs her into the wagon shafts and buckles and cinches some more. She is a kitten in his hands.

Soon Marshall and I, perched on the wagon’s bench, are rattling down the driveway, me at the helm.

“Gee!” I say self-consciously, my voice deepening to mimic Marshall’s. Gee means go right in horse-driver lingo, and that is exactly what Belle does, turning onto the dead-end gravel road beside our farm. At the end of the road, I tell her, “Haw!” and she turns left. “Whoa,” I say. She stops, waiting for my next command.

“Tell her, ‘Back,’” Marshall says.

“Back,” I shout, and Belle steps backward, the wagon jackknifing like a tractor-trailer. My foot pumps instinctively, searching the floorboards for a brake pedal.

“Whoa,” Marshall pipes up.

“Hey, she’s even got reverse,” I say with a nervous laugh, lamely gripping the reins.

But all he says is “Come UP,” and Belle is trotting again.