little man

Johnnie from Berlin, Mass., (say it with me: BER-lin) delivered 200 bales of hay the other day. From the cab of the truck, he whipped the flatbed trailer up and down and around the farm road, guided by intuition or maybe god’s will. Making a tight turn (backwards) with no more than four inches to spare, he never looked nervous. As the cab passed me on its way to one of the drop-off spots, I saw a tow-headed thing asleep in a child's car seat next to Johnnie. Just then, the kid woke up and, after his eyes whirled around from the back of his head, he looked at me and must have wondered where on earth am I and who is this lady starring at me.

The little guy eventually got himself out of his car seat and came back to help unload hay bales. No taller than my waist but with easily twice my determination, Jason (as he was introduced) heaved the things over the edge, making the rest of us look real bad. With his little-kid jeans tucked into his working boots, he didn’t chat. He didn’t kid around. He was a working man. When Johnnie hopped back into the truck to back up to the next drop spot, Jason dropped down on his right knee, he left elbow rested on left knee, and with his right hand he made the back-it-up motion. At the appropriate moment, he gave the hold-it-up signal. Then immediately, back on his feet, hauling hay bales.

When the work was done and we stood waiting for the boss to get the check, Johnnie leaned on the empty trailer. Jason folded his arms and looked up at his uncle to make sure he got the pose right. Johnnie talked with his hands; Jason didn’t talk but copied the hand gestures. If he wasn’t so obviously six years old, you could have believed he was a little man. The only time he broke out of character was when he ran off to pick raspberries, then doubled back and said, “Can I please have a basket to put them in?”