"My God, it's hot!" Darla looked at the thermometer on the back porch of the farmhouse. 110 degrees. The Nebraska summer heat was relentless.
Seth, the farmhand with the rock hard body, a man who sweat for a living, was stacking fence posts out by the corral. As she gazed across the shimmering heat of the back yard toward him, she spread her legs wider, trying to cool her privates. Sweat ran down her thighs.
Her mom and dad had gone to Iowa for the weekend to visit friends, and she and Seth were left behind to tend the stock. He had the dairy herd and Darla fed the chickens, pigs, and horses. She gathered the chickens into the coop each evening to deprive the coyotes of late night snacks.
Darla wore her old thin house dress, no bra, and no panties. The fabric was nearly transparent and with the sweat of her body, the brown of her nipples and the dark spot of her pussy were visible. If she were alone, she would have been nude in the oppressive heat. It was stifling, not a breath of air.
She sat on the rocker in the shade of the porch roof and sipped cider from the storm cellar where the perishable victuals were kept. It had to be 65 degrees cooler in there. She envied the bacon and hams hanging there, not in their deadness, but at least they were cool.
She unconsciously fanned between her legs with an old fan her mother had brought home from the funeral of a friend in Grand Island a few years ago. They had no air conditioning or electric fans. Electricity had only come that summer when the REA finally moved west of Fairbury. 1947 was not a year of great labor saving home improvements, especially with the need for electricity for all that was to come.
Darla had no brothers or sisters. She was the sole heir to the farm. It had been in the family since 1874. Her sweat was in the place as was that of her parents and now, Seth's. She wanted the farm, she loved the farm. The miracle of new growth every year, the bursting of green crops to life filled her senses with the fecundity of the soil. It was part of Darla, but more than that, it was her reason for being.
Each year she also realized that it was the place where she longed to produce the fruits of her body, fertilized by a strong man to guarantee the continuation of ownership through the years. At 23, she felt the need growing in her. She would finish college next Spring and would come back here to farm with her parents. "May God bring me a man, please Oh God," she prayed every night.
Seth was finished with the fence posts and had just come up for air after dousing his head and shoulders under the pump. He strode onto the porch. His wet chest glistened in the light, each exposed muscle in sharp relief under the strong sun.
"Miss Darla, it's..." said Seth.
She interrupted, "Seth, call me Darla, this isn't the Old South! You make me feel like a spinster," she laughed.
He smiled and shyly said, "... ah...Darla, it's time."
She hated to get up and leave the cooler porch, but she knew the garden needed watering. She pumped as he filled the buckets and carried them to the plot, bringing the life-giving fluid to the beans, squash, turnips and potatoes and her mother's prize winning tomatoes. A day without water in this heat would kill everything. As she pumped the water, she was totally conscious of Seth's eyes on her sweat drenched dress. Her conscious decision to wear it today now seemed a bit slutty to her, showing him too much, but he seemed to be enjoying as he kept stealing glances at her as she pumped.
Darla looked up, straight at Seth for a moment as his eyes locked onto hers, those gray eyes that were so transparent, so mysterious. He seemed particularly fixed on the "V" between her legs. She knew her bush could be seen quite clearly through the thin material. His gray eyes seemed to have the power to peel the cloth away allowing the hot southwest breeze that had just sprung up to heat her skin further. She shook her head and shifted her gaze back to the pump.
"Darla, look out toward Kansas," said Seth.
The sky was blackening rapidly; thunderheads were boiling up. The drought was going to be broken; the much-needed moisture to ensure the germinating of the winter wheat was coming. The distant thunder sounded pregnant with the prophesy of rain.
"Seth, get the horses in the barn and secure it. I'll round up the chickens and the baby pigs. We don't have much time."
As he turned, his well-muscled back shone with sweat and the mysterious scar just below his left clavicle caught her gaze. What had happened? He had been in Europe for three years. What evils had he seen? As she hurried away her mind locked on his image, what he looked like when he took a bath under the yard pump wearing his old swimming trunks in the evening. Hard, lithe body, wondering what his arms would feel like around her, his chest moving against her breasts. She tried to imagine the extent of the bulge in his trunks that often grew when he knew she was watching him.
The chickens were scattered, clucking nervously as they sensed the coming deluge. She finally got them rounded up and also shooed the baby pigs back into the pen where the sow herded them into the pig house.
Dashing into the house, she started closing windows and doors. Outside again, she secured the wooden storm shutters over the windows facing southwest, the direction from which the fury would hurtle toward them. She prayed it would be a good, soaking thunderstorm after the wind had carried it upon them. She feared the dreaded prairie tornadoes that caused her an unsettled anxiety as they wove their path of death and destruction across the helpless prairie.
Seth rounded the corner of the barn running toward the storm cellar as the first crash of lightning struck in the south pasture, singing the old sycamore tree. She gathered up her skirt and ran to the shelter too, ducked down the steps, and Seth clumped down after her, securing the heavy double doors.
Darla exclaimed, "Oh Jesus, it's freezing in here!"
