Nellie Mae stepped back into the cook shack after ringing the big brass bell that hung between two poles at the edge of the back porch. It was a call to breakfast for the men in the peach orchard. Her bare feet scuffed across the wood threshold into the cook shack. She figured she had about fifteen minutes before they appeared in the yard to wash at the pump. They had been hard at work since just before dawn with only the bread and cheese they grabbed to start their day. She made breakfast by about eight each morning. The merciless Kansas wind that awakened with the sun had subsided to a heavy breeze as the day ripened. It was mid-July, the second picking of the trees. They liked to be finished by two when sweat from the heat and humidity blinded their eyes. Nellie Mae’s dad and five brothers made up most of the crew. Four hired men helped through harvest season.

The long trestle table at the end of the room was set for ten with big tin plates, cups, forks, and spoons. Each man carried his own knife. Coffee was made. Cream was in the pitcher. A platter was heaped with chunks of ham, fried fatback, and twelve pieces of fried chicken left from yesterday’s dinner. A big plate of butter sat between two jars of blackberry preserves. Four dozen biscuits were piled in a red woven cloth basket at the end of the table. Sausage gravy bubbled in a small pan at the back of the wood-burning stove. The oatmeal was ready and all she had to do was scramble the eggs. The chickens gave thirty that morning.

Nellie Mae gripped the big handles on the hot cast iron pot with two towels to move it to the side of the wood-burning stove so she could begin the eggs. One hand slipped and the pot fell to the floor. Oatmeal spread in a slow ooze. Nellie Mae jumped back and looked around for a solution. No oatmeal was not an option. She didn’t have time to cook up a new batch.  She grabbed the wide trowel she used when making bread dough and quickly scooped the oatmeal back into the pot, setting it on the stove. She took a jar of left-over cinnamon she had grated for cookies two days before and dumped it into the pot. Dust and cinnamon look roughly the same. Then she added a generous pour of maple syrup and stirred the whole thing quickly. She moved it to the counter beside the stove and got her pan out for the eggs, scrambling them with green onions fresh from the garden. The floor was sticky where the oatmeal landed so she dragged the oval braided rug from by the door to the front of the stove. She knew she’d be washing the floor as soon as the men returned to work and before she could start fixing dinner. She served dinner at three.

The first one through the door was Uri, a hired man from Germany. Prussia, he insisted. He was slender built and shorter than her husky red-headed, blue-eyed Hutchison clansmen whose ancestors arrived from Scotland generations before. When she first met him, Nellie Mae thought he was Cherokee with his swarthy complexion, nearly black hair, and hawk-like nose. Her brothers respected him because, even with his slight build, he was as strong or stronger than any of them.

Uri carried a bucket half full of blackberries. He handed the bucket to her. He looked directly at the rug then his snappy brown eyes smiled at her.

“Just came up to pick berries for breakfast,” he said in his slight accent. With a head nod, he indicated the window across the room from the stove. Blackberry bushes grew on that side of the cook shack among the windbreak trees.

“Thanks,” she replied. A niggling feeling of being watched came over her. Passing by the window, had he seen what happened with the oatmeal?

“I think I’ll skip the oatmeal today,” he said with a wink.

She heard the men in the yard washing dust and sticky peach juice from their hands. One by one they filed in scuffing their feet at the door where the rug usually lay. It was there to catch the dirt and debris from the orchard before it could get all over the house.

“Whadya do with the rug?” William, her eldest brother asked.
“My feet got cold while I was cookin’,” she answered, not daring to look toward Uri.
“Get some shoes on, girl.”
“Too busy.”

They took places on long benches at two sides of the table. Nellie Mae scooped a helping of oatmeal in bowls for each man, except Uri. A quiet giggle bubbled up in her every time she looked at him. She could tell he was stifling a laugh too.

“Not sure I like what you did with the oatmeal today,” her taciturn father commented. “Too sweet.”
“It suits me right down to my toes,” her youngest brother, Ben, chimed in.