That voice touches us here, and all the ranches spread out over the prairies between the Rockies and the Mississippi. It’s different from anybody’s voice around Gotham – more like one of those city voices that broadcasts the war news. The voice of the man who announces the wheat prices is as familiar to me as Dad’s. When you have to carry every drop of water you use half a mile, you don’t throw away any.Ħ And then it began. Then I fenced them in with my hand and poured off the water into the kettle on the stove. I used to play they were alligators when I was a child. They were bright green and shiny in the water. Dad told Mom not to bother, they’d come back by themselves, but Mom worried if anything was lost or left unlocked.Ĥ “When I’ve got something, I take care of it,” she always said.ĥ I washed some cucumbers while I was waiting. It might go higher along toward Christmas, but we couldn’t wait for that.ģ The house was so quiet I could hear Mom calling the turkeys down by the barn. We had to sell our wheat this month and not hold it over that is, we did if I was going to the university that fall.

Dad was lying on the couch in the other room waiting for the noon broadcast of wheat prices to come on. Mom was out having another look for the turkeys that were always wandering off. There wasn’t any fire in the stove and everything was spick-and-span because I had just washed the dinner dishes. I was glad we weren’t cooking for harvest hands. The fields have a tired peaceful look, the way I imagine a mother feels when she’s had her baby and is just lying there thinking about it and feeling pleased.Ģ It was hot, though, like a flash-back to July.

The harvesting is done and the wheat stored away and you’re through worrying about hail or drought or grasshoppers.

I mean real wind that blows dirt into your eyes and hair and between your teeth and roars in your ears after you’ve gone inside. Then answer questions 1 through 7.ġ September is like a quiet day after a whole week of wind.

Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker