Free Making Hay by Pamela Morsi Page A

fine switches from the tree in our yard.”
    Lessy giggled at his comical expression of remembered pain as she gently placed another bright, blushing peach in the basket. “With pecans you’re free of the time spent handpicking. You can simply shake the nuts down from the trees without a worry about breaking or bruising them.” Lessy nodded determinedly. “Pecans are definitely a more practical orchard tree.”
    Rip brought a handful of sweet-smelling ripe peaches and laid most of them carefully in the basket. One, the darkest, ripest, most perfect, he held out to her like the temptation in the Garden of Eden. “Practical should not be a woman’s first concern,” he said. “And what’s most fine to have in this world is not always the easiest to get. Lots of the best things in life are clearly not practical.” He waved the peach slowly under her nose. The sultry, sweet scent assailed her. “Music and dancing and laughing aren’t what you’d call practical, but life wouldn’t be nearly so happy without them.”
    “Well, certainly we wouldn’t want to give up our humanity for practicality,” she said, grabbing the peach from him, unable to resist taking a large greedy bite. It was sweet and juicy, and Lessy’s tongue darted out to capture the juice that threatened to drip down her chin. “But pecans over peaches seems a very small compromise to make.”
    Rip came to stand in front of her, holding the ladder between them. “It’s the little compromises like that, Miss Lessy, that will take all the sweetness out of a life.” Lessy let his words pass, hastily dropping her gaze and moving along to the next tree. But as they continued their way through the cooling shade of peach boughs, her mind dwelled upon them.
    Stopping, she took another bite from the peach he’d given her, tasting the sweet, sticky smoothness that could never be supplanted by the finest-tasting pecans. “Ripley,” she asked, as if she could no longer keep her silence, “how important is it to a man that his wife be pretty?”
    The young man was a bit startled by the question. She was unwilling to look at him directly, which gave him opportunity to observe her discomfiture. “You thinking of your friend, Miss Mouwers?”
    “Oh, no,” Lessy insisted. “I was just asking. But you didn’t like Sugie Jo.”
    “I liked her fine,” he said. “What’s not to like? She’s a fine looker for sure.”
    Lessy was puzzled. “You didn’t act like you liked her.”
    “Just being careful,” he replied. “She’s one fine looker who is a-looking to get married. So I don’t want her looking in my direction.”
    “But she’s very pretty.”
    Rip nodded in agreement.
    “So how important is it to a man that his woman be pretty?”
    Ripley turned to look at her. “For most men it’s very important,” he said at first and then hesitated as if thinking. “Well, I guess it’s pretty important.” Stopping completely, he shook his head, and with a light chuckle as he bent over to catch her downcast eyes he told her finally, “Maybe it ain’t a bit important at all.”
    Lessy folded her arms across her chest stubbornly in disapproval. “Which is it?” she asked. “Very important, pretty important, or not important at all?”
    Rip looked at the young woman with some curiosity and a good deal of cockiness as he leaned indolently against a tree trunk. “Miss Lessy,” he said, “it’s all three.”
    She raised an eyebrow.
    ‘To find a woman, a man’s got to notice her. If he passes by her in church without ever speaking, it ain’t likely they’ll ever be together. But if she’s a fine looker, say like your friend, Miss Mouwers,” he said, “then it’s not likely he’ll pass by without seeing her.”
    Lessy nodded. “So it’s very important that she be pretty.”
    Rip shook his head. “Now, most of us fellows meet a gal through family or friends, and usually you get to know her a bit before you’d ever think of walking out