We're a Wonderful Wife Ch. 02

Just as she was getting ready to ease up on the clutch, Tam appeared and climbed up on the right footboard then propped herself on the right fender like Don did when Lanh was first learning to drive the tractor. Tam was wearing a non la, the traditional Vietnamese conical hat and she held one out to Lanh, who slipped it on and tied the chinstrap ribbon under her chin. "I didn't look Asian enough for you?" she asked Tam, squinting her eyes to make the epicanthal fold of her eyes more pronounced behind her thick glasses.

"It's all about tradition," said Tam as Lanh put the tractor in gear. Years ago, someone had mounted a horn off an old Army Jeep on the tractor and Lanh loved it because it sounded like the roadrunner from the cartoons. Lanh gave two quick beeps to warn anyone in the area that she was going forward: "Meep! Meep!" and with that she eased out the clutch and they began to move out into the fields. She was pulling the old, faded red baler and behind that the large green hay wagon where Kim-ly and Ralph sat.

Finally, she got out to the field and looking back over her shoulder she saw Kim-ly had set up a lounge chair on the hay wagon and was enjoying a cold drink. "I wish we had a kicker," muttered Lanh. The kicker launches hay bales from the baler into the air to land in the hay wagon. They land generally right where Kim-ly was sitting. Ralph was sitting next to Kim-ly, he came along to make sure that the girls had this under control. It wouldn't do to bean poppa with a square bale of hay.

Finally, they reached the field that Lanh had cut and prepared for this moment. She pulled up to a wind row and stopped, lowered the three-point hitch lowering the baler intake tines to the ground. She engaged the PTO, and the baler came to life. Squeaking and groaning, it began to scoop hay even before Lanh put the tractor in gear. Tam hopped off the tractor with an encouraging "you got this" and stepped back to the hay wagon and climbed on with Kim-ly and Ralph.

Soon they were really bailing hay! It took Tam and Kim-ly a half dozen bales to figure out that the best way to get the bale on to a neat stack after it came off the conveyer and drop onto the trailer was to do it together. These bales weigh fifty pounds, each girl could deal with one, but it was hard work. If they both grabbed the hay bale and carried it to the stack the job went much easier. Ralph laughed and helped the girls learn the ropes; he had never had so much fun bailing hay in his life. Twenty five years ago he bailed a field of hay with the beautiful young girl that would eventually become Don's mom, which was fun too, but for a wholly different reason.

They finished up the row and Lanh made the turn and lined up the feeder tines of the bailer with the wind row perfectly, not a straw of hay was missed as she started to scoop the hay into the bailer. As the stack grew higher it became more difficult for Tam and Kim-ly to lift the bales, and Ralph took pity. "If it's too much for you, if you can't do it, I can get Don when he gets home from your momma's restaurant, and he can get it for you."

That was the exact right thing to say, Tam pushed the brim of her hat back and said, "We're just getting organized Mr. Campbell. We'll be done before Don gets back from his shift at the restaurant."

Ralph chuckled. "If you insist, now let me give you a hint, when the stack gets too tall, build a step to stand on. Let's see how you can stack them bales."

Tam and Kim-ly went back to work, grabbing the bales as soon as they came off the conveyor and lifted them into place, the job getting easier as they learned to work together. "We should mention this at the dojo," chuckled Kim-ly.

"I've heard worse ideas," said Tam. She and Kim-ly study martial arts due to attacks in their past, now there will be no more drunken frat boys stalking their nightmares anymore.

Lanh made her next 180 degree turn and Ralph hopped off the hay wagon and stepped out in front of the tractor and waived his arms for Lanh to stop. With a long "MEEEEEEEEP!" to tell her crew she was stopping Lanh brought the tractor to a stop and disengaged the PTO, silencing the bailer then shut down the engine. Tam shut off the boom box on the hay wagon and the three hopped down and huddled around Ralph.

"You girls are doing incredible!" Ralph gushed as they gathered around him. "I never would have guessed you have never worked a farm before."

The girls were hot and sweaty and each one had a huge grin. "It's the hats," kidded Kim-ly as she gave Tam an elbow in the ribs. "They give us the agrarian superpowers of our ancestors."

"Well, you keep on doing like you're doing, and you'll have one of the best harvests we've ever produced. The bales are good and tight and will fetch a good price."

"We're just trying to kill a warm summer afternoon," said Tam.

"I'm impressed, Little Bit," he said to Lanh, "when you're done, just drop the trailer behind the tractor shed and drop the bailer by the door, I'll have Don put it away later."

"Yes, sir," said Lanh, grinning in embarrassment that her boyfriend's dad used his pet nickname for her in front of her sisters. She's not going to hear the end of this. She looked at Tam and Kim-ly who were looking at her with evil glee. Somehow these non la hats made her sisters look even more sinister.

As Ralph headed back to the farmhouse the girls returned to their posts. Kim-ly sneered at Lanh and said "Little Bit? That's so cute."

"It's starting already," muttered Lanh as she fired up the tractor and set the PTO. The grinding of the bailer drowned out Tam and Kim-ly's calls of "Let's go Little Bit!"

Lanh eased out on the clutch and the work resumed. It was a little bit easier now for Kim-ly and Tam because Ralph wasn't on the hay wagon with them. It's not that he wasn't a nice guy, he was a tremendous fellow, it's that he worried about them and tended to get in the way.

It was a beautiful summer afternoon and even though the three sisters had been working together their entire lives this was the best teamwork they have ever shown and the first time that little Lanh stepped out at "team leader." As they moved farther and farther away from the farmhouse all three girls stripped off their shirts and began working in their bikini tops that they wore under their shirts. The sun was hot, the breeze was refreshing, and the work was dry and dusty. Soon all three girls were covered in sweat and dust and were loving it. All were enjoying a chance to get out, do something they've never done before on a warm summer day.

Finally, the hay wagon was full, the hay was stacked up to seven feet high and Tam and Kim-ly climbed on top of the hay for the ride back to the farmhouse. They quickly dropped off the wagon and Lanh backed the baler into the tractor shed, parking it where it normally sits just to prove to Don and Ralph that a girl can do it. As she unhitched the baler Sandy came out of the farmhouse and asked, "How many bales did you get?" Sandy is Ralph Campbell's "lady friend." She's widowed like Ralph and is the pianist at the church that Ralph and Don attend.

Unaware that they should have been counting, they counted five bales high six bales wide times eight rows equal two hundred and forty bales the girls put up. Lanh did the math in her head, 240 bales at 50 pounds each, "That's six tons!" she grinned.

Tam and Kim-ly sagged at the realization of all the work they put through. "Holy shit," groaned Kim-ly.

"That's right, six tons of hay, good job girls," smiled Sandy as she wrote the figures on the back of an envelope.

"Where's Mr. Campbell?" asked Tam.

"He's ahhh... indisposed," said Sandy.

"The bikinis?" asked Kim-ly suddenly realizing how skimpy her bikini top was. Her tiny shorts didn't help project an aura of innocence either.

"Ahhh... yeah," smiled Sandy as she headed back to the house. Sandy raised four rowdy, righteous girls by herself, putting up hay in a bikini was dusty and scratchy, but not unheard of. Ralph on the other hand wasn't prepared for the Nguyen sisters.

Lanh decided that she needed to wash off and cool down so she told her sisters, "I'm going back to the pond to wash off this dust, wanna come with?" and soon, after hooking up the small home-made flatbed trailer to the tractor, all three were heading back to the pond, bottles clanking in the cooler, boom box blasting the top forty.

It was still early in the afternoon, and it was warm and sunny back at the pond. They pulled up to the floating dock and hopped off the tractor and trailer and walked out to the end of the dock. The floating dock is merely a dock made of wood planking on top of several empty plastic fifty-five-gallon drums. Pulled up on shore was a ten-foot rowboat and a canoe. It felt strange walking on the dock because it rolled and rocked as you walked on it, but they got to the end, a large eight foot square area where Lanh loved to go fishing. Looking in the water she could see the blue gills and "sunnies" swimming in and out of the shadow of the dock.

"I'm going skinny-dipping, who's with me?" called out Kim-ly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don walked back to the pond pulling a utility wagon with a cooler full of cold drinks, sandwiches, and snacks for the girls. He was impressed with the amount of work they completed, and he was shocked that his dad let them complete the bailing with a customer waiting for their promised five tons of sweet alfalfa. Normally Don would do the hay cutting along with Ralph and Cliff, their hired farmhand, but they had to get it in before the rain started tomorrow and his dad found a buyer who wanted the hay as soon as possible.

Don heard the sisters splashing and playing in the pond and he veered up toward the pines where he likes to camp, and there he set up a nice picnic dinner for the girls as a thank you. His campsite has a nice firepit and several level areas for pitching tents. The thick mattress of pine needles made it difficult to pitch a tent, but he has a stash of extra-long tent stakes made from rebar just for camping under the pines. His camp site even has a big picnic table that he made from a stash of 2" x 4" studs and painted Kelly green so it looked like a table you would find at a forest service picnic site. He was ready to call the girls, so he stepped to the edge of the woods and looked out over the pond and what he saw made his mouth run dry.

There down on the pond he saw them. They were five hundred yards away, so his vision was quite blurry even with glasses, but he thinks that all were naked... or maybe he wanted to think they were naked. "Lanh!" he gasped as he saw the tiny Asian pull herself out of the water on to the floating dock, just to be tossed back in by one of her taller sisters. With a laughing squeal she hit the water then disappeared under the surface and did not resurface. After a minute Don saw the girl in the pond treading water suddenly disappear with a startled yelp. He grinned; the underwater attack was a move he taught Lanh.

Lanh resurfaced and started swimming toward the center of the pond, her strokes looked perfect, they had spent hours in the pond, and he taught her to swim, and she was becoming very good at breaststroke and free style. When she got to the center of the pond, she took a deep breath with a kick she dove deep. She was gone almost two minutes, then she surfaced near where she submerged and after a few breaths she yelled something to her sisters.

He wanted to go join them so badly, not just for the illicit thrill of skinny dipping with the most beautiful women he had ever met and one of them that... that... "Oh wow," he groaned. Don just now came to the realization that he wanted Lanh. Since they first danced eight months ago, they were rarely separated, they were buddies, pals, they occasionally kissed, but she was a girl, and he loved her like a...

Don now realized that he wasn't sure how he loved her. He realized now that his feelings toward Lanh were different, they were evolving. HE was different and evolving too, later than every other guy in his class and on the swim team, but just in time for his seventeenth birthday. Hormones began to course through his body, occasionally his voice would squeak and drop an octave, but there were other changes too.

He used to daydream of just hanging out with Lanh, to walk hand in hand, picnic lunch back here at the pond, swimming and playing in the pond, he even taught her the illicit game of bumper sliding in the winter, but the future... His dreams of his future all revolve around Lanh. He used to dream that she'd enlist with him too, or maybe she'll get commissioned, but now there's no uniforms in his dreams.

He sighed and stepped back to the campsite, to the crackling fire he lit, because what's a campsite without a campfire? Sitting there he got an idea to let the girls know he was here without embarrassing them. He collected an armful of long pine needles from under the stand of white pines and threw the armload on the fire. It almost put the fire out but soon the pile of needles started pouring a huge cloud of white smoke into the air. The white smoke rose a hundred feet, above the treetops, a smoke signal to Lanh and her sisters. He dug an M-80 firecracker out of his pocket and lit the fuse. He let the fuse burn down until the sputtering flame was at the body of the explosive charge, then with a practiced heave he threw the M-80 high into the air. The M-80 exploded with a deafening roar inside the column of smoke. That should get the attention of the girls.

If that didn't get their attention, the pine needles soon were heated to their combustion point and burst into a roaring orange conflagration which was fueled by the pine needles and the pine tar they contained. The white smoke immediately stopped as the huge orange flames roared skyward. The flames should be seen from the pond, even through the trees.

"The water is so cold down there!" gasped Lanh as she re-emerged from her deep dive.

"How deep did you go?" asked Kim-ly who was sitting on the dock, enjoying the feel of the warm breeze on her naked skin. None of these girls had ever been completely naked outdoors before, the feel of the cool pond water caressing every inch of their bodies was incredible. Even though they had gone swimming all their lives, and in Kim-ly's case had worn skimpy bikinis, the feel of being naked in the water was new and exciting.

"I don't know how deep this pond is, maybe fifteen feet?" guessed Lan. "I dove until I felt seaweed."

Suddenly a loud explosion startled the girls, they looked at the cause of the sound and saw a huge column of white smoke rising out of the pine trees. As they watched, the source of the smoke stopped producing smoke, and huge, angry orange flames could be seen between the trees.

"Holy shit!" cried Kim-ly, "What the hell just blew up?"

"I dunno," said Lanh, but she couldn't suppress her smile, she knew of Don's love of fireworks. He was there at his camp site, and he was up to something.

"She knows something," said Tam as she tried to swim after Lanh, but Tam hasn't swum in years and Lanh's form is perfect from swimming with Don so often this summer. She was able to stay out of Tam's reach and circle back around Tam and get back to the dock before her. Lanh was able to pull herself up on the dock and grab her shorts and bikini top before Kim-ly could stop her, then she tried to make it to shore alongside the dock but Kim-ly headed her off and caught her as she stepped up on shore. Kim-ly held the squirming, giggling Lanh until Tam finally caught up to them and helped Kim-ly restrain a laughing Lanh.

Don watched the sisters wrestle, it looked like they were getting ready to toss Lanh back in the pond. He guessed that Lanh told them he was here because two of the distant figures began looking around. That allowed the smallest one to dash for the tractor and hop up on the seat. The other two dashed back to the dock then back to the tractor, Don guessed they picked up their clothes. The tractor started up and dressing on the flatbed trailer the girls slowly rounded the end of the pond and headed toward him.

Fifteen minutes later the three sisters were eating hotdogs they cooked over the fire on long forks along with chips and washing them down with ice cold canned sodas and what beer they had left over. Lanh sat sideways on the picnic table bench seat, Don sat behind her, combing out her long glistening black hair as it dried. Tam and Kim-ly sat across from them and the three girls laughed and recounted the events of the day's work and play. Lanh practically purred with delight as Don combed out her hair and occasionally pulled her back to his chest for a hug, and the best part was that Tam and Kim-ly acted like it was the most natural thing in the world for their mousy little sister to enjoy her boyfriend in front of them.

"I'm so jealous," said Don as the conversation reached a stopping point. "You guys have so much fun. It was just me and dad for years, milking cows, cutting hay, planting corn." He sighed; how different life would have been if he had brothers.

"This doesn't ever happen, em yêu," said Lanh.

"No, it doesn't," agreed Kim-ly

"It was a first," said Tam, and the sisters became strangely silent, reflecting on the day. Don was beginning to worry that something was wrong among them when Tam got up and walked around the table and sat down facing Lanh. She took Lanh's hands and said "Em có cảm thấy ổn không em gái?"

Lanh smiled and said "Không, nhưng mỗi ngày tôi lại gần nhau hơn," causing Tam to lean forward and hug her little sister. With a mewl of joy Kim-ly leapt up and joined them in a sisterly hug which seemed to go on forever. Don didn't want to interfere, but Lanh leaned back against him, adding him to the hug.

Eventually they broke the hug and moved over to the fire and sat around telling stories of their childhood, mostly of how Kim-ly was so jealous of Tam's doll. Kim-ly huffed, "That's all she wanted to do was play with that doll, she'd dress it up six times an hour and give it four baths a day, I never got to play with Tam after she got that doll."

"That's not fair," said Tam, "it was my favorite doll, and I promised má that I would take care of it."

"You never wanted to play with me!" said Kim-ly.

As they taunted each other Lanh leaned over and clutched Don's arm, clutching tighter and tighter with each taunt. Finally, Don asked Lanh "What's wrong? Did you break Tam's doll?"

"No," she replied, "it wasn't a doll, it was ME!"

"No, seriously."

"SERIOUSLY," Lanh shouted, "I was a preemie tiny and Tam adopted me because Bao and Kim-ly were such brats that má had to spend all her time spanking them.

Don chuckled, "Really?"

"You laugh," Lanh pointed an accusing finger at her sister Tam, "she took me to show and tell!" cried Lanh.

"Twice," said Tam with an ill-concealed grin.

"TWICE?" Lanh shrieked.

"I did a changing demo," said Tam as Kim-ly laughed loudly.

"Everyone saw my âm đạo?" gasped Lanh, she buried her face in Don's chest. "I can never go out in public," causing Tam and Kim-ly to double over in laughter.

About an hour later Don and Kim-ly walked down to the pond with plastic buckets to get water to drown the fire, it was time to head back. The girls didn't know it, but their hay was sold for a good price and Ralph was waiting for them to give them their share of the profits. As Don and Kim-ly walked down to the pond Don finally asked Kim-ly "What did Tam ask Lanh after we finished eating?"

Kim-ly thought for a moment, then finally said "She asked are you feeling ok little sister?"

"And what did Lanh say?"

Kim-ly paused even longer this time before saying "She said No, but every day I get closer." Before Don could ask another question, Kim-ly said "If you want to know more, you need to talk to Lanh, or Tam, or your boss." The boss Kim-ly was referring to was Mai, their mother. Don reports directly to Mai whenever he works at the restaurant. "All I can say," continued Kim-ly, "is that when you'd ask her that previously, every time she would say no."