Peck of Pickles

Peck of Pickles
2nd Edition
Lena Austin
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2008 Lena Austin

The light finally changed, and Linc took a deep breath before continuing to the tiny County Extension office. He'd called the agent, Pol Backstrom, yesterday to reserve a table in the dilapidated preservation room where as a kid he'd helped his mother and the other women of the church preserve everything from jellies to pickles, and pickles were the reason he went today. He had more cucumbers to turn into dill pickles than his home equipment could handle. There weren't enough women who needed to use the giant pots and tables anymore, but the equipment still languished in the preservation room ready for use. Today, Linc would probably have the whole building to himself. He parked the battered old F150 in one of the ten possible parking spots and waved at the agent.

Pol lounged on a bench outside the office, sipping on a big mug of steaming coffee. At church breakfasts, Pol was the first in line for the big urn and joked he could drink it dry by himself. The agent had a fancy agricultural degree from the university, and the county paid him well to keep the office running despite the lack of visitors. Pol was as handsome as sin and had the devil's own smiling charm. Blond curls and big, ice crystal eyes made the wiry Pol look like a living version of Michelangelo's carving of David.

Linc took his peck of cucumbers from the back of the truck and hefted the load to the waiting agent. Normally, a little old basket of eight quarts of cukes and ice would hardly strain a muscle of Linc's six-foot, three-inch frame, but nerves made his hands slick with sweat. Just as he reached the sidewalk, the plastic bin slipped from his hands, and he dumped the entire contents at Pol's feet.

"Timber!" Pol jumped back to avoid the icy green avalanche, spilling his coffee all over his county employee T-shirt. He brushed at his wet chest and laughed. "Oops. Good thing I have a pile of these."

Linc seriously considered burrowing right under the cement sidewalk and tunneling like a gopher all the way back home. "Durn it. I'm sorry, Pol. Here, let me get these picked up." He knelt on the hard sidewalk and grabbed up cucumbers as fast as he could. The ice he abandoned. It had done its job to make the cukes crisp when he pickled them.

Amazingly, Pol knelt right across from him and grinned. "Big ol' strapping fellow like you should have no trouble carrying a peck of future pickles, Linc."

Ever since Linc got his growth going, he'd been worse than a bull in a china shop. Most folks equated brawn with no brains, so he'd been treated like a big, dumb ox since adolescence, to his constant embarrassment. Now he'd just proven the fact. His face heated up hotter than the sun would be in a few hours.

Pol glanced up and his eyes widened. "Hey, now. No need to match the stoplight. Someone will think we put an aircraft beacon on the ground here, and we'll have planes landing on Main Street. I was just teasing."

Linc's hand closed on top of Pol's when they grabbed the last cucumber simultaneously. For a few seconds, Linc thrilled to the touch of another human being before he realized what he'd done and snatched his hand away as if Pol's warm hand was scorching. He hung his head like a kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar. "Sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me today."