Part Five: The Keys
So I didn’t argue.
I didn’t raise my voice. I’ve never been much for raising my voice. Dad wasn’t either.
I stood up.
I pushed my chair back slowly. I took my work hat off the back of the chair, where I’d hung it when I sat down. A faded green cap with a John Deere logo and a sweat stain around the band.
I held it in my hand.
Then I reached into the pocket of my canvas work coat.
The keys were there, where they always were. The combine key on a ring with a little brass tag. The key to the machine shed. The key to the fuel tank. The key to the grain truck.
I took them out.
I walked around the end of the table.
I set them down beside Elaine’s plate. Right next to her roast beef.
“Those are yours, Elaine,” I said.
My voice came out calm. I don’t know how.
“So is the combine,” I said.
She looked at the keys like they might bite her.
Then she looked up at me. Her face had gone pale under her reading glasses.
“Mark,” she said. “Sit down and finish your supper.”
“There’s a hundred and sixty acres of beans left on the west side,” I said. “They’re ready. They need to come out this week.”
I put my hat on.
“I’ll write the custom man’s number by the phone,” I said. “Gene Hartwig. Out of Sutherland. He’s good.”
Then I walked to the kitchen. I found a pen in the junk drawer and a sticky note on the refrigerator. I wrote Gene Hartwig, custom harvest and his phone number. I stuck it on the wall above the kitchen phone, the old yellow one Dad never would replace.
When I came back through the dining room, nobody had moved.
Ron Hessler set his fork down on his plate. Very carefully. He looked at Elaine. Then he looked at me.
“Dale would not have liked this,” he said quietly.
He didn’t say it to either of us. He said it to the table.
I never knew which one of us he meant.
I walked out the front door. I walked across the yard past the combine, still sitting there with the last of the sunset on its windows.
I didn’t look at it.
I got in my pickup and drove to the little house on the east eighty. I sat in the driveway for a long time with the engine off.
I didn’t cry. I want to be honest about that. I wanted to. But I’d spent nineteen years learning from a man who didn’t cry, and I didn’t know how to start.
Part Six: One Mile East
The next morning, I drove one mile east.
Arlen Stuckey farms the eight hundred acres next to ours. Has his whole life. His family and mine have shared a fence line since 1911.
Arlen’s sixty-eight now. His knees are shot. He had one replaced in March and he’s waiting on the other one. He walks like a man crossing a creek on slippery rocks.
He and his wife, Marcy, never had children. Arlen’s farmed alone for forty years, with help from hired men when he could find them.
He’d asked me twice that year if I knew anybody looking for work. Once in April at the co-op. Once in September at the Sanborn sale barn.
“Somebody who can run a combine,” he’d said. “And won’t get it stuck in the first wet spot.”
He was already out in his machine shed when I pulled in. Six-thirty in the morning. Coffee in a thermos cup. He was looking at his combine, an older Case IH, like it had personally insulted him.
He saw my truck. He watched me get out.
He didn’t say anything for a minute. He’d heard. Of course he’d heard. In O’Brien County, news travels faster than a prairie fire.
“Mark,” he said.
“Arlen.”
“You still looking for somebody?” I asked.
He looked at me for a long moment.
“Twenty-four an hour,” he said. “Same as I’d pay anybody. Health insurance through the co-op plan. You start now if you want.”
“I want,” I said.
He nodded once. Then he handed me his coffee cup.
“Header’s loose on the left side,” he said. “Been rattling since Monday. You want to take a look at it before we go?”
I fixed the header. Two loose bolts and a worn bushing. It took twenty minutes.
Arlen watched me the whole time from a five-gallon bucket he’d turned upside down to sit on. When I was done, he climbed slowly to his feet.
“Dale always said you were the best mechanic in the county,” he said. “Better than him.”
I didn’t know Dad said that. He never said it to me.
We ran corn that whole day.
Arlen’s corn was good. Two-twenty an acre on the yield monitor. I ran the combine. Arlen ran the grain cart, slowly, carefully, his bad knee propped on a pillow he’d duct-taped to the floor of the tractor cab.
We didn’t talk much. We didn’t need to. Farming with somebody is like dancing with somebody. You learn their rhythm, and after that, words just get in the way.
Part Seven: The Chair by the Window
That first night, Marcy set a plate for me at their harvest table.
Their kitchen was small and warm, with yellow curtains and a cuckoo clock that didn’t cuckoo anymore. The table was round. Four chairs. Marcy set three places.
Pork chops, fried in a cast-iron skillet. Sweet corn she’d cut off the cob and frozen in August. Mashed potatoes with real butter. And a pan of scotcheroos, those peanut butter and chocolate bars every church lady in Iowa knows how to make.
She didn’t ask me a single question.
Not about Elaine. Not about the will. Not about Brad and Kyle in Phoenix.
She just pointed to one of the chairs.
“You’ll want the chair by the window,” she said.
I sat down in it. I looked out the window.
From that chair, you could see across Arlen’s stubble field, past the fence line, past the shelterbelt, to Dad’s beans a mile west. A hundred and sixty acres, golden brown in the last light. Ready. Waiting.
I looked at them for a long time.
Marcy put a pork chop on my plate.
“Eat,” she said.
I ate.
Part Eight: Rain
Then it rained.
It started Thursday afternoon. A cold, gray rain blowing in from the northwest. The weatherman on KTIV said it would clear by Friday.
It didn’t clear by Friday. It rained all day Friday. And all day Saturday.
By Sunday morning, the rain gauge on Arlen’s porch post said almost two inches.
Here’s what you need to understand about soybeans.
When beans are ready, the pods are dry and brittle. The beans inside rattle when you shake the plant. That’s when you harvest them. That’s when they’re at their best.
But if dry beans get wet, the pods soften. Then they dry again. Then they get wet again. Every time that happens, the pods get weaker. Eventually, they split open on their own. The beans fall on the ground.
Farmers call it shatter. Once a bean hits the dirt, it’s gone. You can’t pick it up. You can’t get it back.
Every morning, I drove past Dad’s beans on my way to Arlen’s.
I’d slow down at the edge of the field. I’d look out the window. I could see the plants going down. Lodged over from the wind and the wet. The pods starting to gape.
Every one of those beans had my hands in them.
I’d planted them in May. I’d sprayed them in June. I’d walked those rows in July looking for aphids. I’d scouted them for white mold in August. I’d watched them turn gold in September, like I had every year since I was nineteen.
Deb Kruse called me on Monday night.
“Mark,” she said. “I thought you should know.”
“Know what?”
“Elaine called Phoenix,” Deb said. “Tuesday after you left. She called Brad first.”
“And?”
“Brad said he couldn’t get off work,” Deb said. “He said she should hire somebody. He said that’s what money’s for.”
“And Kyle?” I asked.
“Kyle never called back,” Deb said. “She left three messages.”
I didn’t say anything.
“She called Gene Hartwig too,” Deb said. “The custom guy. He’s booked solid until the second week of November. Some big operation over by Spencer.”
“November,” I said.
“November,” Deb said. “Those beans won’t last until November, Mark. You know that.”
“What about the crew?” I asked. “Ron? Tom?”
Deb was quiet for a second.
“Ron came over Saturday,” she said. “He sat in the combine for twenty minutes. He couldn’t figure out the monitor. He’s never run it. None of us have. You always ran it. Dale always ran it before you.”
She sighed.
“Elaine tried too,” she said. “Sunday afternoon. I saw her climb up in the cab. She was up there almost an hour. She never started it.”
