Part Six: Dustin

On the eighteenth day after Jake died, I heard a sound outside.

It was the tractor.

I went to the window.

Dustin was in the barn. He’d pulled the old Ford out into the yard. He had the hood up. He was working on the hydraulic hose.

The hydraulic hose on the tractor had been leaking since March. Jake kept meaning to fix it. He’d bought the new hose at Tractor Supply. It was sitting on the workbench in the barn in its package.

He never got to it.

I walked out to the barn in my bathrobe.

Dustin looked up. He had grease on his hands and his face.

“Hey, April,” he said.

“Dusty,” I said. “What are you doing?”

He looked at the tractor.

“Hay’s ready,” he said. “Been ready a week. If we don’t cut it soon, it’ll be too stemmy.”

He wiped his hands on a rag.

“Jake would’ve been out here by now,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

I stood in the barn door in my bathrobe and Jake’s T-shirt and cried.

Dustin didn’t say anything either. He just went back to work on the hose.

When he was done, he pulled the tractor around to the mower.

“I’ll cut tomorrow after work,” he said. “If that’s okay.”

Part Seven: The Summer

That’s how the summer went.

Dustin came out every evening after work.

His own truck had died at the start of summer. An old Ford Ranger with three hundred thousand miles. The transmission went out on the highway in early June. He couldn’t afford to fix it.

So he got rides.

Most evenings, a buddy from the tire shop dropped him off at the end of our road. A kid named Marcus with a loud Honda Civic.

Sometimes his dad drove him, before Ron got too tired.

Twice, when nobody could give him a ride, he walked.

Nine miles from his trailer in Clarksville to the edge of town. Then he hitched a ride from a guy in a feed truck to the Adams exit on Highway 41.

Then he walked the last mile.

Down our gravel road. In the July heat. In his work boots and his tire shop shirt.

He fixed the hydraulic hose Jake never got to.

He changed the oil on the tractor. He sharpened the mower blades. He replaced the knotter on the baler that kept missing strings.

He raked. I baled. We swapped.

I’d drive the tractor and he’d stack. Then he’d drive and I’d stack. We’d work until the sun went down. Then we’d sit on the hay wagon in the dark and drink sweet tea out of mason jars.

We didn’t talk much.

Sometimes he’d say something about Jake. A story from when they were kids. The time Jake jumped off the barn roof with an umbrella because he thought he could fly. The time Jake drove their dad’s truck into the creek.

Sometimes I’d laugh.

Sometimes I’d cry.

He’d just sit there either way.

He never once asked for a thing.

Not gas money. Not a meal. Not a ride.

When I tried to pay him, he looked at me like I’d slapped him.

“April,” he said. “It’s Jake’s hay.”