The Grain Truck Past My Father’s Field

The payroll sheet was lying on the kitchen table under the sugar bowl, and I would not have seen it if I had not reached for the sugar.

It was the Sunday before harvest. Mom had made pot roast, the way she does every Sunday from the first week of October until the last bean is in the bin, because she says a family that is about to work sixteen-hour days ought to eat one real meal together first.

The sheet was the kind Mom prints off the farm accounting program. A name, a rate, a start date. The name was Cody Riedel. The rate was $22.00 an hour. The start date was Monday.

I set the sugar bowl back down exactly where it had been. I put sugar in my coffee. I stirred it longer than coffee needs to be stirred.

My little brother was across the table, cutting up meat for his wife’s plate because she had the baby on her lap. My kids were on the porch swing with their cousins. Dad was at the head of the table with his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead and his seed cap hung on the back of his chair, where it always hung during meals.

“Dad,” I said. “Can I ask you something about this?” I turned the sheet around so he could see it. I kept my voice even. I had been practicing an even voice for fourteen years without knowing it.

Dad looked at the paper, then at Mom, then at me. Mom had stopped moving at the stove. “Cody’s on payroll this year,” he said. “Your mother set it up.”

“I can see that.”

“Twenty-two is what the co-op pays a seasonal driver. I checked. I’m not going to pay my own boy less than a stranger gets.” I nodded. That part was fair. That part was more than fair. That part was what I had been waiting fourteen years for somebody in that kitchen to say.

“So what about me?” I asked.