The Grain Truck Past My Father’s Field

The phone call

I called Marv at six the next morning, because farmers are up at five and I knew he would be at his kitchen table with the radio on the markets. “Ostendorf,” he answered.

“Marv, it’s Kelsey Riedel. Norm’s girl.”

“Well, good morning, Kelsey.” I could hear the radio behind him, a man reading off the Omaha cash prices. “What can I do for you?”

“I heard Dale left you.”

There was a pause on the line, and the radio filled it. “He did,” Marv said.

“I’ll drive for you. If you’ll have me. I’ve hauled for Dad fourteen falls. I can back under any auger in the county.”

Another pause, longer. “Does your dad know you’re calling me?”

“No, sir.”

“Does he need you?”

I thought about how to say it honestly. “He’s put Cody on payroll this year. At twenty-two an hour. He told me last night that he’s not putting me on.”

Marv did not say anything for a while. The man on the radio moved on to the weather.

“Well,” Marv said finally. “I pay twenty-two. Cash at the end of every week, and a W-2 at the end of the year, because my wife does the books and she’d skin me otherwise. I start beans Tuesday on the quarter by the cemetery. You’ll go to the co-op in town, same as your dad.”

“I know the co-op.”

“I expect you do.” He cleared his throat. “Kelsey, I’ve known your father fifty years. He’s a good man. He’s a stubborn man. Those aren’t the same thing, and he’s both.”

“I know, Marv.”

“All right then. Truck’s in the shed. Keys are in it. Come at seven.”

The section road

On Tuesday morning I left the house at a quarter to seven. Aaron had already gone to school. Mom had the kids, because I had called her on Monday night and told her what I was doing.

She had been quiet on the phone a long time. “I’ll take the kids,” she said finally. “Bring them by at six-thirty. I’ll make them pancakes.”

“Are you mad?”

“Not at you,” she said, and hung up before I could ask who.

Marv’s International was a 2004, red, tandem axle, twenty-two-foot box with a hydraulic tarp that actually worked. Marv met me in the shed in his chore coat and walked me around it. He showed me the hoist, the gate, the PTO, the spot on the left mirror where the bracket was loose.

“She pulls a little right when she’s loaded,” he said. “Brakes are new. Fuel’s full. Bring her back full.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. He looked at me over his glasses. “Your dad’s starting his beans this morning too. The eighty west of the creek.”

“I know.”

“You’ll have to go right past him to get to my quarter.”

“I know, Marv.”

He nodded slowly and handed me a thermos his wife had filled. “Just making sure you knew.”