The Farmall That Plowed Us to Town

I prayed the whole way. Not big prayers. Thank you, Lord, for this tractor. Thank you for Gene’s father, who bought it. Thank you for Gene, who kept it running when everybody told him to sell it for parts.

Thank you for chains. Keep him breathing. Keep him breathing.

At the creek bridge I lifted the blade a little, like he said, and went over that deck smooth as Sunday. I looked back and Gene was laughing in the pickup. He did not have the air to spare for it, and he laughed anyway.

That was a little past eleven. Two miles. Halfway. The tank on his lap had maybe three hours in it.

I came up the long rise past the Lutheran cemetery, where Gene’s folks are buried, and at the top I saw the plow.

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You can see a county plow a long way off in that country. A big yellow tandem truck with the main blade on the front and the wing sticking out on the right. Its amber lights were going around and around, small and bright in all that white.

It was coming north. Up our road. Straight at us.

The road was one blade wide. There was nowhere for either of us to go.

I did not stop. I think if I had stopped, I would have started shaking and not been able to start again. I kept biting at the snow, and the plow kept coming, throwing a long white wave off its wing.

The closer it got, the bigger it got, until I could read the number on the door. It was Trent’s truck. I would have known it anyway.

He stopped maybe thirty feet from my blade. I pulled the throttle back and the Farmall settled to an idle. For a minute neither of us moved.

Then he opened his door and climbed down.

He waded toward me through snow he had not plowed, up to his knees, and stopped by my front tire. My face was wrapped to the eyes, but he knew me. I had taught him “Jesus Loves Me” with one finger.

“Aunt Marlene,” he said. “What are you doing?”

I pulled the scarf down off my mouth. It had frozen stiff and it hurt my lips.

“Going to town,” I said.

“On this?”

“It’s what we had.”

He started to say something. He had his hand up, like he was about to explain something to me, and then his eyes went past me, down the road to the pickup sitting in my track.

I turned and looked where he was looking. You could see Gene’s gray face through the windshield. You could see the clear tube going up over his ears. And on the seat beside him, buckled in, the green tank.

When I turned back around, Trent’s face was white. Not cold white. White like paper, like somebody had pulled a plug in him and let all the blood run out.

“Is that Uncle Gene?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Is he on oxygen?”

“Since September.”

“Nobody told me.” His voice came out high, like a boy’s. “Aunt Marlene, I swear nobody told me that.”