Forty Plates on the Tailgate

What I Told Her

I did not answer right away. I looked out at the people sitting in the stubble, eating in the last of the light.

I looked at Elmer on the bucket with his plate on his knees, and Dan climbing down from the combine, and the two little girls sharing a bar.

“You get up early,” I said finally. “You start the roast before the dew is off. You peel while the markets are on. You learn which field they’ll be in by the radio. And you just do it again the next day.”

She shook her head. “But why? I mean, why not sandwiches? Why not pizza from town?”

“Some nights it is sandwiches,” I said. “When we’re short on time. Nobody minds. But it isn’t really about the food, Kristin.”

She waited.

“When I hand a plate up into that cab,” I said, “I see who’s tired. I see whose hands are shaking, who’s been in the seat fourteen hours and needs to be told to go home. I hear whose wife is sick and whose kid made the football team. I hear what the beans are making, and whether the dryer’s acting up.”

I nodded toward Elmer. “Elmer’s had two heart attacks. When I take his plate out, I look at his color. If it’s bad, I tell Dan, and Dan finds a reason to send him home early so Elmer doesn’t have to admit he needs to go.”

Kristin had stopped eating. She was looking at Elmer too.

“The suppers aren’t the extra part,” I said. “They’re part of the work. They’re how a harvest holds together. Joan knew that. She taught it to me with a paring knife the first fall I was married.”

For a while Kristin did not say anything. The tractor down the road had reached the van. I could hear the chain clank and the engine pull.

“I didn’t know,” she said finally. Her voice was small. “I didn’t know any of that. I thought it was just, you know. Food. I grew up where supper came in a box with a coupon on the lid.”

“I know.”

“I wanted it to look nice,” she said. “I wanted the pictures for the website. Eric’s family has been out here a hundred years, and I’ve been here six months, and I wanted to bring something. I wanted to be good at something here.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, carefully, the way you do when you are wearing mascara and you are not used to crying in a field.

“I made you feel small,” she said. “In front of everyone. I’m sorry, Julie.”