The Last Harvest in the Combine Cab

Darrell

I called Darrell Mertens that afternoon from the phone on the kitchen wall, with the cord stretched across to the window. Arlene went into the other room.

“Darrell, I’ve got something to ask you, and I know the papers are signed, and I’d understand if you said no.”

“Is this about the Home Eighty?”

I stopped. “How did you know?”

“I farm next to you, Gust. I’ve watched that boy in your combine all fall.” I could hear a milking pump going behind him, and the radio. “What are you asking?”

“I want to take the Home Eighty out of the sale. The house, the shed, the bins, and the seventy acres tillable. The North One Sixty stays with you.”

He was quiet a moment. “It’s the one sixty I wanted anyhow. It joins my ground. My attorney can draw it up Monday.” Then he said, “If the boy keeps at it, I’ll custom farm the tillable for the family till he’s out of school. Plant, spray, combine. He can ride with me.”

I said I would have to talk to Linda and Craig about that. He said to take my time. He had the cows to do.

What we worked out

Craig and Linda came back on Wednesday evening with the envelope. Craig had written a column of figures on the back of it in his lineman’s block print, and he had moved the payment up a little from what I had written. We argued about that for about ten minutes, and then I took the pen and split the difference.

The North One Sixty would still sell to Darrell, at the same price per acre we had agreed in August, re-figured for the one hundred sixty acres alone. That money was a relief, and I will not pretend otherwise. It paid for the knee and what the knee would need next. It meant Arlene and I could stay in the house without worry.

The Home Eighty would go to Linda and Craig on contract. Darrell would farm the seventy tillable acres on a custom basis until Tyler was out of high school. Tyler would work for him every summer and every fall, running whatever Darrell put him on. Craig would keep his job with the co-op. Linda would keep her shifts. Nobody was going to quit anything.

And Tyler is fifteen. Linda said that out loud, more than once. He might change his mind in two years or in twenty. We agreed that if he did, the land would find another way, and we said that plainly at the table and then said no more about it.

The last thing was the combine. The auction bill was already printed, and lot 41 was already on page two. The auctioneer, a fellow named Larry I have known thirty years, phoned to ask whether I wanted it pulled.

“Pull it,” I said.

“You sure? It’ll bring good money.”

“I know what it’ll bring. Pull it. And the grain cart, and the red tractor.”

“Gust, you selling the farm or not?”

“The North One Sixty,” I said. “Not the rest.”

I told Larry he could keep the plow. I never liked the plow.