The Tractor at the Church Door

What Ben did

He didn’t say it loud. He said it the way you say something to someone you love when you’re about to disappoint them and you want them to know you still love them while you do it.

“Mom,” he said. “She told you in July. She told you it was the one thing she wanted.”

Susan opened her mouth, and nothing came out.

“I should have said so last night,” Ben said. “I’m sorry I didn’t. I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of everybody. But I’m going home with my wife.”

Then he turned around, came down the rest of the steps, and walked over to the 60. He looked at me and said, “Wayne, is there room?”

“There’s a drawbar,” I said. “Stand on it behind me, keep your feet wide, and hold on to the back of the seat. Same as my dad used to.”

So he did. He climbed up on the drawbar in his navy suit and his good shoes, and he took hold of the back of the seat with both hands, and he leaned forward and kissed the top of Katie’s head.

The steps erupted. I don’t know who started it. Gordy Hanson, probably.

People were cheering and laughing and throwing what was left of their birdseed at us, and the photographer was running back and forth across the sidewalk trying to get all of it.

I looked back up at Susan. I’ll be honest. Some part of me, the small part, wanted to see her stand up there and take it.

I’m not proud of that. I’m only telling it so you know I’m no saint.

But she didn’t stand there and take it. She came down the steps.

Susan’s reason

She came down slowly, holding the railing, in her good heels. People moved aside for her.

She walked up to the tractor and stood beside the big back wheel, and she looked up at the three of us.

Her eyes were wet. “I need to tell you something,” she said, to me. “Before you go. I owe you that.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Susan,” I said. And I meant it, or I was trying to.

“I do,” she said. “When Greg and I got married, I was a girl from Hutchinson. My dad sold seed corn. Greg’s parents lived on Lake Minnetonka, and they had a lot of friends with a lot of money.”

Greg had come down the steps behind her. He put his hand on her back. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t take it away either.

“My father drove us away from the church in his grain truck,” Susan said. “He washed it and put streamers on it. He was so proud. And I heard Greg’s mother’s friends laughing about it at the reception. Somebody called it a hillbilly wedding.”