The Combine She Drove Home

The Numbers

He had cut about 1,170 acres for neighbors at thirty-five dollars an acre. That was $40,950.

Out of that, he owed the farm account for fuel and parts. Diesel was $5,180. Parts and filters and grease were $1,230. Call it $6,400.

Then there was the machine itself. The custom rate sheets the extension office puts out figure the machine’s share of a custom rate at somewhere around half. I didn’t take half. I took fifteen dollars an acre, and I told him it was because he was my son.

Fifteen dollars an acre on 1,170 acres was $17,550.

“That’s twenty-four thousand dollars,” he said. “Mom, I don’t have it. Most of it went to the truck.”

“I know you don’t have it,” I said. “I’m not asking for it in a lump. I’m telling you what it is. You don’t get to call it an inheritance when the payment’s still got my name on it.”

He nodded. He was looking at the floor.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said.

The Deal

There were four hundred acres left. Al Hofer’s, the Schmidts’, the Kroekers’, and the rest of Merv’s quarter. Four hundred acres at thirty-five dollars is fourteen thousand dollars.

“We’re going to finish them,” I said. “Both of us. I’m going to run the combine. You’re going to run the grain cart and the truck. And every dollar of those four hundred acres goes against what you owe this farm, until we’re square on the fuel and the parts and the payment.”

“What about the rest?” he said. “The other ten?”

“Whatever’s left after this season, you pay me over the winter at whatever you can,” I said. “But you’re going to sell that truck.”

He started to argue. I held up my hand.

“Colby. You’re twenty-seven years old and you’re drowning, and you’re trying to swim by grabbing hold of your mother’s combine. That truck is going to take you under. Sell it before it does.”

“I’ll lose money on it.”

“Yes,” I said. “You will. Your father lost money on things too. That’s not the end of the world. The end of the world is a sheriff in your driveway and Jordyn finding out from a letter.”

He sat there a long time.

“Merv said you’d make it fair,” he said finally.

“Merv’s known me a long time,” I said.

What Jordyn Said

He told her at nine that morning, at their kitchen table in town. I wasn’t there. I only know what she told me later.

She said he started with the truck and ended with the combine, and when he got to the part about telling me it was his inheritance, he couldn’t finish the sentence.

She said she was so mad she couldn’t speak. Not about the money. About him carrying it alone since July and lying to her face every night about how the freight was going.

Then she said she looked at him, sitting there in the same gray sweatshirt he’d had on in the field, with his face all broken up, and she got up and went around the table and put her arms around his neck from behind.

“We’ll sell the truck,” she told him. “I like you better in a pickup anyway.”

That girl laughs at everything I say, and she is going to keep my son out of trouble for the rest of his life.

They came out to the farm that afternoon together. Jordyn hugged me in the yard and didn’t let go for a long time. She whispered, “Thank you for going out there.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I’m still not sure I do.