The Girl Who Carried the Farm Sign

The night before

That night I could not sleep, so I went out to the garage at midnight and sat in the lawn chair next to the card table where Lily had sanded the sign.

I said a prayer that was mostly just the word please.

I was not trying to shame my mother. I want to be honest about that, because I know how it might look.

If I had wanted to shame her, I could have called half the women in her church circle that night and told them all what she said.

I didn’t call anybody. I only wanted my daughter to walk down Main Street with her head up.

I wanted her to know she was part of the hundred years whether anybody wrote her on a list or not.

Ben came out at one in the morning in his socks and sat on the step. “You okay?”

“I’m taking the sign off the wagon tomorrow,” I said. “Lily and I are carrying it. Out front. On foot.”

He was quiet a while. Then he said, “Okay. I’ll keep the tractor at a walk. You set the pace. If she gets tired, you just slow down, and I’ll slow down behind you.”

I asked him if he thought it was spiteful. He thought about it, honestly, the way he thinks about everything.

“No,” he said. “Spiteful would be saying something. You’re not saying anything. You’re just carrying a sign your family painted.”

Parade morning

Saturday came up hot and bright, the kind of August morning when the corn is tasseled and the air smells like dust and sweet corn and somebody’s fryer already going at the Lions stand.

The parade lined up on the old school lot at nine-thirty. There were fire trucks from three towns, the high school marching band in their black and gold, the dairy princess candidates on a hay rack, and a dozen restored tractors from the antique club.

Ben pulled up with Dad’s green tractor and the hay wagon, straw piled at the corners and bunting along every rail.

It looked better than I had pictured, and I had pictured it for two weeks straight.

Mom and Dad came in their own pickup. Dad had on a pressed shirt and his good seed cap, and he was grinning like a boy at the circus.

Mom had a plate of bars wrapped in foil for the committee table. She always brings bars.

Lily stood next to me in a white t-shirt and her good jeans, with her long blonde braid down her back.