The Lane I Cut Around My Brother’s Gate

The Phone Calls

Monday after my morning route, I sat in the bus barn office and made calls on my lunch.

The first was to the county highway superintendent, a man named Ron Stiles who has run the county roads as long as I have been alive. You cannot just cut a new drive onto a county road in Nebraska. You need a permit for the access and a culvert in the ditch.

Ron drove out that afternoon. He walked the ditch where Dad’s stakes said the lane would meet the road. He looked at the fall of the ground and the way the water ran in a thaw.

“You’ll want an eighteen inch culvert, twenty four foot long,” he said. “Set it a little low on the uphill end. I’ll sign off once I see it in.” He wrote the permit on the hood of his pickup and charged me fifteen dollars.

The second call was to the rental yard in Hastings. They had a small crawler dozer, a Cat D3 with a six way blade, on a weekend rate. Friday noon to Monday morning, twelve hundred dollars, plus delivery.

The third call was to Walt Kuhl. Walt is seventy, a deacon at our church, and he and his son run the sand and gravel pit by the river south of town. I asked him what he would charge me for road rock, delivered.

He asked how much. I told him a quarter mile, twelve feet wide, three or four inches deep.

“That’s thirteen, fourteen loads,” Walt said. “What’s it for?”

I told him. I kept it short and I did not say anything mean about Kurt, because Walt has known Kurt since he was in diapers too.

Walt was quiet on the line a while. “Rock’s my cost,” he said. “Fourteen dollars a ton. Don’t argue with me. You find the trucks, or I will.”

“I can’t ask you to find trucks, Walt.”

“You didn’t ask,” he said, and hung up.

April First

On April first, I drove my morning route and came back to the gate at a quarter after eight. Kurt’s pickup was at the shed. I got down and walked over.

He was greasing the new planter. It sat in front of the shed, red and enormous, twelve row units in a straight line. I had never seen it up close. It looked like it cost more than my house.

“Kurt,” I said.

He wiped his hands on a rag and stood up. He looked tired. He had not shaved, and there was a crease between his eyes that Dad used to get in a dry July.

I held out two twenties and a ten. “April,” I said.

He looked at the money a second. I think he had expected me to fight. He had probably rehearsed it, the ruts and the gravel and the bus. He took the bills and folded them into his shirt pocket.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Sure,” I said, and walked back to the bus.

Mike asked me that night why I paid him at all.

“Because I said I’d think about it, and I thought about it,” I said. “And because I want to come through his gate one more time without either of us yelling.”