The Spring Grandma Rode in My Tractor

She would not take rent. I paid the taxes on the thirty acres and kept the fences up and mowed her yard all summer, and every fall I brought her a coffee can full of shelled corn for her chickens.

Ben helped when he could, and his dad lent us the big equipment. But it was my field.

I bought the seed and the fertilizer and the spray out of my own paychecks from the co-op agronomy counter in Marion.

That year I had just under eight thousand dollars in that ground. I know because I kept the receipts in a manila folder on top of the refrigerator, the same way my dad kept his.

We drove up to Grandma’s house that afternoon with the baby. I had not even been home yet. I still had the hospital bracelet on my wrist, and every step up her porch pulled at my stitches.

Grandma met us at the door. She took one look at my face and then at the field behind me, and she put both her hands over her mouth.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “Come in. Come in and sit down before you fall down.”

She knew. I could see that she knew. She sat me in my dad’s old chair by the window and took Maisie from Ben, and for a minute she just held the baby and rocked.

“Roger came by on Saturday,” she said finally. “He said he took care of your corn so you would not have to worry. He said it like he was doing you a kindness.”

“Did he say what he did with it?”

Grandma shook her head. Her hands were shaking a little, and I do not think it was age.

“I thought he meant he combined it for you,” she said. “I thought he would bring you the tickets. I did not ask. I should have asked.”

We found out the rest on Friday, from Donna Larsen, who runs the register at the café in Parker. Donna called me at home because she said somebody ought to, and nobody else was going to.

“Roger was in here Wednesday morning with the coffee men,” she said. “He told the whole counter he hauled six thousand bushels off your grandma’s place. Said it went at four dollars.”

Six thousand bushels at four dollars is twenty-four thousand dollars. I did the math standing in my kitchen with a baby on my shoulder, and I did it twice, because I wanted to be wrong.

“There is more,” Donna said. “Jenna, I am sorry. Somebody asked whether you knew, and Roger laughed and said you would not be farming with a baby now anyway.”

I thanked her and hung up. Then I sat down on the kitchen floor with my back against the cupboard, because my legs were not going to hold me, and I cried into Maisie’s blanket.

Ben came in from chores and found me there. He did not ask anything. He just sat down on the floor next to me and put his arm around both of us.

“He hauled it to Parker,” I said. “In his own name. Twenty-four thousand.”

Ben was quiet a long time. Then he stood up and went to the back door and started putting his boots on.

“Where are you going?”

“To talk to him.”

I knew Ben. He would not have hit anybody. But he would have stood in Roger’s yard and said things that could not be unsaid, and Grandma would have heard about it by supper.