The Combine I Drove for Dad

Calling the Neighbors

Denny Fox at the elevator said, “Doug, I’ll close the scale for two hours and bring my own Oliver, and I’ll call the Hemmelgarns for you, they’re on my way.”

Vince Brinkman said, “You want tractors, son, I’ll have you tractors.” And he started making his own calls before he even hung up with me.

I called the Schroeders and the Vincents and the Brinkmans and a dozen more, and every call was the same. A sleepy voice, then a quiet understanding when I said whose funeral it was and what I meant to do, and then yes. Yes. We will be there. What time does the combine roll.

Dan Vincent, whose seed my dad had given him that spring his back went out, said only one thing. He said, “Harold led me through more than one hard row, Doug. I’ll follow him up one last one.” And he hung up before his voice could break, the way farm men do.

By one in the morning I had lost count of how many had said yes. Denise sat up with me the whole time, writing names on the back of a seed-corn notepad, and when I finally put the phone down she turned the pad around so I could see it.

She had tallied them. Thirty-one tractors, give or take the ones who said they would try to call somebody else.

I did not sleep. I went out to the machine shed around four and I climbed up in that combine cab and I just sat there in the dark with my hands on the wheel where his hands had been. The seat was still set for him. He was a shorter man than me and I had to push it back, and I about could not do it, moving his seat, and I will not pretend I did not cry some in that cab in the dark.

Then I got down and I washed the whole machine with the pressure washer by the yard light, every green panel of it, until she shone. If my dad was going to lead his own funeral he was going to do it on a clean combine. He never would have stood for a dirty one.

I folded the corn head up into transport position and I checked the flashers and the slow-moving-vehicle sign on the back, the orange triangle, because if I was going to put a parade of tractors on a county road behind me I was going to do it legal and safe. My dad was a stickler for that. Lights working, triangle clean, everybody behind you accounted for.

I did not call Paulette. I will be honest about that. I did not ask her. I figured she would say no, and I had decided that this one thing was not hers to say no to.