The Row She Planted on Her Own Ground

I Called My Girl

I called Shelby the next morning before Harold was even off the phone with the elevator about the new-crop bids.

“I need you here Saturday the tenth,” I said. “Early. Five thirty in the morning. Wear your work clothes and bring your gloves.”

“For what, Mom? Is everything okay? Is it Dad’s heart again?”

“Everything’s fine. Your father’s fine. We’re putting corn in the river piece.”

There was a little silence on the line. Shelby knows our operation inside and out.

She knew the boys would be rolling the big sixteen-row on the home place that week, and she knew we do not run two planters.

“You want me on the grain cart?” she said. “There’s no cart on planting, Mom. Did you mean harvest?”

“I don’t want you to run anything but the planter,” I said.

“You’re putting the river piece in. The whole sixty, start to finish, by yourself.

It’s my ground, Shelby. Your grandpa’s ground.

He left it to me, and I’m giving you the planting of it.”

She did not say anything for a few seconds. When she did, her voice had gone careful and small, like she was afraid to want it out loud.

“Dad’s planter?” she said. “He’ll have a fit.”

“The green eight-thirty. I already talked to it, and it doesn’t mind a bit.”

That got a little laugh out of her, which is what I was after. “The ground is mine, honey.

Your grandpa left it to me in ’94, in my name, nobody else’s. Nobody on this earth has to say yes to this but me, and I am saying yes. You come Saturday.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, Mom. I’ll be there.”

I heard her let a long breath out through the phone. Thirty-four years old, a husband and a mortgage and a life of her own, and I heard my little girl set down something heavy she had been carrying since she pushed that ham to the side of her plate.

“Mom,” she said. “Does Dad know yet?”

“He will by Saturday,” I said. “You let me handle your father.”