The Sunflowers on Grandpa’s Twenty Acres

Ben Asks

It was Ben who finally asked her. I want that understood. He did not ask me to do it, and he did not hide behind me. He drove out to the field on a Saturday morning in early March, when he knew she would be there.

I went with him. Sam stayed with my mother. We parked on the blacktop and walked to the gate, and Tiffany was there with a bucket of grain, and Biscuit was nosing her pocket for a treat.

“Tiff,” Ben said. “I need to talk to you about the horses.”

She turned around. I saw her face change. She knew. I think she had known for a long time this day was coming.

“Okay,” she said.

“It’s been two years,” Ben said. He said it plain and kind, the way he says everything. “We love having you out here. Addie loves it. But we’re paying for a lot of it, and we’re trying to save for the house.”

“I know,” she said.

“So here’s what I’m asking,” Ben said. “A hundred and fifty a month for all four. That’s less than half what anybody else in the county would charge you for one. Or, if you can’t do that, we pick a date, and you find another place by then. Either one is fine.”

Tiffany did not say anything for a long time. Biscuit pushed his nose against her shoulder. She put her hand on his neck.

“A hundred and fifty,” she said finally. “From my own brother.”

“For all four,” Ben said. “Tiff, pasture board in this county runs two fifty a head. I checked.”

“I know what it runs,” she said. Her voice had gone flat and hard. “I’ve been doing this since I was twelve. I know exactly what it runs.”

She turned around and dumped the grain in the trough and walked to her car. She did not say goodbye. She drove off down the blacktop faster than she should have.

Ben stood at the gate with his hands on the top rail. He did not say anything. After a while, Biscuit came over and put his nose in Ben’s hand, and Ben scratched him behind the ears.

“That went well,” Ben said.