If I didn’t show at eight, I lost the $1,000; no-shows forfeit the fee. The next open test date was three weeks out, past the end of April, and Rick had been clear about April.
I stood in my kitchen for about one full minute. Then I went down the hall and woke up Mira first.
She is ten, and she understands more than she should. She sat up in bed with her hair sticking out on one side and looked at my face and said, “Grandma’s not coming, is she?”
“No, honey. Grandma’s keeping Aunt Kim’s dogs.”
“Are we coming with you?”
“All three of you,” I said. “I need you to be my sergeant today. Can you be my sergeant?”
She nodded, and she got out of bed, and she went and woke up her brother without being asked.
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Cal is seven, and Cal woke up talking. He wanted to know if he could ride in the big truck. He wanted to know if he could honk the big horn.
“No riding, no honking, and I don’t know about donuts,” I said. “You are going to sit very still in a building and be very good.”
“For how long?”
“For as long as it takes your mama to pass.”
Lula did not wake up at all, mostly. I dressed her in two layers while she slept on my shoulder, hugging her stuffed rabbit, and she was out cold again before we hit the interstate.
It was barely light when we pulled out, the kind of April morning in eastern South Dakota where winter has not decided whether it is finished with you yet.
Mira sat up front and quizzed me from my study book, which she had found in the car door. She did not know what half the words meant. She read them carefully anyway.
“What is the purpose of the tractor protection valve?” she read.
“To keep air in the tractor if the trailer breaks away or has a bad leak,” I said.
She checked the answer in the back. “Correct,” she said, very seriously. Cal clapped from the back seat. Lula slept.
The range sits out on the open prairie where the land goes flat in every direction. One low metal building with a big window, and behind it a wide paved lot with rows of orange cones.
A red tractor sat at the far end, hooked to a long silver trailer, fifty-three feet of it, the same college rig I had trained on every Saturday since March.
It was a cold gray morning, and the cold came right through the windshield. I unbuckled Lula and carried her inside on my hip, with Mira and Cal behind me.
The office manager was a woman named Mrs. Ostby, in her fifties, with a long cardigan and reading glasses she only wore at her desk. I had met her twice, signing paperwork.
She looked at the three kids, and then she looked at me, and I watched her take in the whole situation in about two seconds.
“Who’s watching them?” she asked. Not mean. Just a question.
“Nobody,” I said, and I could hear my voice wobble. “I’m sorry. My sitter fell through at quarter to six. I couldn’t lose the slot.”
Mrs. Ostby pulled her cardigan tight across her chest and stood up from her desk.
“I am,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”