The Five Dollar Bill at the Co-op

Dale shut the combine down at the end of a round and climbed down. He looked at the food on the tailgate, then at his wife and his daughter. He took his cap off.

“Katie,” he said.

“Dad.”

That was all either one of them said. But Katie handed him a sandwich first, before anybody else, and he took it, and that was a conversation too.

Owen came down the ladder backwards the way Dale had shown him. He was covered in dust from his hair to his boots and grinning so hard his face looked like it might crack.

“Mom,” he said. “Grandpa let me run the auger. And I watched the yield monitor. And we did a whole round without stopping. And Grandpa says I’m good luck because nothing’s broke down.”

Katie pulled him against her and didn’t say a word. She just held on to him with her eyes closed, dust and all, while he kept talking into her coat about bushels per acre.

We ate on the tailgate with the sun going low and orange over the stubble. Jan sat on a bucket. Dale sat on the step of the truck with his sandwich and didn’t say much. He kept looking at Owen. Every so often he’d shake his head a little, like a man adding something up and not liking the first answer he got.

After supper Dale stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans.

“One more load before dark,” he said. “Owen, you ride the truck with me this time. Your dad’s done his share.”

They ran one more round with Owen in the buddy seat and topped off the truck, and Dale parked the combine at the end of the rows. Then Dale and Owen drove that load to the co-op together, the two of them in the red cab. Katie and I followed in the pickup, and Jan went home to do dishes.

The sun went down while we were in line. The sky went pink and then gray-blue, and the lights came on over the stackers, and the corn coming off the belts turned from gold to white under them.

By the time they rolled onto the scale it was nearly dark. I saw Owen hop down and walk to the scale house window with Dale. The girl handed the ticket out, and Dale took a pen out of his coat and wrote something on the back of it, leaning on the window ledge.

He didn’t give it to Owen there. He put it in his pocket with the five dollars.

We all went back to Dale’s house after. It was after eight. Jan had pie, because there is always pie at Jan’s, and Owen fell asleep at the kitchen table with his head on his arms before he got two bites in.

Dale sat across from him for a while, just watching him breathe. Then he got up and went to his coat on the hook by the door and came back with the scale ticket.

He set it on the table next to Owen’s arm, face down, so the back showed. In his square pencil printing, the same printing I’ve seen on twelve years of Christmas cards, it said:

First load hauled with my partner.

Katie put her hand over her mouth. Jan turned around to the sink and ran water she didn’t need.

Dale looked at it for a second. Then he reached back into his chest pocket and took out the five dollar bill and set it on top of the ticket and slid them both a little closer to Owen’s hand.