One of them took his cap off and laughed out loud. “Listen to her go,” he said. “That beats my boy, and he’s thirty.”
Walt Jorgenson looked down at that ten year old girl who had just reported his own ground back to him, number for number, better than most grown men could have.
His old face did a thing I will not forget.
“Marlene,” Walt said, still looking at Ava, “that is the best yield report I have had off that eighty in forty years. And I have heard it from some good farmers.”
He was quiet a second. “Where’d you learn the monitor, young lady?”
“My grandma taught me,” Ava said. “In the buddy seat. She said it’s the smartest job in the cab.”
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I did not look at Troy. I did not have to. I could feel him there, ten feet away, holding his weigh ticket.
I want to tell you I felt triumph, but I did not. I felt sorry, a little, and I felt hopeful, and I held still and let the old man and the girl have their moment.
Walt finally looked up from Ava, over to Troy. And here is the thing about Walt. He did not know a thing about that morning in the yard.
He was not making a point. He just said what an old farmer says.
“Troy,” Walt said. “You better hang onto this one. She’s got the head for it.” He nodded down at Ava. “That is the one you teach. Right there.”
Next Year
Troy drove the nephews home. I drove Ava.
She was tired the way a child gets tired after a real day, not a play day. She leaned her head on the truck window and watched the shorn fields go by in the long gold light.
Bin after bin was filling up across the county. The whole heartland was bringing the year home at once.
We passed the church where we buried Dale, and the ball field, and the Dairy Freeze that closes the first of November. Ava’s breath fogged the glass.
“Grandma,” she said, not opening her eyes. “Walt said I’ve got the head for it.”
“You do,” I said.
She was quiet a mile. Then she said the thing I had been hoping for without letting myself hope too hard.
“Next year,” Ava said, “will you teach me to drive it? Not just the monitor. The driving part too. In your machine.”
I kept my eyes on the road, because mine had gone blurry and I did not want her to see her grandma cry over a question about a combine.
“Yes,” I said. “Next year I will teach you to drive it. Dale’s seat. My machine. You and me.”
“The whole north eighty?”
“The whole north eighty.”