The Hayride I Gave Our Whole Road

The Lanterns

By five thirty the light was going and the yard was filling up.

I had not pictured so many. I had pictured our road, a dozen kids, some blankets. What came up our driveway was a parade.

The Hendricksons came first, all five of them, Diane with her roaster of cider held out in front of her like an offering and Craig behind her still smelling of the combine. Their three piled out and ran straight for the wagon, where Sam was already standing guard like it was his personal property.

The Vogts came. The Ahos came, the young mother carrying the baby bundled so thick it was a loaf of bread with a face, and the four-year-old holding his dad’s one finger and staring at the tractor like it was the moon come down.

The Schultes came with their two grandkids and a thermos. The Pfaffs drove over from the county road. Mr. Dittmer walked up from the corner with his cane and a folding chair and sat himself at the end of the driveway where he could see.

Dale had the Jubilee idling, that soft four-cylinder put-put, and he had the wagon backed up to the stock ramp so the little ones could walk right on instead of being lifted. I had forked a good deep bed of loose straw onto the deck, two big round bales broken open and fluffed, and the kids went down into it like it was a snowbank.

I lit the lanterns. The four battery ones I hung on the rails, two to a side, and they threw that warm honey light up onto all those faces.

And on the front rail, up by Dale where no child sat, I lit Grandpa Lon’s kerosene lantern with a kitchen match, and the smell of it, that kerosene-and-flame smell, went right through me, because it was the smell of every Fourth of July of Dale’s childhood and it meant Lon was close.

Ella stood next to me while I lit them. She had her good flashlight and she was being my helper, counting heads, which I had asked her to do because I needed her to feel like the keeper of the ride and not the girl who got crossed off a list.

“Fourteen,” she said. Then more came. “Fifteen. Eighteen. Mom, there’s twenty-one.”

“Count them again when we stop and when we start,” I said. “That’s your whole job tonight. Nobody gets off this wagon in the dark that you didn’t count.”

She took it like a sacred trust. That girl counted children all night like a shepherd.