The Last Day on the Potato Digger

The second week

Tuesday morning Bridger got up at six without me calling him. I heard his alarm and then I heard the floor in the hall creak and the bathroom fan come on.

I made him eggs and toast and packed two sandwiches and a bag of chips. He ate standing up at the counter, looking at his phone, and did not mention the check.

“You going back?” I asked him. It was a stupid question. He had his gloves already shoved in his back pocket.

“I told Arlo I’d finish the break,” he said. “He’s short two kids this year. One of the Jensen boys broke his wrist at football.”

“You know you don’t have to.”

He shrugged. “I said I would.”

Then he went out to the road where the Hansens’ hired man picked up the town kids in a crew-cab pickup.

I watched him climb in the back seat, all elbows and knees, and I went back in the house and cried into the dish towel.

That week I did not sleep much. I kept thinking about that sheet of notebook paper and the line he crossed out. I kept thinking about Lance turning his face to the wall.

I could not undo the first check. That was gone. But there was another one coming, the second week’s pay, and Lance had already said at supper Wednesday, “Same deal with the next one, bud,” like he was talking about the weather.

Bridger had just nodded. And I had sat there and passed the corn.

The phone call

Thursday night I called Arlo Hansen. I had known Arlo and Marjean my whole life the way you know people in Bingham County, from church and Spud Day and the school board meetings.

Arlo is sixty-six. He grows nine hundred acres of russets out past the canal, the same ground his dad farmed and his grandpa before that. He does not waste words on the phone or anywhere else.

“Michelle,” he said. “Your boy’s a good hand. Best picker I’ve got on that second digger.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “Arlo, are you still short on the platform?”

“Two kids short,” he said. “Why?”

“Is there room for one more on Saturday?”

There was a long pause. I could hear the television on in the background, and Marjean asking him who it was.

“You?” he said.

“Me.”

“You drive bus.”

“Not this week. On the break we put in shop days for the state bus inspections. I can take a vacation day for Saturday.”

He did not ask me why. He just said, “Seventeen an hour. Be at the shop by seven. Bring gloves.”

“Arlo, I need to ask you one more thing.”

“Go ahead.”

I told him. I told him I wanted my check for the day made out to Bridger.

And I wanted Bridger’s check for the second week made out to Bridger too, and handed to him, not mailed and not left at the house.

There was another long pause.

“The first one was made out to him,” Arlo said slowly.

“I know it was.”

He was quiet for a second. I think he worked it out. Arlo has known Lance since Lance was a kid himself, hauling hay for a dairy out by Firth.

“All right,” he said. “Both to Bridger. I’ll hand them to him myself at the supper Saturday night.”

“Thank you, Arlo.”

“Michelle,” he said. “Wear a long sleeve. The vines’ll tear your arms up.”