The Seat I Gave Miss Ada

The Walk Up

I set the twine down on a hay bale. I walked over, and my voice came out steadier than I felt inside.

“Miss Ada,” I said. “They are holding your seat. Come on.”

Megan’s head turned then. “Gwen,” she said, low. It was the warning sister voice I have known my whole life. “There is no room.”

“There is my room,” I said.

I put my hand under Ada’s elbow. She felt like a bird through the coat, all light hollow bone.

I could feel the little tremor that is always in her hands now. Under it I could feel her pride trying to decide whether to let me do this.

“Gwen, honey, I am fine to wait,” she said.

“I know you are,” I said. “You are the only one here who could wait all day and never complain. That is exactly why you are not going to wait.”

I kept my voice soft so it would not become a scene in front of the children.

“Walt drove this wagon,” I said. “You are not catching the next one.”

Her chin went down when I said Walt. Just a little. The way a chin goes when you touch a bruise that is also precious.

I walked her back to the iron step. I put her near hand on the rail and my hand under her.

“Up you go,” I said.

She went up light as paper. I steadied her the whole way onto the front bench beside Harlan.

The good bench. The seat with the back rail. The seat I had been going to ride in myself.

Carl’s mother slid over to make room without quite knowing why she was doing it.

Carl’s father tipped his cap to Ada. He is from Sioux Falls, and his mother raised him right, even if he did not know whose seat he was sitting in.

“That is my seat she has got,” I told Harlan. “Roll when you are ready.”

Beside The Wheel

“Where are you riding?” Harlan asked me.

“I am walking,” I said.

He looked at me a second. Then he nodded, slow, the way an old man nods when a thing has been put back the way it belongs.

He gathered up the lines in both hands.

Megan was staring at me. I will not pretend there was nothing hard in her face.

There is a whole lifetime between two sisters, and a lot of it was in that look. The part that says, you are making me look like something in front of company.

I did not hold her eyes long. I went to the front wheel, to Ada’s side of the wagon.

I put my hand on the rail next to her knee.

“You tell Harlan if he drives too fast,” I said to her.

Ada laughed. It came out of her like it had surprised her on the way up.

“Walt drove too fast once,” she said. “Fall of fifty-nine. Tipped a whole load of us into the ditch by the Kruger place. Nobody hurt but the pie.”