The Seat I Gave Miss Ada

The Reins At The Gate

At the end of the lane there is a gate. It is a plain wire gate that somebody has to open to let the wagon into the patch.

That morning the somebody was a teenager Megan had hired for the season. No relation. Just a girl with a job and a bored look.

Harlan stopped the team a few feet short of the gate. He always does that, so the horses can blow and settle before the turn.

Then he did a thing I had never seen him do in all the years I have watched him drive.

He held the lines out sideways. He held them out to Ada.

“Take us through, Ada,” he said. “You know this gate better than I do.”

Ada looked at the lines. Her hand came up, and it was shaking more than its usual shake.

For a second I thought she would wave him off. I thought she would say she was too old, and the moment would just be a kindness an old man offered and a proud old woman could not take.

Then she took them. She took the worn leather in both her bird hands.

She sat up a full inch taller on the bench. She said, in a voice I had never once heard from her, a young voice, a voice straight out of nineteen forty-seven, “Walk on.”

Dutch and Ed walked on. Through the gate. Into the patch.

Eighty-three-year-old Ada Lindqvist was driving the team her husband used to drive. A wagon full of children sat behind her. Her neighbor walked at the wheel.

I will tell you plainly that I cried. I did not make a sound.

But it ran down my face the whole last twenty feet, and I did not wipe it, because both my hands were busy keeping the rail steady for her.

Harlan saw. Harlan looked straight ahead and let me, the way a decent man lets you.

What Megan Saw

Megan had ridden out in the back. She was wedged against the sideboard, next to Carl’s folks and the hay and all those birthday children.

So my sister, who had moved an old woman back to make the picture nice for her in-laws, got to ride the whole quarter mile a certain way.

She got to ride it watching the back of that old woman’s fur collar, up front, in the best light there was.

She got to watch Carl’s mother lean forward and ask Ada her name.

She got to hear Ada tell about the climbing tree, and the black team, and the nickel stand.

She got to watch Carl’s mother, the one who had called the farm rough, go soft and quiet and charmed all the way down the lane.

She got to see Ada take the reins at the gate. She got to see it from the back of the wagon, which is the one place in the world you cannot look away from it.

When we got into the patch, Harlan set the brake and started handing people down one by one.

Megan came around the wagon to me. Her company was off looking at pumpkins. It was just the two of us standing by the front wheel.

“You made me look terrible,” she said.