The Grain Cart Seat I Drove for Free

“Hailey,” she said. “You still running Lonnie’s cart?”

“Every fall,” I said.

“I’ve watched you,” she said. “You’re the best cart driver on our road, and I’m not just being neighborly. You ever run a combine?”

I had, a little. Lonnie let me take his combine through a few rounds when he ate supper in the field, and I’d run a simulator at school. I told her that.

“Our hired man got a new hip in July,” Marcy said. “Doctor says he’s off machinery till spring. Dale’s back is bad and I’m not as young as I was. I need somebody in my combine this fall.”

She named the rate before I could ask. “Twenty-five an hour. Same as I paid him. Through corn, probably the middle of October to the end of the month.”

I just stood there with my pork chop. I think my mouth was open.

“You don’t have to answer now,” Marcy said. “Think about it. But I’d like to know by the first of October.”

I told her I would think about it. And I did, for most of two months. I thought about Mom and the house getting quiet. I thought about Lonnie’s face. I thought about the cart sitting there with nobody in it.

The last week of September I called Marcy and told her yes. I didn’t tell anybody else. Not Mom, not Trent, not my roommate in Willmar. I’m not proud of that part. Maybe if I’d talked to Mom, it could have gone easier.

But I knew what she’d say. She’d say, “He’ll come around, honey.” She had been saying it for five years.

That October afternoon on the tractor step, with Trent’s check in his back pocket, I realized I had already decided. I’d decided at the fair. I just hadn’t said it at home.

I climbed down. My boots crunched in the corn stubble. Lonnie had already turned back toward his pickup, and I said his name.

“Lonnie.”

He stopped. He turned around and looked at me from under the bill of that green seed cap, squinting a little in the low sun.

“I start at Marcy’s tomorrow,” I said. “She asked me to run her combine for corn.”

He didn’t say anything for a second. Trent took one step back, like he wanted to be out of it.

“Marcy’s,” Lonnie said.

“She’s paying twenty-five an hour,” I said. I didn’t say it to rub it in. I said it because I wanted him to know it was a real job, not me running off in a huff.

“And who’s going to run my cart?”

I’d thought about that question for two months, and I’d thought about a lot of answers, some of them not very nice. What came out was the plainest one.

“Whoever you pay,” I said.

My voice didn’t shake. I didn’t raise it. I wasn’t trying to hurt him. I just didn’t have it in me anymore to pretend it was all right.

Trent stood there with his hand on his back pocket, like that check had suddenly gotten heavy. He looked at the ground. He looked at his dad. He didn’t say a word.

Neither did Lonnie. He just looked at me for a long time, and then he nodded once, the way he’d nod at a man at the elevator who’d quoted him a price he didn’t like.

“All right,” he said. “You’d better take the rest of today off, then.”