The Last Pull in Grandpa’s Ford

“Cecil Ketchum,” he said. “Haven’t seen you back here at a hitch in a long time.”

“About twenty-eight years,” Dad said. “Is it all right if I stand here for my grandson?”

Harold looked at him, and then at the Ford, and then at the number on the back glass.

“Cecil,” he said, “you stand anywhere you want.”

I was at the fence by the starting line where the families can stand. Tricia had gone up to the grandstand with everybody else. I could see the front row from where I stood, twenty-some people all leaning forward at once, and my nieces holding up a crooked poster board sign that said Go Ty.

Gene Wolters has been the announcer at that fair since the early nineties. He announced my pull in 1998. He was the man Butch took the mic from two counties over.

When the Ford rolled up to the line, I heard the speakers crackle, and I heard Gene clear his throat.

“Next up in the stock class, folks,” he said, “I’ve got truck number 78. And I want to read you what’s on this entry card, because I’ve been doing this a long time, and I don’t get one like this very often.”

The grandstand went a little quieter.

I’ll tell you now that I had written the entry card myself. There’s a line at the bottom of the form that says, Tell us about your truck, and most folks write something like 6.2 Chevy or Ford Super Duty or mostly stock. I had written three sentences, and it had taken me most of an evening.

Gene read them exactly as I wrote them.

“Driver is Ty Ketchum, sixteen years old, a junior at the high school. This 1978 Ford F-250 was bought new off the lot in town by his grandfather, Cecil Ketchum, in the spring of 1978, when Cecil was twenty-six. Ty’s father pulled this same truck in this same class in 1998, and Cecil stood at the hitch, and he is standing at the hitch again tonight.”

Then Gene stopped reading, and he said something that wasn’t on the card.

“Cecil, I remember you back there in ’98,” he said. “You give a wave, now.”

My father raised one hand from where he stood at the hitch. He didn’t wave it. He just held it up, the way a man holds up his hand in church at the end of a hymn.

And the grandstand stood up.

Not all of them. But our front row did, all twenty-three of them, and then the second row behind them, and then people I didn’t know, people who had never heard of Ty Ketchum and didn’t know a thing about forty-two hundred dollars or a hired help joke two counties over. They stood up and they clapped for an old man standing at a hitch.

I looked over toward the pits, and Butch was standing at the end of the fence in his black ball cap, with his arms folded, watching. He didn’t clap. But he didn’t leave either.

The flagman raised his green flag. Ty brought the revs up, and the old 400 sang the way it hadn’t sung in years. The chain came tight.

My dad slapped the tailgate. Twice.

Ty let the clutch out.