The Tractor Nobody Would Bid On

He put his hand over his eyes. His shoulders went once. It’s a hard thing to watch a grown man try not to cry in a machine shed.

“I said a mean thing to you on the phone,” he said. “About you spending it.”

“You did,” I said. I wasn’t going to pretend he hadn’t.

“It hurt. It’s hurt for fourteen years, the way you look at me like I’m about to steal the silverware. I’m not going to tell you it didn’t.”

“I know,” he said. “I know it.”

“I’m not asking you to like me,” I said. “I’m asking you to quit deciding things about your dad’s life when he can’t say anything back. You took the one thing he made with his own two hands and put a number on it while he was asleep. That’s what I can’t get past. Not the money.”

He nodded. He didn’t argue. I think he had already heard it, standing at the back of that crowd with three hundred men holding their cards down.

“What do I tell Dad?” he said.

“The truth,” I said. “When he’s awake. All of it. He’s going to be hurt, and he’s going to forgive you, because that’s who he is. And you’re going to let him.”

He stood there a while longer. Then he said, “Is it okay if I come by tomorrow? Bring the boys? Tyler’s been asking about Grandpa and I didn’t know what to tell him.”

“Bring them,” I said. “Bring Amber too. I’ll make a hotdish.”

I drove back to Sioux Falls that afternoon. By the time I got there it was after five.

The nurse at the desk smiled when she saw me, the first real smile I’d seen in that unit.

“He’s been more awake today,” she said. “We’ve lightened the sedation. He’s still got the tube, so he can’t talk, but he’s tracking. He can hear you. He squeezed my hand when I asked him to.”

Gene’s eyes were open when I came in. They were tired and wet, but they were his.

He couldn’t say anything with that tube in his mouth, but he moved his hand on the blanket toward me, and I took it, and it was warm.

I sat down and held it and told him I was there. I didn’t tell him about the auction. I didn’t want to bring Kyle into that room yet.

So I called Merle on my cell phone. He answered on the fourth ring, and I could hear the television going and his wife asking who it was.

“Merle,” I said, “I’m with Gene. He’s awake. I’m going to hold the phone to his ear. Would you tell him about the M?”

Merle didn’t ask what I meant. He just cleared his throat, and I held the phone against Gene’s ear, and I leaned in close so I could hear too.

“Gene,” Merle said, slow and plain. “It’s Merle. I drove your M this morning. Four miles on the gravel. She started on the second turn and she didn’t miss once the whole way. Ran fine, Gene. Ran real fine. You did a nice job on her.”

Gene’s hand closed on mine. Hard. And a tear ran out of the corner of his eye and down along the tape that held the tube, and he didn’t even try to blink it back.

He just lay there listening to his neighbor of forty years tell him his tractor ran fine.

“You get well now,” Merle said. “She’s in the shed waiting on you. Linda’s got her.”