The Straw Bale Maze We Built on Halloween

Halloween

Saturday came up clear and cold. Thirty-eight degrees at sunrise, frost on the bales, which steamed a little when the sun hit them.

We spent the morning on the last details. Hay bale seating at the entrance. A pumpkin at every dead end, carved by the third grade.

A plywood table for the cider and the cheese curds, which Julie had gotten donated from the plant in Greenwood, because this is Wisconsin.

At one o’clock, Bill Hanson called. I was standing in the parking area across the road with Julie, setting out traffic cones.

“Becca, I’m sorry. She won’t turn over. I’ve had the battery charger on her since six, and I think it’s the starter.”

“It’s all right, Bill. Thank you for trying.”

I hung up. Julie looked at me. I looked across the road toward the maze. It was a quarter mile back along the field road, past the windbreak, in the dark by six o’clock.

“We’ll walk them,” Julie said. “We’ll line the field road with flashlights. Parents will walk their kids.”

“Some of these kids are four,” I said. “And the grandparents. Leonard’s coming. He said so.”

“Then we’ll walk slow.”

Headlights

By five o’clock the cars had started pulling into the hay field we were using for parking. Families, grandparents, toddlers in pumpkin suits, teenagers trying to look like they had not wanted to come.

I was standing at the edge of the parking area in my gray barn coat with a flashlight, trying to figure out how to tell two hundred people they would be walking.

Lance was across the road with the kids at the start of the field road. Kelli was at the cider table. Leonard was sitting in a lawn chair Julie had brought him, a blanket over his knees.

Then I heard a diesel coming down the road from the north. From Dan’s direction. I turned around.

Headlights came over the rise. A tractor, his good one, the one he never lent to anybody.

Behind it, his hay wagon, the one he would not let the church borrow, with a fresh layer of straw spread across the deck and two rows of bales set along the sides for seats.

It turned into the parking area slowly and came across the stubble and stopped right next to me.

Dan sat up on the seat for a second. Then he shut down to an idle, pulled his cap off, and climbed down.

He stood in front of me holding his cap in both hands. A few of the families nearest us had gone quiet. Everybody in that field knew who he was, and everybody knew about the swath.

“I’ll run the wagon,” he said. “All night. As long as there’s people.”

“Okay,” I said. My voice did not come out right.

“And this is for your bus fund.” He reached into his coat and took out a folded envelope. “That’s the check from the elevator for the five acres. I endorsed it over to the PTO. It’s thirty-two hundred and eighty dollars. It’s not mine. It never really was, after you all cut it in June.”

I held the envelope and did not open it. I said, “Dan, that’s your rent.”

“I’ll make the rent.” He put his cap back on. “Mom and I already talked. I’ll make it.”

He looked past me then. Reid had seen the tractor from across the road, and he had gotten away from Lance, and he was running across the parking area toward us with his flashlight bouncing.

He stopped in front of his uncle, out of breath. He was still in his costume from the day before, because he had refused to take it off.

“Mom said sorry,” Reid told him. Very serious.

Dan looked down at him. Then he crouched in the stubble so they were eye to eye.

“She did,” Dan said. “And now it’s my turn. I’m sorry I ran over your maze, buddy. That was a bad thing to do.”

Reid looked at him with total seriousness for about five seconds.

“Can I ride up front?” he said.