Across the road I could see my own field, cut clean to stubble, and somewhere in it the boot tracks of eleven people still crisscrossing the low spot by the third terrace.
“Eleven people came out last night,” I said. “With flashlights. In the dark. The Brandts shut down their own beans.”
“I know. Don called me after.”
“What did he say?”
Truman turned his cap over in his hands. “He said I’d better be standing at the end of my field in the morning, because he had a feeling who’d be coming over the hill.”
I almost laughed. I didn’t, but I almost did.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said. My voice was steady, which surprised me. “I’m going to cut your forty. Now, before the rain. Ethan runs the cart, you haul the beans to the elevator in Latimer in your own truck, and you take the check to the bank Monday morning.”
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He opened his mouth.
“I’m not done.” I held up one glove. “The eighty is not for sale. Not at six. Not at eleven. Not to you, not to anybody, not ever. It’s Henry’s. You’re never going to bring a paper to my house again.”
“No,” he said. “No, I won’t.”
“And you’re going to tell your mother. Today. Yourself. Not Don, not me, not Nina. You drive to Hampton and you stand in front of her and tell her what you did and why.”
His face went white. I think he would rather have been run over by the combine.
“And Nina,” I said. “You tell Nina tonight. All of it. The note, the combine, all of it. She’s your wife. She doesn’t deserve to find out at the elevator.”
He nodded. He could not seem to speak.
“And this week,” I said, “you call the Brandts, and Don, and every one of those people who walked my field last night, and you thank them. Not for finding the keys. For not saying one word to you about it at church this morning.”
Because they hadn’t. I had heard that from Barb on the phone. Truman and Nina and the kids had sat in their usual pew that morning, and nobody had said a thing to him.
Not one person. They had just let him sit there knowing that they knew.
That was his consequence, and it was a heavy one.
Nobody in our town would ever have to say a word to Truman Weller about what happened on the home eighty. Every one of them knew.
He would have to look each of them in the eye at the co-op, at the gas station, at Henry’s basketball games, for the rest of his life.
He could live with that or he could leave, and I did not think Truman would ever leave.
“Why?” he said finally. “Why would you cut my beans after what I did?”
I thought about it. I thought about the hospital parking lot in Mason City, and the feed store receipt speech, and the way his knees had gone out under the casket.
“Because Morris would have,” I said. “And because I’m not going to let what you did yesterday decide who I am today.”
I climbed back up into the combine. He stood there a second, then put his cap back on, walked to his pickup and drove off toward his place to get his semi.