The Uncle Who Pulled the Hitch Pin

The half mile home

Ava, my nine-year-old, was sitting on the front bale. She looked at me, and I could see her deciding whether to be scared.

That is the thing about kids. They don’t decide by what happens. They decide by your face.

I checked my phone. Merritt, my husband, was finishing corn on the rented quarter across the road, and our other tractor was hooked to the grain cart three miles off. Even if he dropped everything, it would be forty minutes before he could get a tractor to us.

Forty minutes in October in Brown County, South Dakota, once the sun goes down, is cold. It was already dropping toward forty degrees, and it would be dark in fifteen minutes.

The yard was half a mile west, along the fence. I could see the yard light already on and the little shapes of the parents standing around the fire pit with their cider.

I drive a school bus route for Groton every morning and every afternoon. Fifty-one miles of gravel, thirty-four kids. I have done a lot of things with children that nobody trained me for, and I knew exactly what this one was.

It was a head count and a walk.

I climbed up on the edge of the wagon so they could all see me, and I clapped my hands once, the way I do when the bus is getting loud.

“Okay, Clovers,” I said. “New game. We’re walking home. Who wants to be first?”

Five hands went up. I picked Noel, because he would have been mad if I hadn’t.

“Kylie,” I said, “you take the back.”

Kylie Schultz was sixteen and our junior leader. She was a calm girl, the kind who shows a steer like she’s walking a dog. She nodded and jumped down without a word.

I had the kids count off. One through twelve. Ava was four. Gavin Becker was twelve, because he was the smallest and he was last to get his courage up.

Gavin was eight. It was his first year in 4-H. His grandpa had died in June, and his mom had told me quietly at the start of the evening that he had been clingy ever since.

He sat on the back bale with both hands holding the twine.

“Is he coming back?” he asked me.

“No, honey,” I said. “We don’t need him. We’ve got legs.”

“It’s dark.”

“It’s almost dark,” I said. “And I’ve got a flashlight on my phone, and Kylie has one, and we’re going to sing.”

He didn’t move. Then Ava walked back along the wagon, sat down next to him, and took his hand. Nobody told her to. She just did it.

“You can hold my hand the whole way,” she said. “I know where the holes are.”

I could have cried right there, but I had eleven other kids to get home.

We walked single file along the fence line, where the cattle had beaten down a path. I went first with my phone light pointed at the ground. Kylie walked last with hers.

We sang the club pledge, which is not a song, but they made it one. Head, heart, hands and health, over and over, louder every time, until it was more yelling than singing.

Then we sang “Home on the Range,” because it was the only other song all twelve of them knew. Then we sang it again.

Halfway there, the yard light got bigger and I saw Merritt’s pickup bouncing down the field approach on the far side of the road.

The parents had seen the tractor lights go the wrong way. Someone had called him.

By the time we came through the last gate, it was full dark and the parents were standing at the edge of the yard in a line, like they were waiting for a school bus.

I counted the kids twice as they came through the gate. One through twelve. Then I counted them again, because my hands were shaking and I didn’t trust myself.