The Farmall My Grandpa Pulled at 86

Ward drove past the place twice in July. You can see the road from the shed door, and you can tell his pickup by the toolbox. Both times he slowed down. Both times he kept going.

The second time, Grandpa watched him go by from the doorway.

“He thinks I’m going to die on it,” he said.

“I know.”

“I might,” he said. “But I might die on the porch, too, and that’s a lot more boring.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t want me to say anything. He went back to the workbench and picked up the carburetor and started taking it apart for the rebuild kit.

We cleaned the gas tank, put in new fuel lines and a sediment bowl, and flushed the radiator twice. The radiator held. Grandpa said that was the Lord being kind to an old man, and he said it like he meant it.

He wouldn’t let me convert it to twelve volts. “It started on six for fifty years,” he said. So we put in a new six-volt battery and cleaned every connection with a wire brush until it shone.

The first Saturday in August was the day. Mallory brought the baby, and a lawn chair for Grandpa, and he refused to sit in it. It was already eighty-four degrees by ten in the morning, and the sky was so blue over the corn it looked painted.

We’d put the hood and panels back on the week before. The tractor still had its old faded paint then. Grandpa didn’t care about paint. He cared about whether the thing would run.

I checked the oil. I checked the fuel. I set the choke. Then I stepped back and let him climb up.

He did it slow, one hand on the fender and one on the wheel, the way he’s climbed up every tractor I’ve ever seen him on. He sat down. He set his feet. He looked over at me.

“Well,” he said.

He pushed the starter. It turned over twice and fired. Just like that. A little smoke out the stack, then a little less, then that steady, even, four-cylinder sound that you never forget once you’ve heard it as a kid.

Mallory said, “Oh,” and put her hand over her mouth. The baby jumped at the noise and then started laughing, kicking her feet in Mallory’s lap.

Grandpa didn’t move. He sat in the seat with both hands on the wheel and listened to it idle. He listened a long time. Long enough that I started to wonder if I should say something.

Then he said, “Your grandma would’ve liked that sound.” She’s been gone eleven years. He doesn’t talk about her much. When he does, it’s always like that, one sentence, and then he goes on to something else.

This time he didn’t go on to something else. He just sat there with it running, and I saw him wipe his eye with the back of his wrist, quick, and then act like he’d been brushing off dust.

After that it went fast. There were two weeks until the fair.