The Farmall My Grandpa Pulled at 86

The man with the measuring wheel walked it off. He looked at his wheel and called it to Purl.

“Two hundred thirty-six feet,” Purl said over the loudspeaker. “Two hundred thirty-six feet for Leroy Riese and his ’48 H. Folks, that puts him in second place.”

The grandstand, which had sat down, stood back up. Grandpa shut it down. He sat there for a second, both hands still on the wheel, looking straight down the track at where he’d stopped. Five feet short of Gideon’s John Deere. Five feet.

I unhooked the chain. My hands were shaking worse than his ever have. When I stood back up, I saw Ward.

He’d left the end of the grandstand. He was walking toward us down the side of the track, through the dust, with his cap in his hand. He wasn’t walking fast. He was walking like a man going somewhere he didn’t want to be, but meant to get to.

Grandpa saw him coming, and he set the brake. Ward stopped beside the big rear tire and opened his mouth. Nothing came out at first.

The two Farmall Ms still had to pull after us, so the club had us drive back around to the scale while they waited. That’s the rule for anybody in the top three: weigh again after you pull, to keep everybody honest.

So Ward walked beside the tractor the whole way back, on the other side from me. He didn’t say anything on the way. Grandpa didn’t look at him.

We pulled up on the scale. Simeon leaned out of his shed and read it off.

“Fifty-four thirty,” he said. “Same as before. You’re good, Leroy.”

And there, on the scale, with Simeon in the doorway and Merl and Vester and four or five of the other old pullers standing around because they’d come to see the number, Ward finally said it.

“Dad,” he said.

Grandpa looked down at him from the seat.

“I said a hard thing to you in April,” Ward said. “In front of all these men. I said you belonged on the scrap pile.”

He stopped. He looked at the ground. He looked back up.

“That was wrong. I was wrong to say it, and I was wrong to say it there. I’ve been scared since the hospital, and I took it out on you, and that’s mine to carry, not yours.”

Nobody said anything. It was quiet enough to hear the next tractor idling down at the start line.

“I’m sorry,” Ward said. “In front of them. Same as I said it.”

Grandpa sat there for a long moment. Then he looked over at the old men standing around the scale.

“You all heard that?” he said.

“We heard it,” Simeon said.

“Good,” Grandpa said. And he climbed down off the tractor, slow, one hand on the fender and one on the wheel, and stood on the scale platform in front of his son.

“I might die on that seat someday,” he said. “You might be right about that. But I’d rather go out doing something I love than sit on the porch waiting for it.”