The Girls Who Stacked Nine Thousand Bales

The phone call

On Tuesday afternoon, the second Tuesday in August, we were eating lunch on the tailgate at the dairy family’s farm. Brynlee’s phone rang.

She looked at the name on the screen. Then she looked at me.

“It’s Uncle Gaylon,” she said.

The other girls stopped chewing. Lark set her sandwich down on the tailgate.

Brynlee let it ring twice more. I did not tell her what to do. I had made up my mind back in June that this was her crew and her call, and I meant it.

Then she answered.

“Hello, Uncle Gaylon,” she said.

I could hear his voice, but not the words. It went on a while. Brynlee listened to all of it with her eyes on the ground.

When he stopped, she said, “If you need something, you can ask me in person. We’re at Odell’s tomorrow afternoon.”

Then she said, “Yes sir,” and “Goodbye,” and she hung up.

Her hand was shaking. She put the phone face-down on the tailgate and picked up her sandwich and took a bite, and nobody said anything for a while.

“Was that mean?” she finally asked me.

“No,” I said. “That was fair.”

Odell’s field

Wednesday afternoon we were in Odell’s back hayfield, putting up the last of his second cutting. It was hot and still. Odell’s wife had already been out with tea, and Odell himself was sitting in a lawn chair at the end of the field, under a walnut tree, watching like he always did.

I saw Gaylon’s truck turn in at the field gate about three o’clock. He parked it by Odell’s chair and got out. The two old men nodded at each other. Odell did not get up.

Then Gaylon walked across the field toward our trailer. He did not hurry. He took his cap off about halfway across and held it in his hand.

Brynlee was up on the stack. She saw him coming and climbed down off the back of the trailer and stood there in the stubble.

She pulled off one glove. Under it, her hand was taped, the white tape gone gray with dust and sweat.

Gaylon stopped in front of her. He looked at her for a long time. Then he looked at her hand.

“Who taught you to tape like that?” he asked.

“Mama,” she said.

“Your granddaddy taped his just like that,” he said. His voice went funny. “Your grandma used to do it for him at the kitchen table. I’d sit there and wait for him to finish so we could go.”

Brynlee did not say anything. She waited.

Gaylon turned his cap around in his hands. He looked off toward the tree line, and then back at her.

“I lost my crew,” he said. “I’ve got three thousand bales on the north place and rain coming tomorrow evening. I can’t get it in by myself, and I can’t find anybody in the county who can come.”

He stopped. It was hard for him. I could see it in his jaw.

“Can your girls bail me out?” he asked.