The Gully in Dad’s Hayfield

It rained six inches by morning. Some of the gauges north of us said more. The creeks came up over the low-water crossings, and the county had two roads closed before seven.

I didn’t get out to Dad’s until Friday noon, after the crew boss let us go for the day because half our work was under water. The gravel on the section road was washed into ruts, and I drove it at a crawl.

Dad wasn’t in the house. I found him standing at the edge of the south hayfield with his cane, in the same spot where he’d stood a thousand times to judge whether the brome was ready to cut.

A gully ran through the middle of the field from the north fence clear to the draw on the south end. It was raw brown dirt, cut straight down, and in the deepest place it was taller than me. You could have parked a pickup in it and not seen it from the road.

The water had come down off the pasture to the north, found the low line through the field, and torn it open in one night.

“Dad,” I said.

He didn’t turn around. “Fifty years,” he said. “I cut this field the summer your mother and I got married. I cut it the summer you were born. I cut it last August.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know how to fix that,” he said, and pointed his cane at the gully. “I don’t think anybody does.”

I stood beside him and looked at it with the eyes I use at work, the eyes that see a hole and start figuring yards of dirt and passes of a blade. And I thought, yes, somebody does.

But I didn’t say it yet. I wasn’t sure yet. And Dad looked so tired.

By Sunday the whole road knew about the gully. That’s how it is out here. The preacher mentioned the flood in his prayer, and three different people asked Dad after church what he was going to do about the south field.

He told every one of them the same thing. “Haven’t decided.”

Marcy and Quentin sat two pews ahead of us, like always. Marcy turned around during the greeting and squeezed Dad’s hand and said she was so sorry, and she meant it. Quentin shook his hand and said, “Hard luck, Leroy,” and he meant that too, in his way.

Then on Monday morning, Quentin came over and made his offer at the fence.

I want to be fair to him, because this story isn’t any good if I’m not. Quentin has been renting more and more ground every year. He bought a new combine and a new planter three years ago on payments that would make your eyes water, and the only way to make those payments is to run more acres through them.

Dad’s forty acres sit right up against Quentin’s line. Quentin had wanted that field for years, and everybody knew it. When the flood cut it open, I think he looked at it and saw the one chance he would ever get.

There’s a line you don’t cross with family. Quentin crossed it with his forearms on the fence wire, talking soft.

That Monday afternoon, after Quentin drove off, I sat in my pickup in Dad’s yard with my phone in my hand. I had Quentin’s number up. I had about four different speeches ready.

And I put the phone down.