The Hayride Grandma Asked For

Coming down

Cordia and Rufus unloaded everybody the same way they loaded them, one at a time, slow, a hand on the rail and a hand on an arm.

Nobody fell. Nobody stumbled. Beulah checked every single person at the bottom of the steps and wrote it on her clipboard.

Ambrose went down the steps and turned around at the bottom and shook Bud’s hand for a long time. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

Then he walked to the back door on his own, without waiting for his aide, and the aides looked at each other like they’d seen a miracle.

Glennis told Bud his horses were a credit to him.

Tilden asked if he could stroke Tolbert’s nose, and Bud walked him up to the front, and Tilden stood there with his hand on that big blond face for a full minute with his eyes closed.

Gail was the one who helped Grandma down. I watched her.

She stood at the bottom of the steps with her arms out, and Grandma came down one step at a time, holding the rail and Gail’s hand, and at the bottom Gail put her arms around her and held on.

“You drove,” Gail said into her hair. “Cordia told me. You drove the team.”

“I did,” Grandma said. “For a minute.”

Late afternoon

The families took everybody inside for cookies and cider in the dining room. Dorcas said it was the loudest the dining room had been since the Christmas party.

Glennis was holding court at one table about trees. Ambrose was telling about the sassafras tea to anybody who would listen.

Bud and I stayed outside to unharness the team in the warm afternoon sun. The shadows of the maples were getting long across the lot.

Bud was quiet the way he gets when something has gone right and he doesn’t want to jinx it by saying so.

Gail came out after a while with two cups of cider. She handed one to me and one to Bud.

Then she stood there by the wagon, running her hand over Grandma’s scrap quilt where it was still lying across the front bale.

“She made this the year your dad was born,” she said to me.

“She told me,” I said.

Gail folded the quilt up carefully, corners together, the way Grandma taught all of us, and held it against her chest.

She watched Bud lead Ivo and Tolbert up the ramp into the trailer. She watched him check the latches twice.

Then she turned to me. Her eyes were still red, but her voice was steady, the payroll clerk voice, the one with a binder for everything.

“Tonya,” she said. “When’s the next ride?”