Monday the mail carrier stopped and looked at it a long time. Then she put the mail in and drove off, and I saw her shake her head and smile in the side mirror.
The rest of that week it did not snow. Dad walked down every afternoon and checked on it like it was a calf.
Thursday he called me at the barn. I was in the middle of herd checks, and I stepped out into the alley to hear him.
“Radio says snow tonight,” he said. “Eight inches.”
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“I heard.”
“You think it’s set?”
“It’s set, Dad.”
He was quiet a second. Then he said, “Royce will come by in the morning.”
“Probably.”
“I don’t want anybody hurt, Wade.”
“Nobody’s going to get hurt,” I said. “If he keeps his wing on the road, he’ll go right by it like it isn’t there. That’s all he has to do.”
The snow came in the night, just like they said. In the morning it was still coming, fine and steady, and it let up about noon. By one o’clock the sun was out again, hard and bright on new snow, and the wind had laid down.
I had arranged to be off that afternoon. I told my boss at the dairy why, and he laughed and said to take pictures.
Pete’s school let out at noon because of the snow. Anders had no classes on Friday. So all three of us were at Dad’s by one, sitting at the kitchen table with coffee, watching the road out the front window.
Dad sat in his chair by the window with his cane across his knees. He did not say much. Every few minutes he leaned forward and looked down the road toward the corner.
At about a quarter after two we heard it.
You can hear Royce’s loader a mile off on a still day. It has a deep diesel note you feel in your chest more than you hear, and a scrape under it where the blade meets the gravel.
“Here he comes,” Pete said.
We all got up. I don’t know why. We could see fine from the window. But we got our coats on and went out on the porch and stood there in the cold, the four of us, Dad with his hand on the porch post.
The loader came around the corner at the section line throwing a long white curl off the blade. The wing was down on the right side, riding way out over the shoulder, past the edge of the road, just like always.
It came on steady. Royce was not slowing down. Snow was pouring off the end of that wing in a white wave and landing in the ditch, twenty feet out.
Dad said, very quietly, “He’ll see it. He’ll lift.”
Royce did not lift.