The Old Ford in Mom’s Driveway

She drove it right down the driveway, right past where Trace was standing at the edge of the gravel.

She did not stop. She did not say anything to him. She did not honk. She just lifted two fingers off the wheel, the way you do to a neighbor on a county road, and drove on past him and out onto the road and off toward the corner.

He stood there with every man in that yard watching him. He watched her go. And I saw what he did with his hands.

He took his cap off. He held it against his chest with both hands, the way you do when a funeral goes by.

She drove it around the section. Four miles. We all stood in the yard and listened to it the whole way, the sound fading and coming back as she came around past the woodlot and up the road and into the drive again.

When she shut it off, Lowell opened her door. She sat there a minute with her hands in her lap.

“It sounds like it did when he bought it,” she said.

The Elevator Again

Monday morning, Mom got up and put on her good cardigan and drove to the elevator.

I followed her in my own truck. I had told the shop I would be an hour late, and I did not care what they said about it during harvest. I parked across the road by the railroad tracks and watched.

It was a clear cold October morning and the sun was well up over the silos. There were three grain trucks lined up at the scale, and the dust was hanging in the light.

She pulled into the gravel lot at eight o’clock, right on the dot, and parked in the spot by the office door where she always parks.

And she honked twice.

The office door opened before she had the engine off. Lowell came out, and Beryl behind him, and Junie with a cup of coffee in her hand, poured and steaming. Behind them the whole coffee crowd stood in the doorway.

Mom got out of the truck. Junie handed her the cup. And they all went in together, and the door swung shut behind them.

I sat in my truck across the road a while longer. I am not ashamed to say what I was doing.