The Summer We Walked Forty Acres

She looked at it a long time. Then she looked up at Merlyn.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No,” Merlyn said. “Thank you. You saved my year.” His voice went rough and he looked off at the corn. “Lorene would have liked you,” he said. “She checked every plant too.”

Jaycee did not cry. But I did. I stood there with my orange Popsicle melting down my wrist and cried right there on the field road in front of all of them, and nobody said a word about it. Bertram handed me his handkerchief.

That was when I saw Darrin.

He was coming across the road from his field. He had left his clipboard behind.

He walked over the ditch and up onto the field road, and he walked right past me and Nolan and Merlyn and stopped in front of Jaycee, where she was sitting in the grass with the envelope in her lap.

He took his cap off. He stood there holding it in both hands, the way Merlyn had held his hat the day the field man came.

Nobody said anything. Zelda looked at the ground. Bertram looked at the sky. Nolan did not move.

“Jaycee,” Darrin said.

She looked up at him, and she did not get up.

“I heard about your field,” he said. “Fletcher told me. He said he never walked one cleaner.” He turned his cap around once in his hands. “I heard you went three times. I heard it was you and your mom by yourselves.”

“Yes sir,” Jaycee said.

Darrin was quiet a while. I could see him trying to find what to say, and I could see he did not have practice at it.

He is not a bad man. He is a man who had done the arithmetic on a clipboard and never once looked at what the clipboard was costing him.

“I was wrong about you,” he said finally. “You weren’t slow. You were careful. I didn’t know the difference that day.” He looked down at his boots. “I should have known it. My own kid walked right past what you went back for. I saw her do it, and I kept her and sent you home. That wasn’t right. I’m sorry.”

Jaycee looked at him for a long time. Then she said, “Okay.”

Not “it’s fine.” Not “that’s all right.” Just okay. She was fourteen and she knew the difference.

Darrin nodded. He looked over at me then, and I looked back at him. I did not say anything. I did not need to.

He nodded at me too, and I nodded at him, and that was the most either of us had said to the other in the whole three weeks.

Then he turned back to Jaycee. He did not put his cap back on.

“I’ve got the company’s contract on Merlyn’s road again next year, and the eighty across from it,” he said. “I’m going to need somebody to lead a row. Somebody the younger kids can follow, who checks every plant and doesn’t let anybody walk past one. Somebody I can trust with the late ones.”

He held his cap against his chest.

“Jaycee, would you lead a row for me next summer?”