The Threshing Machine Dad Rebuilt

The Fork

The crowd got quiet. You could feel it, even with the machine running. People turned to look.

Lorenz stopped in front of Grady. He is a head shorter than Grady and about half as wide. He held out the second fork, handle first.

“Grady,” he said. Not loud. Just loud enough. “I hear your name’s on this machine.”

Grady looked at the fork. He did not take it.

“Well,” Lorenz said, “come earn it.”

For a second I did not know what Grady would do. I think he did not know either. His face went red, then white. His hands were at his sides.

Then he reached out and took the fork.

Lorenz turned around and walked back toward the rack, and Grady followed him. The crowd opened up at the rope to let them through. Nobody laughed. Nobody said a word. A couple of the old men nodded at Grady as he went by.

Lorenz climbed back up on the rack. Grady climbed up after him.

“Heads first,” Lorenz said. “Not too fast. Watch Arlis. He’ll tell you with his hand when to slow down.”

Grady stuck the fork in a bundle. He lifted it. He pitched it into the feeder too hard, sideways, and the cylinder groaned.

Dad pulled the lever back a hair. He looked down at Grady over the edge of the platform.

Then he held up his hand, palm flat, and moved it slow. Easy. Easy.

Grady pitched the next one slower. Heads first. The cylinder took it clean.

Dad nodded.

An Hour on the Rack

Grady pitched bundles for an hour and ten minutes. I timed it on the tractor clock without meaning to.

He was not good at it. His bundles went in crooked. Twice he lost his footing on the rack. The sweat ran down his face and through his shirt, and the straw dust stuck to him until he looked like he had been rolled in it.

Lorenz pitched alongside him the whole time. He did not take over. He just showed him. Turn your wrist like this. Let the fork do the lifting. Stand with your feet apart.

Around eleven thirty, Ilene came over from the pancake tent with a bucket of ice water and a dipper. She took it up to the platform first. Dad drank, and then she went to the rack.

She handed the dipper to Lorenz, and Lorenz handed it to Grady.

Grady drank it standing there in the straw with his chest going up and down, and then he handed it back and picked up his fork again.

I saw some of the men at the rope look at each other. Not unkind. Just taking note. That is how men out here say things. They do not make speeches. They take note.

Rhoda stood by me the whole time. She had stopped holding my hand at some point, but she did not leave.

“He’s got blisters,” she said once, quiet.

“He’ll live,” I said.

“I know it,” she said. And then, a minute later, almost to herself: “Good.”