The Six Rows Dad Planted for the Widows

The first stop was the Ambrose place.

Leota had the coffee on. I could smell it from the yard.

She was standing on her front porch in a barn coat with her hands in the pockets when we pulled in, and her chickens were scratching around the steps.

Royce got out of the Chevy. He went around to the bed and lifted out the first sack, fifty pounds of Russets, and put it on his shoulder the way Dad used to, and he walked up her front walk with it.

I stayed in my truck. Dad stayed in the Chevy with his window down. It was not our errand.

Royce set the sack down on Leota’s porch beside the door. He straightened up. She looked at the sack, and then she looked at Royce for what felt like a long time.

She is a small woman, and he is a big man, and she looked at him like he was nine years old.

“Your dad tells me you cut every piece of these,” Leota said.

Royce did not take that. He shook his head. “Not every piece, Mrs. Ambrose. Dad cut the first five rows and more. I came at noon. I cut the afternoon.”

“Ingeborg told me the noon part,” Leota said. “She told me some other parts too.” She looked at him a moment longer.

Then she held her screen door open. “Well, come in. Coffee’s on. You can bring your father in too, if he can get out of that truck.”

Royce went back and helped Dad down out of the Chevy. Dad took his arm, which he does not do for anybody, and the two of them went up Leota’s walk together, slow, Dad’s hand on Royce’s elbow.

We did all twelve stops that day. Royce carried every sack. At every porch, the woman inside knew, because the county road knows everything, and at every porch she said something small to Royce, or nothing at all, and he took it, and set the sack down, and said thank you for the coffee.

That night Dad called me after supper. He does not call much. He does not like the telephone.

“Royce is coming to help cut seed next April,” he said. “He said so. In the Ambrose kitchen. With Leota listening.”

“That’s good, Dad.”

“And you’ll open the furrows.” He was quiet a minute. “On your place again, if you don’t mind. I like the view from that tailgate. You can see the Grand the whole time.”

“I don’t mind.”

I have thought a lot about what I could have done that Thursday in April.

I could have called the sheriff, I suppose, though it is a strange thing to report your own brother for selling potatoes out of your father’s cellar, and Dad would never have forgiven me.

I could have driven to Royce’s and said everything I wanted to say.

But Dad did not want a sheriff, and he did not want speeches.

He wanted seed in the ground before the middle of the week, and twelve sacks on twelve porches in October, and both his sons at the tailgate. And in the end that is exactly what he got.

And I still remember that bright morning in April, the sun on my back, the Tetons with snow clear down to their shoulders, the meadowlark on the post, and Dad’s voice coming down the strip in the still air every time I reached the gate.

Six rows, and Dad counted every one out loud.