The Old Picker That Beat the Storm

Lamar’s combine

Late Sunday afternoon, while Hoyt ran the tractor for an hour, I drove to town for diesel. The paved road runs past Lamar’s back field.

His combine was running hard, and his hired man was swapping trailers at the end of the row.

He had a lot of acres still lying in the windrows. I could see that from the road. I slowed down but I did not stop.

I am going to tell you something I am not proud of. For about a quarter mile, I hoped it would rain on him first. I hoped it hard.

Then I passed the church and I felt ashamed, and I prayed for him the rest of the way to the pumps, and I meant it about halfway.

That is the honest truth, and I promised I would tell it honestly.

Monday

Monday morning the wind had come around to the southeast and the air smelled like the Gulf.

The weather radio said the first rain bands would cross into Terrell County by early evening.

We had fifty-four acres left and maybe ten hours to do it in. That was more than we had done in any day that long.

Hoyt looked at the hour meter and the sky and at me, and I knew he did not think we would make it.

“We’ll make it,” Clayton said. He was already at the picker with the grease gun.

The wind kept the dew light, and it was off by seven thirty. We started at seven forty.

I do not think the tractor stopped more than five minutes at a time all day. Beau and Wilburn ran trailers so fast the buying point started a separate line for us.

Around noon Hoyt traded places with Clayton so the boy could eat. Clayton took his sandwich and climbed right up on the platform with me.

We stood there side by side, eating Inez’s ham biscuits, with our hands on the rail.

“Granddaddy would have liked this,” he said with his mouth full.

“He’d have said we were running it too fast,” I said.

“Are we?”

“Yes,” I said. “Don’t slow down.”

By three o’clock, the clouds to the southwest were not far off anymore. They were coming.

The pines along the field edge were bending in the gusts and the light had turned yellow and strange.

We were on the last field, the one behind Inez’s house. Her sixty acres.

She stood on her back porch with her cane and watched us go up and down, and every time we passed at the end of the row, she lifted her hand.

The last row

At half past six, the first drops hit the brim of my hat. Fat ones, far apart, the kind that leave dark spots the size of a quarter in the dust.

We had one windrow left. About a quarter mile of it.

Clayton did not slow down. He did not speed up either, because you cannot push a picker past what it will take.

He just held it steady, and I held on to the rail, and the old machine roared up that last windrow like it knew.

The rain picked up. I could feel it on my back through my shirt. The pickup reel kept lifting the vines.

The peanuts kept coming up into the basket. I watched the end of the row come closer and closer.

We hit the turn row and the reel came up empty.

Clayton disengaged the power takeoff and shut the tractor off. In the quiet, I could hear the rain on the vines behind us, coming harder now, hissing across the whole field like a wave.

My son laid his head down on the steering wheel and stayed like that.

I climbed down off the platform and walked up beside the tractor and put my hand on his back. He was shaking. So was I.

“We did it, Mama,” he said into the wheel.

“You did it,” I said. “You and your granddaddy’s grease gun.”

We drove the last trailer to the shed and parked it under the roof.

Then we all stood in the shed door and watched the storm come across our empty fields. Every acre was off the ground.