The Birthday in Grandpa’s Hayloft

The first ones up the lane

At ten to two the first truck came up the lane. Then a minivan. Then a pickup with a rack of fishing rods in the back window and a little girl waving through the glass.

Grandpa stood at the mailbox beside his tractor like a man greeting the President.

He took the first eleven kids on the first trip. I have a picture of it. Eleven nine-year-olds on four hay bales in their jackets, hair blowing, singing a song none of them knew the words to, and my grandfather in front, driving at a walking pace with his chin up.

I stood in the barn door counting. Twelve. Fifteen. Twenty. A mother I barely knew pressed a gift into my arms and said, “I’m so glad we got to come.” A father in a camouflage cap shook Ken’s hand like they had known each other for years.

By a quarter past two, I had counted thirty-one. Every invitation. Not one stayed home.

They climbed the ladder to the loft one after another with presents under their arms, and Ken stood at the top handing them in. A boy named Sherman went first on the rope swing and landed laughing in the hay. The next one went and the next, until there was a line of them, shrieking and waiting their turn as if it were the best ride at the state fair.

Maisie went last, and she held on tight, and she screamed the whole way down. I had not heard her scream like that in a long time. It was the good kind.

Afterward she climbed out of the hay with it stuck all over her pink sweatshirt and her curls, laughing so hard she snorted, and every kid laughed harder because she snorted.

She would not let go of my hand after that. “Cut it with me, Mama,” she said, when the cake came out onto the bale.

So I stood beside her with the paper plates in my hands and let her hold the knife while the whole barn sang. Thirty-one kids, nobody in tune, nobody caring, a few of the mothers singing along from the bales with their phones raised.

She made her wish with her eyes squeezed shut. She would not tell me what it was. She cut the first slice and handed it up to Grandpa before anybody else.

His hand shook a little taking the plate. He did not say anything. I passed out cake. A little girl with a gap in her teeth asked me if she could live at the barn.

A father asked Grandpa about his tractor. Two of the boys discovered that if you climbed the stack of bales behind the swing you could jump the whole distance into the hay, and Ken, calm as a church deacon, set a rule that the jumping stops when the mothers say.

I thought, for twenty minutes, that I had pulled it off.