The Combine That Ran for the Crowd

“I know you will,” I said. “There’s a cap on the hook behind the seat. It was my husband’s. I’d like it to stay there, if you don’t mind.”

His wife put her hand over her mouth. He nodded. “It’ll stay there as long as I own it,” he said, and I believed him.

When I turned around, Trent was walking to his pickup.

I went after him. I did not run. I just walked, across the stubble and down to the road ditch where his pickup was parked, and I caught him with his hand on the door.

“Trent,” I said.

He did not turn around at first. Then he did. His face was red under the black cap, and his jaw was tight.

He looked older than thirty-seven. He looked like his father did the year the hail took the corn.

“I suppose you’re happy,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I’m not happy. Nobody’s happy. That machine was your dad’s, and it’s gone down the road, and so is he.”

He looked away. “It should have been mine. All of it. He should have left it to me.”

“Maybe he should have,” I said. “That was his choice to make, not mine and not yours. But you didn’t come here to argue with your dad. You came here to lie to his neighbors, and they knew him better than you think.”

He did not say anything to that. A truck went by on the road, and the dust rose and settled on both of us.

“There’s a toolbox in the shop,” I said. “The big red rollaway, your dad’s. It’s got your name taped on the top drawer. It’s been there since July. It was always going to be yours, whatever happened today.”

His eyes moved, just a little. He looked toward the shop, and then back at me.

“You can come get it whenever you want,” I said. “The shop door isn’t locked. It never has been.”

He opened his pickup door and got in and shut it. He sat there for a second with both hands on the wheel.

Then he started it and pulled out onto the gravel and drove off toward the blacktop, and he did not look back.

Behind me, Ione was ringing the cowbell on the shop door to say the lunch was on.

I walked back up through the yard. People were lined up at the lunch stand with paper plates.

The church women were dishing up sloppy joes and potato salad and slicing pie. Somebody had the radio going in a pickup with the Gophers pregame on.

Hal Brekke was sitting on an overturned five-gallon bucket by the shop, eating a piece of rhubarb pie, with his cap back on his head. I went and stood beside him.

“Thank you, Hal,” I said.

He did not look up from his pie. “Didn’t do anything but tell the truth.”

“That’s a lot, today.”

He chewed for a while. “Orrin would’ve done it for my wife, God rest her,” he said. “He’d have done it quicker, too, and louder.”

That made me laugh, because it was true. Then Hal finished his pie and set the plate on the ground and put his hand over mine for just a second, his old hand, rough as a corn cob. Then he took it back and went to get more coffee.