The Ledgers Behind The Grain Hauling Sale

Till harvest

I should go back to April of 2007, because that line is the whole story, and I would like you to understand how small it was when it started.

My father, Gale Reinke, started Reinke Grain Hauling in 1988 with one used truck and a loan from the county bank.

By 2007 he had six trucks and a gravel yard south of Holdrege with a shop big enough for two rigs. Dad could fix anything with an engine, and he could not stand paperwork.

In April, Dad had his stroke in the yard, between a trailer and a fuel tank, with a wrench still in his hand.

Troy was thirty-four and driving for Dad. I was thirty, a loan processor at the bank, and five months pregnant.

Mama called me from the hospital in Kearney at four in the morning, and I drove the hundred miles with my hands shaking on the wheel.

Dad lived, but his right hand never worked right again. He could not hold a wrench, and he could not sign his name the same way.

Within a week we all understood the business would belong to Troy, and that Troy had never looked at a fuel tax form in his life.

The first Sunday after, the three of us sat at Mama’s kitchen table, with Dad’s shoebox between us and all the paper falling out. Troy said, “I don’t know where to start.”

He looked about twelve years old when he said it.

I said, “I’ll do it until harvest.” I meant it as a kindness.

I had a bank job, a husband and a baby on the way, and I figured the books were a few evenings a week until Troy found somebody to hire.

Troy said, “Thanks, Sis. I’ll get a girl in here by fall.”

Dad, in the hospital bed, lifted his good hand and tapped twice on the blanket, which was how he said thank you when he could not say anything.

On Monday after work I bought a green columnar ledger at the office supply store in Holdrege for $4.89, and I carried it home and wrote on the inside cover that line in pencil.

Dad’s books. Till harvest. T.

Harvest came. Brooklyn was born the second week of September, and the corn came off in October, and nobody hired a girl. Troy said the money was tight, and anyway I already knew where everything was.

That is how it happens. Nobody ever asks you to give nineteen years.

They ask for one more quarter, and then they ask again, and you say yes because the person asking is your family and the thing at stake is a roof over somebody’s head.

I have been asked since then why I did not simply say no.

I have been asked by Curt, by my best friend Denise, and by myself at three o’clock on a good many mornings.

The honest answer is that when I pictured saying it, I pictured Mama’s face.

Dad’s business was how Mama ate. There was no pension, and the business paid her bills through Troy. If the payroll missed, twelve families missed a paycheck, and one of them was my mother’s.