The Combine Across the Street

I did not say a word to her, and she did not say one to me.

I did not tell her that her father’s name was written in marker on the inside of the box, under the green paint, where Owen had put it before the first coat. I did not tell her the costume was for him.

I think she knew. She got in her car. I got in mine. We drove out of the lot one behind the other and turned in different directions at the stop sign.

That was all. No hug. No tears. Nobody forgave anybody in a parking lot. Before I left the library that night, I did one thing.

Tasha had left a clipboard on the front table. It was a volunteer sheet for next fall, with six empty lines. I stood over it for a minute, in my good coat, thinking about August, and what I had said.

Then I picked up the pen and wrote my name on the first line.

Under it, I wrote: Parking lot. Orange flags. One afternoon. I did it because of Owen. I did it because of the little ghost and her mother, and Brielle with her duct-taped bucket.

Friday evening I came home from the barn, and Owen was at the kitchen table.

“What are you building?” I said. “Next year’s combine.” “Already?” “It’s gonna have a bigger header,” he said. “And a second wagon. I’m gonna have two hundred bars.”

“That’s a lot of mowing.” “I know.” He pushed the jar toward me. “I’ve got eleven dollars already.”

I stood in the doorway of my own kitchen and watched my son plan a combine the way his grandfather used to plan a harvest. Careful. Patient. Counting every acre.

After supper Curtis took him out to the front porch, the way he does every night in fall.

The sun was down behind the Whitlock field. The last of the corn was coming off on County Road 9, and the combines were running late with their lights on, big yellow-white beams, rolling through the dust like ships.

Owen sat on the top step with his chin on his knees, and I sat on the swing with a cup of coffee, and Curtis leaned on the post.

A combine went by, slow, with a grain cart following close behind. “That’s one,” said Owen.

Another came over the rise. “Two.”

The driver of the second one, a man I did not know, lifted a hand from the wheel. Owen lifted his back, and then he stood up on the step and waved with his whole arm, the way he does.

The man blew the horn. It was a long, low, honest note across the fields.

Owen turned around to look at me, with his whole face lit up. “Did you hear that?”

“I heard it, buddy.” “He heard me.” “I know,” I said. “They always do.”

He sat back down and put his chin on his knees. “Three,” said Owen.