The Mower Nobody Thought She Built

In the cab, where I had thought she was asleep, Reese sat up.

I called Lloyd Ahlers that night at nine-thirty, from the kitchen table, in my socks.

“Same rulebook,” he said at last. “We run the national club’s stock rules, same as Trent. Has been since 1998. A rebuilt engine is a stock engine if it’s built to stock specs. Nobody’s ever said different.”

“She’s fifteen.”

“Doesn’t matter. We run twelve and up if they can pass the safety inspection. Helmet, long sleeves, kill switch, belt guard, no blade.” He cleared his throat. “Stock class is Thursday, ten o’clock heats. Entry’s twenty-five dollars. I’ll inspect it myself.”

Dunmore County is forty-five miles from our place, up Highway 59 past Currie and across the county line. I knew the road. I had driven it to see my sister.

Reese had been standing in the kitchen doorway for the last minute of that call. She stood there a while. Then she came over and she did something she had not done since she was ten, which is put both arms around my neck from behind and set her chin on top of my head.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said.

“Go to bed.”

“I’m not going to be a thing,” she said.

“You’re going to be a girl who races a lawnmower. Go to bed.”

The week went by quietly. But Reese had a friend, as fifteen-year-olds do.

I found out later that on Wednesday night, a girl named Kelsey from her 4-H club had written a long, furious post on the town’s community page, about the disqualification, the line about girls, the keeping of the entry fee, and the fact that her friend would be racing in Dunmore County on Thursday at ten.

On Thursday morning, at ten to six, Wade and I were hooking up the flatbed trailer in the gray light, while Reese tied a ratchet strap over the mower and checked the knot three times.

We went north.

It was seven-forty when we pulled in. The morning was bright and cool. Somebody had run a water truck over the track and it had gone dark and tacky, the way a racetrack should, and a couple of kids were already walking the infield with push brooms.

Lloyd Ahlers was waiting by the inspection table. He was a small, wiry man in a feed cap and suspenders, and he had a clipboard under his arm that looked like it had been through three wars.

“You’re the Ostlunds,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Which one of you built it?”

Reese took one step forward. “I did.”

“Well, let’s see her.”

We rolled it off the trailer and set it on the grass in front of his table.

Lloyd spent twelve minutes on that mower. I know because I looked at my watch, and because I have never in my life seen anyone be so slow and so fair at the same time.

He checked the kill switch first, and he made her demonstrate it, pull the lanyard and watch the engine die. He checked that the blade was off and the blade adapter was capped.

He looked at the belt guard, which was a piece of bent steel Reese had formed herself over a vise. He tilted the seat back and looked at the wiring. He ran his thumb along the deck and under the steering linkage, looking for anything loose.