The Mower Nobody Thought She Built

“Whereas,” Wanda read, “the Trent County fair race rules are published in the fair book and follow the national stock class rulebook. And whereas the race superintendent disqualified an entry on August sixth on the basis of a rule that does not appear in either document.

And whereas that entry was built by a fifteen-year-old exhibitor who passed the same safety inspection at the Dunmore County Fair a week later and won her class.”

“Be it moved that the committee interpretation rule be struck. That the inspection be conducted from a written checklist, signed by two inspectors, with no entry disqualified on any ground not in the printed rules.

That any exhibitor twelve years or older who passes safety inspection may race. That the entry fee withheld on August sixth be returned in full with an apology from the fair board. And that Dennis Ostlund be relieved as race superintendent, effective tonight.”

Dennis stood up. He said something, and I will not repeat it, because it was not worth it. It was about tradition, and about girls getting hurt, and about people from out of town telling him how to run his races.

Delmar waited until he finished.

“Dennis,” he said, kindly, and I had not known that man could be kind. “You’ve done eleven years for this fair. I appreciate every one. But you told a child her daddy built her engine, and you kept her twenty dollars. Sit down.”

He did not sit. He took his clipboard off the table. He walked down the aisle between the folding chairs, past me and past Reese and past Wade, who stared straight ahead, and out the double doors of the exhibit hall, into the dark.

I looked at Wade. He was looking at his hands. I put mine on top of them, and he turned his palm up under mine, and we sat that way.

The vote was seven to one, with one abstention. The one was Dennis’s cousin. The abstention was Dennis, who was gone by then, and whose chair was empty.

Wanda Weiss walked over to us afterward, with the paper still in her hand.

“There’s one more item,” she said. “It’s not a motion. It’s more a request.”

She looked past me at Reese, who was standing there in her school sweatshirt with her hands in her pockets.

“Next August, we’ll need somebody to run the inspection table. Someone to sit with a clipboard, and read the checklist, and put a hand on the kill switch, and tell every kid who comes up that they’re welcome here.

The insurance people want an adult to co-sign. I’d be glad to do that.” She smiled, a small dry one. “But I’d like it to be you who’s sitting in the chair.”

“Can I make the checklist?” she asked. “I already made one. It’s got eleven items.”

Wanda blinked. “It does?”

Reese took the typed page out of my folder, the one I had not read, and she handed it over.

Wanda read it. It took her a while. When she finished, she folded it in half, very carefully, and held it against her chest like a church bulletin.

“This is better than ours,” she said.

Here is what became of Dennis. The rule was changed, and he lost a job he’d held for eleven years. Dennis has not spoken to us since. He did not come to Thanksgiving. He did not send a card. Wade drove over to his house in October, and the lights were on and the truck was in the drive, and Dennis did not come to the door.