The Wheat Crop Held at the Elevator

On the Tuesday night I sat out on the tailgate of the grain truck in the motel lot at two in the morning, and Cade came out in his socks and sat next to me.

He did not say anything. He had a pocketknife in his hand. It was my father’s.

It was a worn yellow Case with a cracked handle, and I had given it to him in April when he turned fifteen.

“Grandpa’s knife,” he said. “Yes.” “Do you think he’d have done it? What you’re doing?” I thought about it honestly.

“I think Grandpa would’ve never let it get this far,” I said. “He’d have written the number on a napkin in May, at the table, in front of Wayne, and made him sign it.

That was his way. I didn’t. That’s on me. But once it got here? Yes. I think he’d have stood in that lot.”

Cade turned the knife over in his hand. “I don’t want Uncle Wayne to hate us,” he said. “He might.” “Is that okay?”

“It’s the price of being right sometimes,” I said. “It’s not a bad price, but it’s a price.

You’ll pay it a few times in your life. Make sure what you’re buying is worth it.”

He leaned his head on my shoulder like he had when he was six.

I have been a lot of things in my life, and I have been proud of some of them, but I do not think I have ever been prouder than I was of that kid at two in the morning in a motel parking lot in Kansas, with his bare feet on the cold asphalt.

Jesse came out too, around three. He had been awake the whole time, he said.

He stood off to the side with his hands in his jacket and said he had been thinking he might quit, if it would help.

“Help what?” “The money,” Jesse said. “You’ve got a lot to pay, Mr. Reimer. I can wait on mine. I can wait until Dakota.”

I looked at this nineteen-year-old boy, who had worked three weeks of sixteen-hour days and had a tuition bill due in August, and who was standing in a dark parking lot offering to wait for what I owed him.

“Jesse,” I said. “You will be paid Friday. On the day I said. From my own account if I have to. That has nothing to do with anybody else’s money. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.” “Go to bed.” He went. Carla was standing in the motel doorway behind us, in her robe, and I saw her wipe her face with the back of her hand.

Thursday morning, the ninth of July, I went to the co-op early. The word had gotten around.

It had gotten around in a way I did not expect, and Leland had not exaggerated: by Thursday there were nine pickups in the lot at six forty-five, and none of them were hauling grain.

Sid was on the loading dock with his arms crossed. Lorna was at the window.

Along the gravel lot, men in feed caps and sunglasses stood next to their trucks with coffee in paper cups, talking low. I saw old Mr. Kroeker, who had hired my father for forty years.

I saw two brothers from the next county who ran a crew of their own.

I saw Leland Faber, who had no business being there, since his crew was two hundred miles north. He had driven back down on his day off.