The Wheat Crop Held at the Elevator

We were standing by the grain cart in the motel lot, and he took it and counted it, then counted it again. He did not say anything. He looked at the floor for a second.

“Thank you, Mr. Reimer.” “You were worth it,” I said. “Every hour.”

We drove north that Friday night. We lost five days on Haugstad, which cost us the fourteen hundred acres down to twelve hundred and fifty, and it cost us a little more than that in fuel and goodwill.

When we pulled up to his farm outside Bowman, he met me in the driveway with his arms folded.

“Heard you had trouble in Kansas,” he said. “Yes, sir.” “Heard you held a man’s grain over it.”

“I did.” He looked me up and down. He was seventy, with a face like a split fence rail.

“I’ve been burned by relatives twice,” Haugstad said. “Never had the nerve.” He unfolded his arms. “Get your machines in the field. I’ll make up the five days in the rate.”

I did not know what to say. I said thank you. That is how it goes on the road. A story travels faster than a combine does.

By the time we got to South Dakota, three different farmers had asked me about it, and none of them were asking what I had done wrong.

By September, when we cut the last field of the season in Montana, I had a call from a man in Nebraska who wanted to book us for next year, and said he had heard I was the kind of operator who got paid.

I did not hear any of this from Wayne. I heard it from Leland Faber, who called me one night in August on the satellite phone while I was parked by a field in the Dakotas with my boot on a tire.

He was laughing, a little. He does not laugh often.

“Your uncle called around,” Leland said. “Looking for a crew for next June. Called four outfits, I know of. Mine, the Kleins out of Okeene, the Hendrickses, and a kid out of Pratt.”

“What did they tell him?” “Same thing,” Leland said. “Booked.” “All of them?”

“All of us. Every one.” He was quiet for a second. “Nobody’s going to cut for him, Nolan. Not on paper, not on a handshake.

Word came down the road on its own. I didn’t tell anyone to do a thing. I just said what happened.”

I stood there in the dark with the phone against my ear.

“He’s going to have to hire local kids,” Leland said. “Rent a machine. Pay double. He’ll find somebody. But it won’t be a crew that follows the wheat.

And a crew that follows the wheat is the only thing that gets a Kansas farmer’s crop in on time. He’ll have to take his chances with the rain.”

“That’s hard.” “It is,” Leland said. “It’s also what it costs.” He cleared his throat. “Your daddy would’ve liked this, you know. Not the part where it hurts. The part where it’s fair.”

I did not answer him for a while.

My mother, who is eighty, drove down to my house in October with a pie she had baked in my father’s old pan.

She sat at the kitchen table and ate a slice with a fork. Carla poured her coffee. Cade sat across from her with his cap on the table.