The second hot bale was worse than the first. The third one, when I drew it out, came apart a little on the forks, and a piece of it fell on the shed floor, smoking, and Paisley was on it with the hose before I could even say her name.
The fourth one was the one that scared me. When I pulled it, the air rushed into the hole behind it, and for one second I saw a little orange glow deep in the gap, like a coal in a stove when you open the door.
“Back!” I said. “Both of you, back out to the field! Now!”
They went. Paisley dropped the nozzle and ran, and Kenna caught her by the arm and they stood out in the stubble together.
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I backed that bale out with smoke pouring off it and set it down and then I sat on the tractor and watched the gap.
The glow did not catch. It sat there and smoked. Brock’s words were in my head. If it flares, you back out. The shed is just a shed.
But it did not flare. And after a minute I waved Paisley back, and she came, and she put the water on it until it stopped smoking, and then we went on.
I looked at my phone once. Fourteen minutes since I had called 911.
Paisley’s question
We had a rhythm after that. Kenna would come in on foot and look at the face of the stack and tell me which bale was smoking worst. I would pull it.
Paisley would wet the gap. I would drag the bale out and Kenna would wave me back, and cut it, and Paisley would soak it.
Then Kenna would trade me for the cool bales on the edges, so we could keep a lane open and the air moving, and I would stand by Paisley and hold the hose with her, because her arms were shaking from it.
We did not talk much. There was nothing to say. There was just the next bale.
About twenty minutes in, we were standing together in the field by the row of split, steaming bales, and Paisley pushed her cap back and wiped her face with her arm, and it left a long dark streak of soot across her cheek and freckles.
She looked down at the bales. They were brown and wet and black in the middle and smelled like a burnt pan.
“Mom,” she said. “Can the cows still eat these?”
It was such a little question. She was thirteen and her mother was pulling smoking hay out of a shed with a forty-year-old tractor, and what she wanted to know was whether her cows were going to be all right this winter.
I could not answer her right then. My throat would not do it. I just put my hand on the back of her neck for one second, and she leaned into it, and then I went back to the tractor.