tougher, his balance even and confident. His back no longer ached in the morning. When the ancient baler choked on too large a lump of hay, Lee could hop down and fix the jam. He had learned to handle the far more complicated gearing of the International and could guide the big tractor over the uneven ground on days Grizz let him drive a load of hay up from the fields. Hay stuck to his sweat-streaked skin. Blades of it probed for tender places to make fresh wounds. He breathed in the tractor’s exhaust and dust and bugs kicked up from the fields.
And yet it was beautiful to be together in the hot sundown. Swallows dipped and dived around them, hunting insects the tractor stirred up from the soil. The fields shone emerald in the fading light. From this upper pasture, the two had a view of the river valley, and Grizz turned now to point toward the west where thunderheads piled up. They would have to hurry before the rain came. If the hay got soaked, it would mold and rot, and all their hard work would be for nothing. The wind already carried the sweet smell of wet. A shadow from a chicken hawk riding on a thermal passed over the field and chased away the swallows. Lee took the bales and formed neat square stacks while Grizz kicked the tractor into higher gear. They worked in a wordless rhythm, moving faster to beat the rain, his focus on maneuvering the tractor in tight turns, Lee yanking out bales and tossing and stacking.
Then the work was done, and Lee rode down the hill standing atop his lurching hay mound, sapped but triumphant. From his perch, twenty feet above the mowed ground, he could likely see the old landing on the other side of the valley, the silver glinting of the river, and beyond it the rim of the world itself, turning black now with storm.
Lightning rippled from boiling clouds, followed a few seconds later by grumbles of thunder. Grizz heard the cattle moan out in the yard. One large drop of rain splashed his cheek. “Hurry,” he called to him, grinding the tractor to a halt outside the barn. Lee scrambled down from the pile of stacked bales, chunks of loose hay spraying down along with him.
A minute later, Grizz emerged from the barn with an immense blue tarp and a coil of rope and motioned for Lee to climb up again. Back atop the hay, Lee took the end of the tarp just as the rain began to lash down. Lee balanced along the flat surface, the tarp fanning out behind him. Wind lifted the sheet and nearly tore it from his grasp. Grizz was shouting from below while he clutched a rope that held it from the other end. Rain blinded him. Grizz imagined the tarp filling up like a sail, lifting the boy and carrying him straight into the thunderheads. But Lee got down on his knees to keep his balance and crawled, still dragging the flapping tarp behind him. Then he was climbing down the other side, the billowing plastic stretching and then lying flat across the bales. Wind and rain battered both of them. Lee was drenched by the time Grizz came around the side with another rope to secure it. “You can let go now,” he told him. “Let’s get you inside.”
On a normal day they would sit out on the white sagging porch and sip tea with fresh mint pulled from the weedy garden Jo had once tended. Sometimes they were joined by the pastor’s wife with her baby girl. Seth’s old girlfriend had moved back to the Cities along with her father.
On this day, Grizz left him alone to undress in the mudroom, stripping off his soaked socks and the very same ragged shoes he had worn during his tumble down the mountain. After a few minutes he carried to him a bundle of musty-smelling clothes and an old towel. “You can shower down here. I have some shoes that might fit you as well.” Lee frowned and said nothing, but when he came back upstairs he was wearing the Judas Priest shirt from Seth and his son’s jeans and shoes. “These clothes?” he said.
“Yeah. They were his.”
Lee said nothing.
“I’ll drive you home.”
“That’s okay. The rain’s stopped outside.” They both listened in the new quiet. The faint sound of a radio crooning trickled in from the next room. “I don’t