“I’ll figure it out.”
I climbed into the pickup and drove away.
In the mirror, Phil remained beside the gate.
Behind him stood our childhood home.
The yellow curtain Mom had hung in the kitchen window years earlier was still there.
I looked away before the road blurred.
I rented pasture from Mrs. Nielsen, a widow north of Elba.
Her husband had been a friend of Dad’s.
She agreed to rent me enough grazing land for five months.
The cost came to thirteen thousand dollars.
It was money I’d never expected to spend.
But my cattle needed grass.
Then I visited the local agricultural cooperative.
Jeff, the manager, had known me since Little League.
He listened when I asked whether he needed help during the spring.
He didn’t ask why I wasn’t working on Dad’s farm.
I appreciated that.
“Still have your commercial driver’s license?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I need someone to haul fertilizer and help at the feed mill. Twenty-three dollars an hour.”
“When can I start?”
“Monday.”
So a man who’d spent twenty-two years helping operate four hundred acres began hauling fertilizer to other people’s fields.
Every morning, I fed my own cattle before sunrise.
Then I went to work.
In the evenings, I returned home and handled whatever chores remained.
Dad’s feed truck was far more equipment than forty cows required.
But I used it anyway.
Every morning at five-thirty, I climbed into that cab.
His gloves were still on the dashboard.
And every morning, I quietly said hello.
I knew how foolish it sounded.
But it was the closest thing I had to talking to him.
—
When April arrived, I began watching the weather.
Not because I had a crop to plant.
Because I knew exactly when Dad’s fields should be planted.
The ground beneath the center pivot warmed slowly.
Dad always waited until the soil reached fifty degrees at a depth of four inches, measured at seven in the morning for three consecutive days.
He kept a soil thermometer hanging on a nail in the shop.
He also carried a small green notebook.
Inside were decades of information about the farm.
Seed populations.
Planter adjustments.
Irrigation settings.
Equipment problems.
Everything he’d learned through experience.
I’d planted those fields every spring for twenty-two years.
I knew every low spot.
Every change in soil.
Every section that dried slowly after heavy rain.
But that spring, I wasn’t there.
Theresa noticed me checking the weather reports.
One evening, she finally said, “Call Phil.”
I kept eating.
“About what?”
“Offer to help plant.”
“He has my number.”
“Wade.”
I looked up.
“He inherited the farm. If he wants me to plant it, he can ask.”
“That’s pride talking.”
“Some of it.”
“What about the rest?”
I put down my fork.
“I’ve worked those fields for twenty-two springs. I’m not going to beg my brother for a job on the land I thought I’d spend my life farming.”
Theresa sighed.
“He might not know how to ask.”
“Then he needs to learn.”
She didn’t answer.
She simply gave me another slice of pie.
That was Theresa’s way of telling me I was being stubborn without starting an argument.
—
By late April, the soil was warm enough to plant.
Neighboring farmers began working their fields.
Dad’s land remained untouched.
I drove past it twice a day in the fertilizer truck.
The corn stalks from the previous harvest stood in silent rows.
No tractor.
No planter.
No activity.
I kept waiting for Phil to call.
He didn’t.
On May ninth, two inches of rain fell.
Three days later, I drove past the farm and saw a sixteen-row planter moving across the center-pivot quarter.
Behind it was an unfamiliar tractor.
A pickup with Kansas license plates was parked nearby.
Phil had hired an outside crew.
I slowed down.
The soil was still too wet.
I could see the planter wheels pressing muddy trenches into the field.
The ground was smearing instead of crumbling.
Anyone who knew that land would have waited several more days.
I almost turned into the driveway.
My hand moved toward the indicator.
Then I remembered that Phil had hired strangers instead of calling me.
He’d chosen someone from Kansas over his own brother.
I lowered my hand.
And drove past.
I’m not proud of that decision.
But it’s the truth.
That evening, Theresa found me sitting in Dad’s feed truck after dark.
The driver’s door was open.
I hadn’t even turned on the cab light.
“They planted it too wet,” I told her.
She climbed onto the running board.
“Can it be fixed?”
“Some of it.”
“Then why aren’t you helping?”
I looked away.
“He didn’t ask.”
She put her arm around my shoulders.
We sat quietly beneath the yard light.
Finally, she whispered, “Your father would hate seeing you two like this.”
“He’s the one who caused it.”
“I know,” she said. “But I think he’d hate it anyway.”
By the middle of June, the consequences were obvious.
Corn should emerge in neat, even rows.
Dad used to say a properly planted field ought to look like a choir standing in formation.
This one looked terrible.
Some plants were knee-high.
Others were barely four inches tall.
There were long gaps where nothing had emerged.
In some places, several stalks crowded together.
The wet planting conditions had caused the seed trenches to harden.
Roots struggled to grow downward.
Weeds spread between the rows.
And the center-pivot irrigation system hadn’t moved once.
It was still sitting exactly where Dad had parked it the previous September.
One tire was flat.
The control panel wasn’t working.
On the east eighty, the crew had planted corn too densely for dryland conditions.
If summer turned hot, the crop would struggle badly.
Everybody in the county could see the problems.
Especially Butch Sedlacek.
Butch was seventy-three.
He’d farmed beside Dad for nearly half a century.
The two men had spent decades arguing across their shared fence.
But they respected each other.
One Thursday evening, Butch found Phil inspecting the poor corn.
He stopped his pickup beside the field.
Then leaned against the fence.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Finally, he spoke.
“Your father would’ve said a blind mule could plant straighter than that.”
Phil sighed.
“I expect he would.”
Butch looked over the field.
“He’d have plenty to say about those gaps, too.”
“I know.”
“But he would’ve said something else.”
Phil looked at him.
“What?”
“He’d say the crop isn’t dead yet. It needs weed control, nitrogen, and irrigation. And it needs all three quickly.”
Phil looked toward the silent center pivot.
“I don’t know how to start it.”
Butch nodded.
“I figured.”
“I called someone. He said he could come back in two weeks.”
“You don’t have two weeks.”
Phil removed his cap.
Rubbed his forehead.
And stared at the machinery.
Then Butch said something that finally broke through his pride.
“There’s a man eleven miles from here who knows everything about that irrigation system.”
Phil lowered his eyes.
“I know.”
“Then why aren’t you calling him?”
Phil hesitated.
Finally, he admitted the truth.
“Because Dad left me the farm and gave Wade an old truck. How am I supposed to drive over there and ask him to help?”
Butch considered that.
Then replied, “The same way he’d have to come asking you. Slowly, with your hat in your hands.”
That evening, Phil drove to my house.
I was outside servicing the feed truck when I heard tires crunching along our gravel driveway.
I turned.
It was Dad’s old blue pickup.
For half a second, seeing that truck approach in the evening sunlight made my heart jump.
I expected Dad to step out.
Instead, Phil climbed down.
His boots were covered in mud.
He walked toward me carrying his cap.
Then he stopped beside the feed truck.
He looked through the windshield.
I knew he could see Dad’s gloves.
“Wade?”
I wiped my hands on a rag.
“What is it?”
Phil stared at the ground.
Then he looked at me.
“I need your help.”
Four months.
I’d waited four months to hear those words.
I’d imagined giving him a long speech.
I’d rehearsed everything I wanted to say about the farm, the will, and the strangers he’d hired.
But now he stood in front of me, holding his cap with both hands.
He looked tired.
Embarrassed.
And more like our father than I’d ever noticed before.
“I don’t know what I’m doing out there,” he admitted.
I remained silent.
“I know the fields are in trouble. I can see that much. But I don’t understand how bad things are or what to fix first.”
