What I learned is that people will surprise you, if you give them a way to be better than they are. Most of them won’t take it. But a few will, and those few are the ones who keep a country running.
Tom knew that. He’d known it all his life. It’s why he buried a cash box in a field, and a letter beside it, and a line in a notebook that said check the west corner. He didn’t trust himself to say it out loud. So he left it in the one place I’d be sure to walk.The following June, a year to the week after Tom’s last cutting, we put up the north eighty again.
It was a good year, wet in spring, warm in May, and the grass came on thick and sweet. Arlen’s nephew ran the baler. Gene brought his own tractor and showed up uninvited, and Ben drove the rake. Dwayne, who had come every Saturday through the winter and had quietly kept coming through the spring, worked the stackyard beside me, loading bales onto the flatbed with a steady, uncomplaining rhythm.
