Elaine kept a close watch on the combine header as the canola fed in, glancing over to check the moisture reading on the screen every few seconds. The combine’s night lights lit up the dust floating over the field. It was only a little after eight-thirty, but already dark enough that, outside the circle of the machine’s lights, the only signs of life Elaine could see from this field were the lights of some nearby pumpjacks.
When she reached the end of the canola swath, she made a 180-degree turn, then lowered the header to pick up the next one. She turned the autosteer back on, and once the machine took control, she rooted around on the shelf behind her for her water bottle. She found it buried under a filthy hoodie her husband Jeff had been looking for all day. She opened the bottle, then looked back down at the header.
“Dammit,” she shouted as she stopped the header and jerked the combine to a stop. Water from the bottle spilled on her jeans.
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Elaine hadn’t seen the pile of canola that Jeff or her father-in-law Dale must’ve left behind when they swathed this field. She should’ve been paying attention. She should’ve seen the pile coming and worked it into the header a little at a time. Now she had the header plugged and canola piled up all along the width of the machine.
She tried running the header in reverse to see if she could get things going from inside the cab. But it was no use. She idled the machine down and clicked the parking brake on.
“Good thing I found this,” she muttered, pulling Jeff’s hoodie on over her own sweater. Based on the smell of the hoodie, she was going to have to make time to do laundry. She picked up a pair of gloves from the floor of the cab, let herself out and climbed down the ladder.
She didn’t have time to waste on stupid mistakes like this. It was already a late harvest. So many rainy days had kept them out of the field. And even when it wasn’t raining, it was at least noon before the dew dried up enough that they could start combining.
And here she was, wasting perfectly good harvest time.
It had been a busy month. Jeff and Elaine’s son Connor had started Grade 7. That meant a move to the “big school.” Connor wouldn’t admit he was nervous, but Elaine recognized the scared look on his face when the school bus pulled into the yard. She worried about him as she watched him trudge out to the bus, stopping to pet Flora, the German shepherd puppy who was barking at the open bus door as if the driver was a dangerous thief.
Connor’s younger sister Jenny was so excited to start fourth grade that she skipped out to the waiting bus and shoved the dog out of her way, yelling “Shut up, Flora!” At least Elaine didn’t have to worry about her.
Connor’s hockey practices and Jenny’s dance classes had already started. Elaine arranged rides for Connor with his friend. She hired a teenaged neighbour, Madison Hunter, to take Jenny to dance class, bring her home, make dinner for both kids and put them to bed before Elaine and Jeff came in for the night. The plans worked, but Elaine was stricken with guilt. She wanted to be there herself.
“With so much drought everywhere, I should be grateful we have a crop to harvest,” Elaine had said to Jeff that morning after the school bus left. “But this harvest has been going on too long.”
“Let’s just get that canola we’ve already sold safely into a bin,” Jeff said. “Have you seen my blue hoodie?”
“You lost another one?” Elaine asked while she wiped up the kitchen counter. “We’re going to have to buy them in bulk.”
“It’s cold,” he said. “Probably no point taking the combine out for at least a couple more hours.”
“Good,” Elaine said. “I have another Zoom meeting in half an hour.” Since Elaine had been elected to a farm board, she’d spent more time in online meetings than anyone deserved.
“Fertilizer emissions?” Jeff asked.
“Yup. And input costs,” Elaine said. She set the cloth in the sink. “I’d better get to my office and finish reading that new carbon study.”
“I’ve got some calls to make,” Jeff said. “I need to find a trucker to haul lentils to the terminal, and I’ve had two messages about seed cleaning.”
“Seems early for that,” Elaine said.
“That’s because we’re harvesting so late,” Jeff said.
“Maybe.”
“It would be easier to take if everybody else on Twitter wasn’t already done,” Jeff said.
“It’s hard to remember to be thankful,” Elaine said.
“We’re thankful,” Jeff said. “But we’re tired.”
After sitting through two Zoom meetings, making lunches, double-checking on rides for Connor and Jenny, feeding the dogs and cats, filling the trucks with fuel and spending nine hours on the combine, Elaine was still tired, but hanging in. Until now.
Now she was walking in the dark, picking her way through the sharp canola stalks to the front of the idling combine. The chilly fall night stung where her jeans were wet with spilled water.
She started pulling piles of canola stalks off the combine table and onto the ground.
Soon Elaine saw the lights of the grain truck coming closer. Jeff had been waiting in the truck for another full hopper of canola to haul to the bins. He must’ve noticed that the combine lights weren’t moving. He didn’t say anything, just came over and started hauling canola off the canvas on the other side of the header. When they met in the middle, Jeff looked over. “You found my hoodie!” he said.
“I only looked away for a few seconds,” Elaine said, angry with herself.
“It happens,” Jeff said.
Elaine rolled her eyes and kept working.
They finished in a few minutes. Elaine climbed back into the cab and reversed the header again. This time, the last of the canola got shoved out onto the canvas. The table was cleared and she was back in action.
Then her cell phone rang. It was Jeff, calling from the ground right beside the combine ladder.
“Did you notice the lights?” he asked.
“Aren’t they working right? They seem fine from here.”
“Not the combine lights. The northern lights.”
“What?” Elaine asked.
“You probably can’t seem them from inside. Come back down,” Jeff said.
“There’s no time. It’ll be too tough to thrash soon.”
“Just come down.”
Elaine reluctantly put the parking brake back on and went down the ladder again. She followed Jeff into the dark on the other side of the truck.
They stood together, looking up at the dazzling green lights moving across the sky.
“It’s incredible,” Elaine said quietly.
“Yeah,” Jeff answered.
She could see her breath in the night cold.
Jeff reached out and took her hand. Elaine pulled it back, used her other hand to pull her glove off, then took Jeff’s hand again.
They stood together. Watching the night sky.
