What are you waiting for?” Jeff asked his father. “Get in the combine and let’s get going. These peas aren’t going to harvest themselves.”
Dale stood with Jeff, looking up at the cab.
“You go ahead. You can make the first round this year.”
Jeff looked surprised. “But you always combine the first round of the first field. I’ve been standing around waiting for you to get here for half an hour already!”
“Huh. No sense in that. It’s no big deal. You go ahead.”
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“OK Dad. If you’re sure,” Jeff said, one foot already on the ladder. Grinning. “Can you and Grandpa bring the truck out from the yard? Won’t be long until I get a full hopper.”
“Of course we can,” Ed said. “We’re not a couple of feeble-minded old men.”
“Speak for yourself, Dad,” Dale muttered to himself.
Dale hadn’t been feeling too confident this season. While he was seeding, distracted by a broken ankle, a ringing phone, and neighbours driving by on the road, he’d missed a spot. Then, when Jeff realized there was a problem in that part of the field and brought in experts to diagnose it, Dale had been too embarrassed to tell anyone what he’d done. Finally, Jeff had figured out the problem.
“I’m sorry,” Dale had mumbled, red faced.
“It’s OK Dad,” Jeff had told him. “It was pretty good entertainment, actually. You should’ve seen that hotshot agronomist coming up with crazy high-tech theories.”
Jeff hadn’t lost any sleep over it, but the incident had really thrown Dale. When it was time to get the GPS system set up in the swather, he wasn’t sure he had it right. “I’m going to call the dealership,” Dale told Jeff. “We’ll just get that guy from Weyburn out here to make sure I have it right.”
“It looks good to me, Dad,” Jeff said. “You had it running fine last year.”
Midsummer, when Jeff was trying to decide if he should put on a second round of fungicide, Dale had been left almost speechless with indecision. “Geez, son… could go either way.”
Dale’s father, Ed, had been off in the corner of the shop that morning, making himself an Italian espresso in the one-cup machine his girlfriend Helen had bought for him. When Jeff had left the shop, Ed called Dale over to the coffee pot.
“What’s going on here? You’re acting like some retiree who’s about to sell his place and move out to Vancouver Island. Spend your days trying to get palm trees to grow in your backyard.”
“They can grow palm trees out there?” Dale asked.
“You should see those yards! Helen and I could hardly believe it when we were driving through there in June! They can grow darn near anything… Wait, you changed the subject! What’s going on with you these days? You can’t set up the swather. You can’t make a decision. Donna probably had to tell you what shorts to put on this morning.”
“I guess… I’m just worried…”
“Everybody’s worried. All the time. That’s farming,” Ed said, with no trace of sympathy.
“I guess you’re right,” Dale had said, putting an end to the whole conversation.
Things had gone downhill from there when Dale had managed to gouge the corner of the shed with the edge of the lawnmower at the end of July.
Luckily, Jeff had been off at the lake with his wife and kids that afternoon, so he hadn’t been there to see the damage. Dale was able to fix the shed reasonably quickly once he found the spare tin at the back of the shop. But his confidence had suffered a hard blow.
And now — now that it was time to get in the combine and put the first of the 2015 crop through the header, Dale didn’t feel up to it.
Dale and Ed stood back, watching Jeff start up the combine and cut into the peas. Then Dale walked into the flying dust and chaff and got down on his knees behind the combine to look at the losses.
“Wish I could still get down on my knees like that, and be sure I could get back up!” Ed joked. “What’s the damage?”
“Looks good. I think we just about have that combine set right,” Dale said.
“Must be killing you not to be running it.”
Dale didn’t answer.
“I know why I’m not up in that combine as much as I used to be,” Ed said. “But I don’t know what you’re doing. You’ve been acting strange all summer.”
Dale kept running his hands through the pea stubble, pretending to look for stray peas.
“I know you’re worried. I haven’t seen the books, but after all that flooding, then the hail, all that disease. I imagine pulling this crop off is pretty important,” Ed said.
“Yup,” Dale said. “But it’s not just the farm. It’s… Well, it’s me.
“You? Is something wrong with you?”
“No. Yes. Maybe? I’ve been worried ever since I had that miss at seeding. I’m not as sharp as I used to be.”
Ed rolled his eyes and brushed some stray pea straw off of the shoulder of his shirt.
“Don’t act like it wasn’t a big deal. That sort of thing shouldn’t happen. I let Jeff down… I’m… I’m getting too old for this.”
With that Ed snorted in disgust. Then he laughed. “If I’d quit and run off to the campground complaining I was too old every time I made a stupid mistake around here, you wouldn’t have seen me since 1997!”
A trace of a smile came to Dale’s lips, and he said, “Well, there was that day you drove the combine into the shed before you rolled the door up far enough in 1996…”
Then Ed and Dale both started laughing.
“People get older,” Ed said. “Beats the alternative.”
“Dad, I just don’t want to screw anything up. Jeff needs to get off to the best start he can. He doesn’t need some old man weighing him down.”
“No, but he does need an old man as part of his crew. And someone he can get some advice from now and then.” Then Ed pointed at himself. “Heck. The kid needs one old man, and one really old man.”
They both laughed again, then neither one spoke for a few seconds.
Dale finally broke the silence. “I’m not in charge here anymore.”
“Look at it this way,” Ed said. “You always wanted to be able to pass the place on to your son.”
“Yeah. But it’s hard.”
“Tell me about it,” Ed said. “At least your son isn’t as big a bonehead as mine was.”
They chuckled together.
“And look at it this way,” Ed said. “You always get more vacations when you’re not in charge.”
Dale’s cellphone rang. When he answered, they both heard Jeff on the other end. “Are you two going to get that truck moved out here soon? I’m going to need it!”
“Yup, be right there,” Dale said, and hung up, still chuckling to himself.
“Let’s go,” Ed said. “Don’t want to let the boss down.”
