Damn idiot ought to get a ticket. Driving like that,” Dale shouted, hitting the brakes. The truck slid a little on the slippery highway, but Dale held the wheel and slowed to 80 without coming too close to the back of the green Chevy Malibu in front of them. Dale waited impatiently for his chance to pass, craning his head to the left, then watching two matching semis come by, one right behind the other. “Look at those guys. Travelling in packs so nobody can get around.” Then Dale saw his chance to pass and took it, glaring into the window of the Malibu as he sped by.
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“Look at that guy. They should take away his license,” Dale said.
Dale’s son Jeff looked over from his seat on the passenger side of Dale’s truck. Jeff thought the other driver looked a lot like his father, but he wasn’t going to say that. Especially not today.
“It’s not that icy. Drivers who slow down the whole highway are way more dangerous than a little ice.”
Dale kept ranting as he pulled back into the right-hand lane. “I can’t believe the gearbox on that damn grainleg packed up like that. Just when we were almost to the bottom of that bin-full of soybeans. If we don’t get those beans through the cleaning plant before the weather turns cold again, we’re not going to get them cleaned until it warms up in the spring.”
Jeff let his father go on.
“Stupid soybeans. Why are we growing a crop too delicate to be handled in the cold?”
“Two trips to town in one day,” Dale kept talking. “No wonder we can’t get anything done. We spend all day driving up and down the highway.”
Jeff took a deep breath. Now Dale was ranting about something a little closer to what was actually bothering him.
A few hours earlier, Dale had called Jeff out to the cleaning plant. “The grainleg gearbox is packed up tighter than… I don’t even know what. I could use a little help getting it down. We’ll have to take it in to town to the machine shop so we can get back in business.”
Jeff and Dale struggled until they finally had the gearbox loaded into the back of Dale’s truck.
“Guess we were headed to town this morning anyway,” Dale said. “You ready to deal with Greg on that new combine? Got the chequebook out?”
“I need to talk to you about that, Dad,” Jeff said. “I called Greg at the dealership and changed our meeting to this afternoon.”
“Why?”
“Elaine wants to come,” Jeff said. “And she’s tied up taking Connor to playschool this morning.”
Jeff paused. “I hope that’s OK.”
“It’s your meeting, son. Have it when you like. But it’s a shame for us to make two trips. Especially when Elaine’s already in town this morning. But if she wants to ride in with us, there’s room in the truck.”
“Dad,” Jeff started slowly. “Elaine doesn’t want a ride to the Co-op. She wants to come along when we make the deal with Greg.”
“What?” Dale said.
“She wants to be there when we make the deal.”
“Why?” Dale asked.
“She’s been keeping the books. Working on financial plans. She wants to be more involved with the business.”
“Your mother never tried to do that. And she kept the books for decades.”
“You know Elaine,” Jeff said. “And it kind of makes sense. This is the biggest deal we’ll make all year.”
“Sure, it’s a big deal. But what’s the use of having an extra person in the room for it? What’s she going to say? Is she going to try to stop you from closing the deal?”
“Well…” Jeff started.
“She’s never bought anything more expensive than a new winter coat. What if she opens her mouth at the wrong time and we end up paying more than we have to?”
“I don’t see…” Jeff started.
“And where’s she going to sit? You know Greg’s office. There’s only two chairs on our side of the desk.”
“With the price of new machinery, I think Greg could bring in a third chair,” Jeff said.
“We’ll see,” Dale said. “I’m going to change my clothes so I can get that gearbox into the shop as soon as possible.”
“I’ll change too, and come along,” Jeff said.
“You sure you can do that without your wife?” Dale muttered, heading toward his house.
They hadn’t spoken much since that, unless Dale’s angry monologues counted as conversation.
“Geez,” Dale kept complaining while he drove, slamming the brakes hard to avoid hitting the grey Ford Explorer in front of them that was going well below the speed limit. “You’d think these people were driving through the blizzard of ’73, the way they’re creeping along. Just because there’s a little frost coming out of the road.”
But there was more ice than Dale realized. Even with his foot hard on the pedal and the anti-lock brakes pumping, they weren’t going to be able to stop in time. Jeff braced himself with both hands on the dashboard, and Dale kept his hands tight on the wheel while the truck spun 90 degrees clockwise and shot into the ditch. There was just enough snow in there that they weren’t going to be able to drive it out.
Dale and Jeff looked down at themselves to make sure they weren’t hurt. They watched the Ford Explorer inch on westward down the icy road, with no indication that the driver even knew she’d almost been in a serious accident.
“You OK?” Dale asked, trying to catch his breath.
“Think so. You?”
“Geez,” Dale said. “That could’ve killed us both.”
“Got kind of lucky,” Jeff said.
Then the men saw an SUV coming from the west slow down and pull over carefully onto the far side of the road. Of course it was Elaine, on her way home from Connor’s playschool.
“We’d better get across the road in a hurry,” Dale said. “She’ll have Connor and the baby in the back. We don’t want anyone rear-ending her.”
A few minutes later they were all in the SUV, heading toward the Hanson farm.
“Guess we’re not going to get the cleaning plant running again anytime soon,” Jeff said, from where he was wedged between the two boys’ car seats in the back of the SUV.
“We’ll get the truck out of the ditch, then go back in to town,” Dale said. “What time are we supposed to see Greg?”
“Two-thirty,” Elaine said.
“Huh,” Dale said. “I hear you’re coming along.”
“Yes,” she said, slowing down carefully to turn off the highway and onto their grid road.
“Thanks for letting me sit in. Don’t worry, I won’t say much. I just want to watch and see how you do it. I want to learn as much as I can about how you do business. In case something happens to Jeff one day.”
“Something almost happened just now,” Jeff piped up.
“I suppose you might as well learn the ropes, Elaine,” Dale said. “Glad to have you.”
Leeann Minogue is the editor of Grainews, a playwright and part of a family grain farm in southeastern Saskatchewan
