Exhaustion made people careless.
They switched places.
“You still know how to operate one of these?” Ethan asked.
Walter looked around the computerized cab.
“No.”
Ethan almost smiled.
“Then why are you here?”
“I know how to drive straight.”
They laughed.
Walter listened while Blake explained the basic controls.
Then the seventy-two-year-old mechanic began harvesting.
He didn't chase maximum speed.
He watched the crop entering the header.
He listened to the engine.
He checked the grain sample.
Blake monitored the electrical system.
At three in the morning, the younger technician closed his laptop.
Walter noticed.
“No more numbers?”
“The numbers are good.”
“Numbers usually are when everything else is.”
Blake looked toward him.
“You think we're useless, don't you?”
Walter kept the combine aligned with the row.
“No.”
“You made it pretty clear you don't trust diagnostics.”
“I trust them.”
“Then what was today?”
Walter adjusted the reel speed.
“Your laptop told you seventeen systems were failing. You believed it because the machine cost enough to be complicated.”
“It is complicated.”
“Yes.”
Walter looked toward the wheat.
“But complicated machines still obey simple laws.”
“Voltage.”
“Heat. Friction. Pressure. Air. Fuel.”
He glanced toward Blake.
“And gravity.”
Walter pointed toward the floor.
“Broken pieces fall down.”
The Things Machines Cannot See
By sunrise, they had harvested four hundred acres.
The storm was moving faster.
Weather radar showed a line of severe thunderstorms crossing western Kansas.
Wind warnings were being issued.
They continued.
The neighboring combine worked the southern field.
Ethan's machine moved north.
Trucks carried grain to the elevator as quickly as the roads allowed.
At noon, Claire brought sandwiches into the cab.
At two, a tire failed on one of the grain trucks.
Walter repaired the wheel while Lucas inspected the combine's new ground connections.
At four, thunder rolled in the distance.
Seven hundred acres remained.
The wind began pushing waves through the wheat.
Every farmer knew what that meant.
Once stalks lodged flat against the soil, harvesting became dramatically slower.
Some grain would never be recovered.
Ethan increased speed.
The grain-loss monitor climbed.
Walter, riding beside him, reached toward the speed control.
“Slow down.”
“We don't have time.”
“You're throwing wheat out the back.”
“I'm trying to save the field.”
“You save it by putting grain in the tank.”
Ethan's temper rose.
“This isn't your farm.”
Walter withdrew his hand.
“No.”
There was no anger in his voice.
Only truth.
Ethan looked at him.
Walter had spent the previous night in the field.
He had repaired the combine without asking for money.
He had called neighbors.
He had worked as though Daniel Mercer might return at any moment and inspect what they had done.
Ethan reduced the speed.
The loss reading dropped.
“I'm sorry.”
Walter nodded.
“Your father used to get mean when he was scared too.”
Ethan tightened his grip on the controls.
“You don't have to keep talking about him.”
“No.”
Walter looked toward the field.
“But you don't have to keep pretending this is only wheat.”
Ethan said nothing.
The combine continued forward.
Finally, he spoke.
“My last conversation with him was an argument.”
Walter remained silent.
“He wanted to replace the main shop roof. I said we couldn't afford it.”
He swallowed.
“He told me I was thinking like an employee instead of an owner.”
The engine rumbled beneath them.
“I told him maybe the farm needed an owner who understood debt.”
Ethan stared through the windshield.
“He died that afternoon.”
Walter watched the reel.
“Did your father know you loved him?”
“I don't know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“How?”
“Because everyone knew.”
Ethan looked away.
The first cold drops of rain struck the windshield at 6:17 that evening.
They had one field left.
Two hundred and forty acres.
The rain remained light, but the western sky had turned almost black.
Lightning flashed beyond the county road.
Ethan kept harvesting.
The header cut another row.
Then another.
Rain struck harder.
The wheat began bending.
“Last pass,” Walter said.
“We can keep going.”
“Not safely.”
“One more field.”
“One more pass.”
Ethan looked toward the yield map.
They had harvested more than ninety percent of the crop.
It didn't feel like enough.
The rain intensified.
Mud began forming beneath the front tires.
Walter reached toward the separator switch.
“Your father would stop.”
“You don't know that.”
“I pulled him out of enough wet fields to know he should have.”
Despite himself, Ethan laughed.
Then he disengaged the header.
The combine rolled toward the field entrance as the storm finally broke.
Rain hammered the cab.
Wind swept across the wheat in silver sheets.
For the first time in two days, Ethan let the machine stop.