I turned away.
Not because I felt bad.
Because if I laughed while a deputy was standing there, I might have become the villain of my own story.
Colin looked down at his ruined shoes.
Then at the car.
Then at me.
“You did this!”
I stared.
“I’m thirty feet away.”
“You brought those machines!”
“Yes.”
“You pressured me!”
Aaron stepped between us.
“Sir.”
“He did this intentionally!”
“You were ordered to move to the paved pull-off.”
“This road is unsafe!”
“The road didn’t put you in the ditch.”
Colin’s face went purple.
He started pointing at everybody.
Me.
Aaron.
The combine.
The county.
Possibly agriculture itself.
Meanwhile, the sun continued setting.
I looked at Aaron.
“Can we get into the field?”
He looked at the gate.
The car was no longer blocking it.
“Yeah.”
Colin spun.
“You’re just letting him work?”
Aaron stared at him.
“Yes.”
“My car is in a ditch!”
“I’m going to call recovery.”
“I need a flatbed.”
Aaron looked down at the car.
“I don’t think a standard flatbed is touching that.”
Colin looked horrified.
“What?”
“You’re too far down and the angle is bad. It’s probably going to need a boom truck.”
“I need it out now.”
Aaron looked toward the horizon.
“Good luck with that.”
Then he motioned me forward.
“Get your combine off the road.”
That might have been the most beautiful sentence I heard all year.
Matt pulled the combine into position.
The machine needed every foot of the gate opening.
He swung wide across the shoulder, nose turning slowly toward the field.
Colin stood beside Aaron watching.
The combine passed exactly where the sports car had been parked.
Then the header entered the soybeans.
The reel began turning.
Plants disappeared beneath the cutter bar.
Beans started filling the tank.
We were harvesting.
I climbed back into the tractor and followed with the grain cart.
Before I entered the gate, Colin shouted:
“This isn’t over!”
I stopped.
Looked at him.
“You were right about one thing.”
He glared.
“What?”
“The sunset.”
I looked west.
Orange light stretched beneath the storm clouds.
“It is pretty.”
Matt laughed so hard over the radio that I had to turn the volume down.
Then we went to work.
We harvested all night.
That sounds heroic when you say it quickly.
It wasn’t.
It was miserable.
Dust.
Noise.
Cold.
Coffee.
Constant lights.
Checking moisture.
Watching bearings.
Moving grain.
Calling the elevator.
Fighting exhaustion.
But acre by acre, the beans came out.
At midnight, the forecast moved the storm forward.
By three in the morning, we had less than thirty acres left.
At five-thirty, the eastern sky began changing color.
At seven-fifteen, the final pass disappeared into the combine.
Eighty acres.
Done.
My hands were shaking from caffeine and fatigue when I shut down the grain cart tractor.
Three hours later, freezing rain began tapping against the equipment shed roof.
By noon, it sounded like handfuls of gravel hitting the metal.
The unharvested soybean field across the county road took a beating.
Pods shattered.
Stems flattened.
We had made it.
Barely.
And Colin’s car?
Still in the ditch.
The local towing company refused the recovery.
So did the second.
The car’s ground clearance was too low, the ditch too steep, and the angle too awkward to drag it out without causing more damage.
A specialized recovery company came from Des Moines the following afternoon.
Boom truck.
Outriggers.
Soft straps.
Traffic control.
Six people standing around discussing lift points like surgeons planning an operation.
By then the ditch was filling with rainwater.
They eventually lifted the car almost straight upward.
Mud poured from the wheels.
One side skirt was cracked.
The underbody panels were damaged.
The rear bumper had been partially pulled loose when the car slid.
The passenger side carried a long scrape from the embankment.
I did not watch with binoculars.
Tom did.
He gave me a running commentary over the phone.
“You should see his face.”
“I’m working.”
“He looks like somebody died.”
“Tom.”
“The tow guy just handed him paperwork.”
“Goodbye, Tom.”
“Wait, wait. He’s yelling.”
I hung up.