Wen had until Friday afternoon to come back with a trailer. He pulled into the driveway just past noon. His mother was hanging laundry on the line behind the house. She waved at him.
She did not yet know. He went inside. He took off his boots. He washed his hands twice. The second time with the orange pumice soap his grandmother had always kept by the sink.
And then he walked across the yard and down the Mauck place 3/4 of a mile down on the right. Hollis Mauck was 75 years old that summer. He had farmed the 80 acres next to the Holloways since 1947.
He had been Otis Holloway's friend and Mabel's friend. And there were certain things in Franklin County that everybody knew. And one of them was that Hollis Mauck would sit through a 4-hour Methodist potluck for Mabel Holloway and never once complain about the green bean casserole.
Hollis was in his shop oiling a hand sickle when Wen came in. He looked up. He looked at the boy's face. He set the sickle down.
"What did you do, son?" Hollis asked, not angry, just curious. Wen told him the whole thing. Lot 22, the bushings, the bidding, Drexel Behannon, Cyrus Penrose, the walk back to the pickup, the cigarette, "Accidents happen."
All of it. Hollis listened. He didn't interrupt. When Wen was done, Hollis nodded once.
"I've got the flatbed," Hollis said. "I'll drive behind you Sunday. Don't argue with me." That was the whole conversation.
On Sunday morning, Wen and Hollis drove the 18 miles back to Harlan County in a two-truck convoy. Wen first in the Chevy, Hollis behind in his old GMC, pulling a 16-ft flatbed. They winched the Massey-Harris up onto the trailer in the auction yard. Lurleen Cobb came out from the office and watched them load.
She gave Wen the smallest nod again, the same nod she had given him at the registration table. He understood now what it meant. They pulled out at 1:30 in the afternoon. The 18 miles home went by mile by mile.
At about the 12-mile mark on a long, flat stretch with no other traffic, a black Ford pickup came up fast in the rearview mirror. It pulled close to Wen's bumper, held there. Wen could not see the driver's face. The pickup hung on his bumper for maybe a quarter mile.
Then it swung out into the left lane to pass. And that was when the driver, whoever it was, looked into his side mirror and saw Hollis Mauck in the GMC behind, big as a barn, 15 yards off Wen's tail. The black Ford accelerated past, kept going, and disappeared around the next curve.
Wen never got a look at the plate. He never got a look at the driver. He would not, for the rest of his life, know for sure whether that pickup was Drexel Behannon or just some stranger in a hurry to get to Holdrege, but he would always wonder.
They pulled into the Holloway driveway at 2:15. Garrett Holloway was standing on the back porch drying his hands on a dish towel. He had heard the diesel coming half a mile away. He saw the flatbed first.
Then he saw the Massey-Harris, and his face went the color of wood ash. Hollis nodded at Garrett through the windshield. He didn't get out.
He backed the flatbed into position, watched Wen and his father unload. The Massey rolled off slow on its own wheels, the front end leaning the same as it had in the yard. And as soon as the tractor was on the gravel, Hollis tipped his cap at Garrett, said, "I'll come around for the trailer Tuesday." and drove away. He understood that the rest of this conversation was not for him.
Wen and his father stood in the driveway 10 ft apart, looking at the Massey-Harris. Garrett spoke first. His voice was very quiet, which was worse than yelling. "Wen.
Where did you get that money?" "My tin, from detasseling and the Mauck hay job." "Where did you get the truck?" "Uncle Roy's.
He said I could borrow it for the morning." "Does Uncle Roy know what you did with it?" "No, sir." Garrett closed his eyes for a long second.
"And the tractor?" "Auction in Harlan, Wednesday." "By yourself?"
"Yes, sir." "On a learner's permit?" "Yes, sir."
The silence that came then was the longest silence of Wen's life. His mother had come out to the porch. She did not speak. She sat down on the top step and watched.
When Garrett finally spoke again, he was looking at the tractor, not at his son. "I closed that shop, Wen. I closed it for a reason." "I know, Dad."
"You don't know," Garrett said, and his voice cracked just slightly on the last word. "You don't know, son. You think you know. You think this is about your grandmother, about me being angry at her or wanting to forget her or I don't know what you think it's about. But I'm going to tell you what it's actually about, and you're going to listen."
Wen listened. "I watched my mother work in that shop for 38 years," Garrett said. "I watched her get up at 4:30 in the morning and not come in for supper until 8:00 at night. I watched men in this county look right past her in church, at the co-op, at the school board meetings like she wasn't there.
I watched a man named Calvin Strode tell her in front of me when I was 19 years old that she should sell this land and find a husband. I watched her drive home that day and go straight out to that shop and not come in until midnight. And when she came in, her hands were so cold she couldn't hold a coffee cup.
And I decided that day that no son of mine was going to have a life that hard, not if I could help it, not if I had any say in it at all." He turned and looked at his son for the first time. "And then, you go and do this on a learner's permit."
Wen did not look down, he had not yet, in his 15 years, ever raised his voice to his father. He raised it now. "You closed her shop, Dad. You locked the door and you tried to make it like she didn't exist anymore, but she left it to me.
The chest, the cabinet, all of it. She wrote two words on a card, Dad, and pinned it to that chest. Use them.
Two words. And you locked the door. So, I'm asking you, what was I supposed to do?" Garrett opened his mouth, closed it.
His wife, Wen's mother, Eula Holloway, stood up from the porch step. She walked across the gravel. She put one hand on her husband's shoulder and the other hand on her son's shoulder.