Rough Ground, Full Price

Chapter 2 Two Dollars a Gallon and No Friends

His name was Tyler. His father used to haul grain for me in a truck that smoked. I asked Tyler to try the account again. He typed something and shook his head and looked at the floor. Behind him, on the corkboard, the recommended operators list was already printed, though it wasn't supposed to go out until next week. I could see the edge of it. I did not ask to see the rest.

I drove forty minutes to the next town and paid two dollars a gallon more for off-road diesel. The pump was slow. A man in a feed cap asked if I was the Marshall who did custom work. I said I was. He said he'd heard I was hard to work with. I said he'd heard wrong. He paid and left. I stood there with the nozzle in my hand and watched the numbers climb and thought about how fast a story travels when it has a last name attached.

That night my parts order came in short. The seal kit I'd ordered three weeks before was "out of stock," which was strange because I'd checked the stock number that morning. I called the counter. A woman I didn't know said she couldn't override it. I hung up and looked at the leaking seal on the 2008 and did the math on a used kit from a salvage yard two counties over. It would take a day. I did not have a day. I had a field booked for Friday that I was already afraid would cancel

The trouble started slow, the way real trouble does. On Thursday the Co-op wouldn't fill my tank. The kid at the counter said their account system was down, but I'd known that kid since he was in diapers and he wouldn't look at me. That night my parts order came in short.

By the weekend, two of my regular customers had canceled. Merle Hanson called and said he'd found someone else. I asked who. He saidWanda's barn needed paint. Her mailbox was still the one her husband had put up before he died. I had hauled her grain for four seasons and never once been late. I typed a reply and deleted it. There was nothing to say that wouldn't sound like begging.

Six years of showing up at five in the morning, of digging people out of snowdrifts and hauling their grain when their own trucks broke down, of doing jobs for cost when a family was hurting. I'd made a life here. I didn't think it could be taken apart by a spreadsheet. I started the truck and drove home the long way, past the co-op, past the Legion hall, past the field I had left unfinished. The furrows were still there, six inches, honest. Nobody had filled them in. That was something

Wanda Price: sorry zeke cant do it this year

I sat in the cab of my truck in the Price farmyard for ten minutes after that text and watched a red-tail hawk work the fence line. I'd made a life here. I didn't think it could be taken apart by a spreadsheet.

It got taken apart by a spreadsheet.

By the following Wednesday the co-op had published a "recommended operators" list in their spring newsletter. Forty-one names. Mine wasn't on it. The newsletter mentioned in its opening paragraph that all listed operators were "insured, certified, and in good standing with the tri-county agricultural board." I was insured. I was certified. What I wasn't, apparently, was in good standing.

I called a lawyer in Fairview who handled farm disputes. His name was Martin Poole and he'd grown up two towns over. He listened to the whole story and then said the thing nobody wants their lawyer to say first.

"Legally, you don't have much," he said. "They didn't defame you by name. They didn't refuse you service in writing. The co-op can recommend whoever it wants. Your real problem isn't legal. Your real problem is that you're one operator with one machine and they've got the whole supply chain."

"So what do I do?"

"You could apologize to Clara Boyd. That's free."

"I'm not apologizing for doing the work right."

"Then you'd better find customers who don't read the newsletter."

I hung up and sat in my shop with the radio playing low and the smell of old grease around me, and I did the math on my note on the Steiger, my insurance, my fuel bill, and my mortgage. Forty-one names on a list and mine wasn't one of them. I had maybe eight weeks of runway before I had to start selling equipment, and once you sell the Steiger you're not an operator anymore, you're a guy with a truck.

The radio was playing a weather report I already knew. Rain Thursday. Wind Friday. I wrote it on the board anyway, because writing it made it a job and not a rumor. A cat I did not own sat in the doorway and then left. I did not call it back.

That night I called my brother, who works pipeline inland, and asked if he needed a hand. He said they were slow too. He said he was sorry. I said don't be.

Clara Boyd called me the following Monday at 6:12 a.m. I was awake, because farmers are always awake, and I let it ring four times before I picked it up. Her voice was different. Not kind. Just different.

"Zeke. It's Clara Boyd."

"I know who it is."

"The forecast changed. They're calling for four inches by Thursday and another five by Sunday. Every operator in the county is booked. I need my north forty ripped before the rain or I lose the whole field to runoff."

"That's a real problem," I said.

"I'll pay you the full six forty-eight. I'll pay you double. Just come out this morning."

I looked at my kitchen table. There was a bowl of sunflower seeds on it and my feet were up on the other chair. I'd spent the whole weekend not working, which was a way of working I wasn't used to. I picked up a seed and cracked it between my teeth.

"Clara," I said. "You tried to charge me three hundred dollars for doing my job right. Then your husband got on the phone and threatened me. Then your friends at the co-op took me off a list I'd been on for six years. And now it's going to rain."

"Zeke, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, all right. I need the field done."

"You don't need it done," I said. "You need it done by me, and only because everyone else is busy. That's not an apology. That's a transaction. And here's my price. You want your field ripped, you call the co-op and you get my name put back on that list, in writing, in this week's update, with the same recommendation you give everybody else. You want the work, you fix the thing you broke."

There was a long pause. I heard her breathing.

"That's not fair," she said.

"I know," I said. "That's why I'm asking."

She hung up. I went back to my seeds.

The porch boards were slick. I had a beer I didn't finish. I slept in the chair for an hour and woke when the thunder moved east. The shop roof was holding. The Steiger was dry. I went inside and wrote the rainfall in the book, the way my father used to, even though nobody was going to ask me for it. Some habits are just how you stay in the job.