The Rusty Nail, December 2012
birthday saying, “It's yours, son. Do what you want with it. Even sell it, I reckon.” “I'd like to finish clearing it and build me a house down there, Daddy, if it's all right,” the boy replied. Hollis did not try to answer. Jerry tackled the project at a tireless pace, working weekends and late into each evening. The house had become a place to avoid. Jean's wedding to James was approaching, and the house hummed with giggling bridesmaids and women from the church much of the time. The afternoon of the wedding was stifling, especially for late October. It had been a brutal late summer and autumn for farmers, hot and dry. Dust rose from the driveway as the wedding party and guests arrived for the reception. After dutifully greeting them with his parents, Jerry stole out the back door, unnoticed, pulling off his tie. Relieved to escape the bustling household, Jerry disliked any occasion that required the wearing of a suit or his leaving the field. He slipped into the barn to check on the Jersey calf he had helped deliver the week before. It was suckling its mother, doing fine. Hollis wanted Jerry to name the calf, but he hadn't thought of a handle he liked. No hurry, his father said. Jerry started the new John Deere tractor and drove over the ridge to his field. There was one last hickory stump he wanted to pull. If he hurried he could probably finish and return to the reception before anyone missed him… An hour later, Hollis went outside to look for his son. Amanda had said, “Get that boy back in here, Hollis. We have guests.” Initially surprised to find the tractor gone, Hollis then laughed and thought, Hell, I'd rather be out in that hot-ass field than cooped up with those hens myself. When Hollis reached the top of the rise overlooking the east field, he froze, staring in disbelief at the scene below him. Jerry lay on the ground near the pond, motionless, the tractor on its side near him. Hollis saw the log chain running from the back of the tractor to the partially uprooted stump, and he knew, God, he knew. (“Never to the back, son. Always hitch to the front and throw it in reverse. Otherwise, a damn tractor'll flip back on you sure as hell.”) Hollis would not remember stumbling down the hill to Jerry's body, but he could never forget what he saw when he got there. The weather was hot, so damned hot, and there were still so many ants on the place...Jerry was covered with them. They were in his ears, his nose, his open eyes. As in a dream, Hollis tried to wipe them away, oblivious to their bites, knowing only that no one else could see his son that way. He stood and backed away, trying to breathe. There wasn't a mark on the body, except a thin puckered scratch on Jerry's shin. Just that one little scratch on my boy, Hollis thought, right before he began to wail a long high cry that cut across the ridge and drew the others.
Friends worried about his mental state when, during his only son's funeral, Hollis rode the spreader around and around Jerry's field, spraying insecticide until there was none left. Hollis wanted to bury the boy there, but he knew that Amanda would never allow that—Jerry was to be laid to rest in the Winter plot behind the Baptist church down the road—so he bought a granite marker that simply read: Jeremiah Leigh Winter Farmer 1977-1995 Hollis placed it himself on that lonely spot beside the pond. Amanda never went to the field after that, Hollis only occasionally to clear around the stone. The gate to the field remained closed for fifteen years as Hollis always squeezed through the walk-gap beside it. The Jersey calf eventually came to be known as Old Cow, the last tangible link to Jerry's work on the farm.
Jerry lay on the ground near the pond, motionless, the tractor on its side near him.
A week after the funeral, Hollis took down the red bus stop, fighting the urge to peer inside at the carvings and markings Evelyn, Jean, and Jerry had made through the years. He couldn’t bring himself to haul it off the farm or dismantle it, so Hollis carefully stashed it behind the feed-bins in the barn. He was grateful that Amanda soon became so involved in the church. The bake sales, revivals, building-fund drives, and choir practice gave her something to do with her time. For a time Hollis continued to go to church, but he left the choir. He just never felt like singing, he told Amanda. She didn't argue but noted that Hollis eventually spoke less as well, and they never discussed Jerry’s passing after the initial period of grieving passed. It was just that nothing seemed to make sense to Hollis anymore. A man should not outlive his son. And Jerry knew more about farming than men twice his age. To think that he died from making one mistake on that tractor. Hollis never told Amanda that Doc Wilson later said Jerry might have lived if the boy hadn't somehow moved the tractor off himself. He did not know how anyone could have hoisted that much weight, but fear and pain do strange things. “He probably panicked, and the effort of pushing that thing off drove one of Jerry's broken ribs into his heart. He died instantly, Hollis.” The little girl craned her neck around the door of the bus stop, looking up and down the road. Hollis had angered Amanda by insisting that Billie take the bus on her first morning at the new school. “She might as well get used to it now,” he'd said, but now he began to feel a bit guilty watching his tiny granddaughter grip her lunch bag and watch for her ride. Hollis spied a toy tractor and cow on the seat beside Billie. He distinctly remembered telling her not to take them to school.
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