Darla's Story (6 page)

While staring at the useless lump of plywood
I’d cut, I had an epiphany. I wet down my breathing rag, tied it
around my face, and trooped back to the house.

Mom and Ruth were barely a quarter of the way
through the pile of corn ears on the kitchen table. As I came back
through the kitchen, carrying one of our round end tables, Mom
asked, “Do I want to know what you’re doing with that?”

“Probably not,” I replied.

I stopped to use the bathroom, which was
lucky, because while I was in there, I noticed the vinyl cove
molding that served as a baseboard in the bathroom. The molding was
about four inches tall, thin, flexible, and strong—perfect for
making a round concrete form. I ripped about five feet of it off
the wall and carried it out to the barn with the end table.

Saturday morning, I finished assembling the
gristmill—or at least did everything I could do while waiting for
the concrete to set—and Mom and Ruth ground the rest of the corn
we’d harvested the day before. In the afternoon, all three of us
ventured out into the field to harvest more.

It took me less than fifteen minutes on the
tractor to clear most of the ash off an area as big as we could
pick in one afternoon. I shut the tractor down and hopped off to
help pick the corn.

Ruth straightened out and looked my way.
“That tractor handles the ash real well.”

“It’s made for muddy fields. That’s why the
rear wheels are so big. Ash isn’t that different, I guess.”

“I’ve got to be going soon,” Ruth said.

“You’re welcome to stay with us,” Mom
said.

“Oh no, I couldn’t. I need to get to Omaha,
to make sure my Esther, Rachel, and Peter are okay.”

“They have parents, don’t they?” I said.

“Well, of course. But Bruce works all the
time. Naomi might need help. And with the phones and Internet down,
I haven’t heard from them in more than a week.

“I’m sure they’re all right,” Mom said. “The
Lord will keep them in the palm of His loving hand.”

I looked away to hide a scowl, forgetting
again that the breathing rags hid my face completely. Mom had no
way to know they were all right—in fact, they probably weren’t.

“You could take me,” Ruth said. She stared at
me with a hungry look in her eyes. “On your tractor.”

“Take you? To Omaha?” Ruth was nodding as I
went on. “That’s more than 300 miles. And the top speed on this
tractor is fourteen miles an hour. I don’t have enough gas—”

“I’ll pay for the gas.”

“Or time. And how were you planning to pay
for gas? If there’s any for sale. Which I doubt.”

“I brought my platinum card.”

I couldn’t even think of a reasonable
response to that.

After a moment of silence, Ruth added, “If
you won’t drive me, how about selling the tractor?”

“No.”

“I brought my checkbook, too.”

“The tractor’s not for sale,” I said, staring
her down.

She turned to Mom. “I’d pay well.”

“It’s Darla’s tractor, not mine. If she
doesn’t want to sell, that’s her choice. And she’s right, you know.
You won’t be able to buy anything with a credit card or check.”

“I’ve got to get to Omaha,” Ruth said.

“Maybe Darla would drive you into
Worthington. Could be that someone there has a vehicle they’d
sell.”

“Mom!” I didn’t want to waste half a day
hauling Ruth to Worthington.

Mom gave me the stare that said, Don’t fight
me on this.

“Okay,” I sighed. “After the grinder is
finished. And we have all our corn ground. I’m not gallivanting off
to Worthington before we have plenty of food laid in.”

“But how long will that take?” Ruth asked. “I
was hoping to leave tomorrow.”

“A few days.”

“But—”

“Deal with it.”

“Darla!” Mom snapped.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“She’s right, though,” Mom said. “In a few
days we can have enough cornmeal laid in that we can send some with
you. Maybe not enough to get you to Omaha, but enough to keep you
fed for a few days.”

“I wanted to leave tomorrow,” Ruth muttered,
bending to resume picking corn.

We picked corn until it got impossible to
see. The ash had mostly quit falling, but it was still dim and
gray, even in the middle of the day. At twilight, the sky faded to
pure black. Then we sat at the kitchen table for what seemed like
half the night, shucking and grinding corn by candlelight. We were
amassing quite a store of cornmeal—eight bags full. While we’d
probably get awfully sick of eating corn pone, it beat
starving.

Sunday I slept like a diabetic cat, waking
far past my normal time. But I was still the first one in the
kitchen. I stood by the table for a few moments, puzzled. Something
looked wrong. When I figured out what it was, I ran to the living
room to check the couch. It was empty, the extra blankets pushed
roughly aside. I ran upstairs to wake Mom.

“The cornmeal is gone,” I said as I shook her
shoulder. “And so is Ruth.”

“Wha? Huh?”

“The cornmeal. Ruth left. And she took our
cornmeal.”

“Goodness.” Mom started climbing out of bed.
“Is your tractor still—”

My tractor! Christ! I ran, taking the stairs
three at a time, bursting out the back door without stopping for a
breathing rag.

My tractor was gone. I’d left it parked right
by the back door. Almost no ash was falling, but a light rain was
steadily filling the troughs left by the big back tires in the
slushy ash.

I charged back into the house, grabbed the
truck keys from their hook in a cabinet, and wet down a breathing
rag. Just as I finished tying it around my face, Mom came down the
stairs, wearing a bathrobe.

“I’m going after her. I’m taking the truck,”
I said as I strode toward the door.

“Did you pack any water?” Mom yelled after
me.

“No.”

“Food? Emergency supplies?”

I stopped. “No . . .”

“And how were you planning on driving the
tractor and the truck back?”

“You’d better come with me.”

“Yes. Give me two minutes to change. Get some
supplies ready while you wait.”

Mom turned back to the stairs. It made sense
to get prepared, although I didn’t like the fact that Ruth would be
getting farther ahead of us. I fidgeted while I waited, wondering
what I could’ve done differently. Was I too mean to Ruth? Would she
have stolen my tractor if I’d coddled her craziness a little more?
Either way, I would get my tractor back. I’d put thousands of hours
of hard work and love into that thing. My hands and Dad’s had
rebuilt it, touched nearly every part of it.

Mom got dressed in record time, and less than
two minutes later we were in the cab of the truck. I started it up,
thinking about the air filter I’d cannibalized for my tractor. The
truck wasn’t going to last long in this mess without a filter. But
I didn’t have a spare or anything I could use to make one
quickly.

The truck started fine, of course. But when I
shifted into first gear—nothing. The rear wheels just spun in the
wet ash. I engaged the four-wheel drive and tried again. This time,
all four wheels spun. The ash had fallen on and around the truck,
so it was sitting in a hole lined with wet, slippery ash.

“I’ll be right back,” I told Mom. “Wait
here.”

I ran into the barn and grabbed the first
four pieces of scrap lumber I could find—a couple of short
one-by-ten planks and two scraps of plywood. I jammed one scrap in
front of each of the truck’s four wheels and climbed back into the
driver’s seat.

This time, the truck climbed out of the hole.
I kept it in first gear, rolling slowly to the road. At the end of
the driveway, I tapped the brakes and looked both ways, more from
habit than anything. The tractor had turned left—north. When I
tapped the accelerator to follow, the wheels just spun. I tried
every trick Dad had taught me for getting a truck unstuck—a
super-gentle start, reverse-gear, rocking it—nothing worked.

I got out and tried to run back to the barn
to get the boards. You can’t really run in wet ash, though. Your
feet sink, and it pulls at your boots like wet concrete. I
retrieved the boards as quickly as I could and used them to get the
truck unstuck again. This time I wasn’t going to stop for
anything—I’d never get unstuck.

The tracks the big tractor wheels made were
already fading—Ruth had a huge head start. I slowly accelerated
until I was doing almost thirty, but even going that slowly, the
truck was sliding all over the road. I wasn’t sure I could control
it if I went any faster. Mom had grabbed the handle above her head,
clenching it with both white-knuckled fists.

We’d only been driving about two minutes when
the truck’s engine started knocking. At first, it was just a
metallic tick-tick-tick. But soon it grew to be more of a muffled
clang-clang-clang coming from the engine compartment.

“What’s that?” Mom asked through tensed
lips.

I kept my eyes glued to the road. I was
leaning forward, fingers twitching on the wheel, turning into each
little skid as it started, using every trick I knew to keep us on
the road. “The ash. It’s getting into the engine. Tearing up the
valves.”

“If the truck dies, how’re we going to get
home?” Mom asked.

“We’ll take the tractor.”

“And what if we can’t find it?”

I was going to find it. I’d put too many
hours into that tractor over the last eight years to let some crazy
grandma make off with it.

“Darla . . .”

“What?”

“It’s getting worse.”

She was right. The clanking had escalated
into more of a full-blown clangor. I goosed the accelerator,
nudging our speed up to thirty-five.

“We need to turn around,” Mom said.

“No.” An annoying wetness was filling my
eyes. I lifted my right hand from the wheel briefly to rub
them.

“Turn around. Now.”

“No!”

Mom slid her left foot over, and before I
realized what was happening, she had jammed on the brake. The truck
slewed wildly, whipping through a 540-degree turn in seconds. It
stalled, miraculously coming to rest in the middle of the road,
facing in the opposite direction.

I gasped, trying to catch my breath. “You
really . . . shouldn’t have . . . done that, Mom.”

She just nodded. She was as white as a
rabbit’s belly fur.

I tried to start the truck. It made a
grinding noise, but it started. The clanging noise was almost
deafening, and the whole truck shook. It felt like the pistons were
beating the engine to pieces.

I eased the truck into gear. Of course, the
wheels just spun in the wet ash. We were stuck again.

Mom and I were in the middle of nowhere. I
couldn’t see any buildings nearby, just a few lonely stalks of corn
still peeking up from the interminable ashfield. The truck clanked
alarmingly, so I shut it down to save what remained of the
engine.

I clambered out of the truck to the field
beside the road and started digging through the ash with my hands.
It took more than an hour to gather enough cornstalks to make a
thick pad of them in front of all four wheels, even though Mom got
out and helped me.

There was no way we’d catch Ruth now. I
wasn’t even sure we’d make it home. I started the truck and slid it
into gear again. I gently eased my foot onto the accelerator. At
first, nothing happened. I glanced at the rear-view
mirror—cornstalks were shooting out behind the truck, flung by its
spinning wheels. But then something caught, and we lurched into
motion.

I took the return drive much slower, never
passing about fifteen miles per hour. The truck lurched and
shivered, and the noise the pistons made was deafening. Mom and I
might have been able to talk by shouting, but we didn’t.

I ground my teeth, thinking about Ruth.
Losing my tractor felt almost as bad as getting kicked in the gut
by a cow. This is what kindness gets you, I thought: an aching hole
where your chest used to be.

I was sure we wouldn’t make it home, so when
I caught sight of the peak of our roof, I gasped in relief. As I
pulled the truck up beside the barn, I moved my foot from the
accelerator to the brake, and the truck sputtered and died.

“Well, that was an adventure,” Mom said.

“I wish I’d run that woman over more
thoroughly,” I replied.

“We did the right thing. She’ll get her just
rewards, in this life or the next.”

“Maybe. I don’t want to talk about it.
Ever.”

“Okay.”

Mom and I climbed out of the truck. I slammed
the door as hard as I could, kind of hoping the whole thing would
fall apart from the force of my frustration. Mom walked around to
my side and wrapped her arm over my shoulder. I fought back tears
as she led me back to the house, her arm a comforting weight
against my back.

The morning after we returned from our
fruitless search for Ruth and my tractor, we dug more corn, working
by hand. Every spadeful of ash I threw made me angrier. A task that
would have taken fifteen minutes with my tractor dragged on all
morning.

In the afternoon, we shucked and ground the
corn. It took less than an hour to finish up the grinder. It was an
amazing improvement over the mortar and pestle. The concrete stones
threw a lot of grit into the meal, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt
us. Mom poured kernels of corn into the gristmill while I pumped
away on the bicycle, turning the grindstones. We left the barn
doors wide open to let in the wan, yellowish afternoon light.

We were almost finished when a figure on skis
appeared in the doorway. He was short and slight, maybe just an
inch taller than I was. His whole right side, from his ribcage
down, was drenched with blood. He carried a long staff in one hand
and a ski pole in the other. Just as I noticed him, his skis slid
down the short drop to the barn floor and caught in the dirt and
straw. He pitched forward, hitting his head.