I had a tractor, a wagon of forty children in costume, and a bale of straw under me when Dwayne found me at the edge of the pumpkin field. Dwayne is my yard manager, fifty two, a heavy, pale, careful man who keeps the books of the company in his head, and he climbed up on the tongue of the wagon with the engine still running. “Gil,” he said, under the noise, “Line 18 is in the parking lot of the fall festival. The Peterbilt. Somebody put a new vinyl logo on the door. Muncy Freight.”
I shut the tractor down. The children in the wagon, a row of small pirates and bumblebees and one very serious pumpkin, stared at me with big eyes. Rick Muncy, my brother in law, came striding across the stubble in a canvas coat and a seed cap, with a cup of cider in each hand. He is sixty seven, a barrel chested, red faced man with a booming voice, and for thirty years he has called me tarp man at every holiday table, to the delight of everyone but me. “Gil, what is it?” he said. “You are holding up the whole hayride.”
“Rick,” I said, “Kyle drove a Peterbilt 389 flatbed off my lot two weeks ago. Line 18. Listed at a hundred thirty two thousand. He told my yard manager that I had given it to him.” I stepped down from the tractor seat. “I sold Tackett Flatbed Express in September. Eleven million, nine hundred thousand dollars. That truck belongs to the buyer.” The cider of Rick sloshed over his cuff. “Eleven million,” he repeated, in a hollow voice. “And you let me pay you twenty five dollars to drive a hayride?”
A bale of straw sat on a hayride wagon at a fall festival and gave one flatbed trucker the afternoon to bring his nephew back to the strap and the tarp.
My wife, Darla, had been standing at the corner of the wagon with a toddler on her hip, wearing a bumblebee suit. She handed the baby up to a teenager. She is sixty three, a small, trim woman who runs a church thrift store with an iron hand, and her face was perfectly calm. “Rick,” she said, “twenty five dollars. Plus a donut. We counted. Gil drove the hayride four hours on a bad shoulder, and you gave him the donut.” She smiled, and it was a terrible smile. “I told him to let me tell you. He said no. He said he wanted to see what you would do.”
Kyle had appeared, finally, across the field from the parking lot. My nephew is twenty eight, a lanky, black haired boy in a clean flannel shirt with a rodeo belt buckle he had never earned, and he moved like a man trying to look as if he was only out for a walk. “Uncle Gil,” he said, as soon as he was in range, “I can explain. I had a haul. A big one, to Charleston, and my truck was in the shop. Yours was sitting in the lot with the keys in it. I thought, he will not even notice.” He tried a grin. “It was a loan.”
“A loan,” I said. “Kyle, did you check the tires?” He looked at me. “The tires?” “Did you check the brakes, the lights, the tie downs? Did you chain the load?” His grin faltered. “A truck is not a car, son. It is thirty tons of rolling decision. You pulled onto Interstate 79 with the load of a stranger on a deck you had never walked, and you did not check a single strap.” I gave him time to hear it. “If you had lost that load on the hill at Fairmont, the mother of somebody would not have come home.”
He was silent. Rick, beside him, stood with his cup in both hands like a man holding a candle at a funeral. “Gil,” he said at last, “I called you the tarp man for thirty years.” “You did.” “Do you know why I started?” I did not. “Because when we were boys, my father hired you at sixteen to strap and tarp loads, and I was jealous. You were so careful. You never lost a load. Not once. My father said, why can you not be like Gil? And I called you the tarp man so that I would not have to hear it.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “It was the best job in the yard.”
I did not say anything at first. A very small voice from the wagon said, “Mister, are we going to the pumpkins?” “In a minute,” I said. Then I turned to Kyle. “Here is how it goes. Dwayne takes the truck back to the lot, and you ride with him and walk the whole thing, bumper to bumper. The buyer will not press charges. They have offered you a job in the yard, at yard wages, with the crew that straps and tarps. The man who teaches you is Dwayne.” Kyle nodded, jaw tight. “And Rick,” I said. “I would like you to ride the wagon.”
We hauled the children to the pumpkins. Rick sat on a bale at the back of the wagon, the whole length of the field, in his canvas coat, with a small pirate asleep against his arm. Darla sat across from him and said nothing, and the forgiveness in her silence was so large that it took me a while to understand it. At the pumpkin patch he got down, and picked up a very large one, and carried it to the car of every family that was there, one by one, without being asked. It took him nearly an hour. He did not mention the hayride again.
Kyle worked the yard for a year. He learned the straps, the chains, the edge protectors, the way a tarp should be pulled tight so that it hums in the wind. By the next fall he could throw a tarp over a forty foot load in four minutes flat, and he was proud of it, the first pride I ever saw in him that was earned. On Thanksgiving, Rick stood to give the blessing at the table, and before he bowed his head he said, “To the tarp man,” and lifted his glass, and nobody laughed, and nobody needed to explain.
