Harvest

 I’m new here (A to Z Writing Challenge) and have been looking for a daily writing challenge since the old days with the WordPress sponsored Daily Writing Prompt. It’s hard to say what happened to it, it was very popular.

So, here I am, Byron Lehman. I wrote under the pseudonym Kenton Lewis in my WordPress days.

H! Here we go.

Harvest

It was time for the bean harvest. Rain kept us out of the fields. The price of wheat went up a bit so Pa and I shoveled two wagons full of wheat and slung a canvass tarp over each and headed for the elevator.

I didn’t particularly want to go with Pa but he insisted. The novelty of going to the elevator wore thin by the time I reached my teens and now I was two months shy of sixteen.

The elevator was in a small village three miles from us. I sat in the cab with Pa. He drove. It was a good mile before he spoke.

“Don’t like this, do ya?” Pa said.

“Not really,” I said.

“What would you rather do?” Pa said.

“I wanted to go over to Steve’s and play some pool,” I said.

“Steve has a younger sister, right?” Pa said.

“Yeah,” I said, “Debbie.”

“How old is she now?” Pa said.

“She’s about to turn fourteen,” I said.

“You are in the best years of your life,” Pa said. “It may not seem like it to you. It didn’t to me but I had a lot of fun when I was your age.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“You know what makes them good?” Pa said.

“Hard work?” I said.

Pa grinned and slapped me on the knee. “Yes, but it’s good times with your friends.”

“So why didn’t you let me go to Steve’s?” I said.

“I wanted you with me,” Pa said. “It’s a lonely drive.”

“You really wanted to talk to me about Debbie, right?” I said.

“Man to man,” Pa said.

I looked away, hoping the tractor would somehow speed up.

“I’m not going to say anything embarrassing, son,” Pa said.

“But you are anyway, right?” I said.

“Trust me as you have never trusted me before,” Pa said. “Real men know their limits. They set them. And they keep them.”

We must have driven another mile.

“That’s it?” I said.

“That’s all a man needs,” Pa said.

“Are you saying I’m a man?” I said.

Pa grinned and nodded.

That harvest sticks in my mind as if it happened yesterday. That was the best harvest ever. It was Pa’s last.