I’d gotten pretty good at handling the bucket, too. Earnest had said that when I was “ready”—this in the mysterious tone of some wise philosopher–kung fu master—he would teach me how to attach other implements and then how to use the digger attachment—“the backhoe arts.”
I revved it up, lowered the bucket, and charged at walking speed toward the pile of crushed rock. When the bucket engaged the mound, the engine labored, but I continued to rock the beast forward against the slope, raising the bucket by degrees until it had a reasonable load. Then I backed away, more carefully now because the back end of the tractor seemed awfully light with all that weight up front. Through the gate. Over the softer soil of the paddock area. Up to the brink of the ditch so that the bucket hung over the pipe, then a delicate touch with the hydraulic levers to tip the bucket. The egg-size stones rained down onto the pipe more or less centered in the ditch—we would level it all by hand later—and covered the pipe with a pile about ten inches deep and four feet wide. When the bucket was empty I backed away and turned to survey my work.
Not too bad for a spoiled city twit with an identity crisis, huh, Diz?
I returned to the gravel heap. My first bucket had not made much of an impression on it, and for the first time I understood just how much there was to carry and dump. I rammed the tractor forward again, working the hydraulics, striving for a fuller bucket. The exhaust darkened with blue smoke as the engine strained, the hydraulics whined as they labored, and I knew I had a good load.
Back to the ditch. Carefully maneuver the tractor up to the edge at a right angle to the ditch, just where the first load ended, then inch forward until the bucket overhung the pipe, then slowly tilt and lower to sift the stuff off. The gravel seemed to cling inside the bucket, and the back end of the tractor rose disturbingly, but I jiggled the lever and got it bouncing, and at last the load avalanched off and made a tidy mound just where it should be.
Doin’ good! I told myself. I savored my own prowess and inhaled the diesel fumes deep into my lungs as if they were full of vitamins.
The gravel had been heaped at the end of the driveway, at the pasture end of the old barn—a small mountain that represented twenty dump-truck loads. We all had gathered to watch the first truck empty itself. When I asked why they didn’t just dump it down by the ditch, Diz had explained with excessive patience that the truck would sink to the door handles in the mud and stay there forever and “we’d use the damn thing as a planter, put our begonias in there maybe.”
Of course. A loaded ten-yard dump truck would weigh many, many tons and would indeed have a hard time in the wet soil of the paddock.
“Or end up in China,” Earnest said. “Then we’d have a problem with Immigration.”
Diz had scowled at him for interjecting genuine humor into the situation.
Screw Diz, I told myself grimly. When I came up to the pile the third time, I was thinking about how little my last bucket had taken. At this rate, it would take all day and Diz would say something about what a sensitive tractoring style I had. So I really worked the bucket in, getting the angles just right so that when I lifted it free the rocks were mounded above the bucket’s rim. I congratulated myself.
Chug-chug back to the ditch, the tractor crushed low in front and daintily high off the ground in back. I was fuming inside but I took it slow, mindful of the weight differential. I positioned myself, edged out over the ditch, and tipped the bucket. Only a few stones fell. The gravel had lodged itself in there pretty well. So I joggled it up and down, the tractor clanking and rocking front to back, and inched a little closer, and then the edge of the ditch gave way and the tractor tipped forward and the front wheels went down so that the full bucket lay flat on the far bank. The Ford’s back wheels floated just off the ground. The whole thing was locked in place, canted at a hard forward tilt and pinned by the bucket full of half a ton of gravel. The bucket couldn’t lift and the tractor couldn’t reverse itself out of the trap.
I shut off the engine. For a moment, I sat there, leaning forward, holding myself off the steering wheel with my arms. It was a fine day. Birds making a lovely cacophony in the woods. Cows unperturbed on the green slope. A tranquil bucolic scene. My mind racing like a panicked rat in some gruesome lab experiment.
Truly, literally, I thought of just sprinting to my car, getting in and driving away and never coming back. Leave all my stuff up on the hill. Send the papers back to Brassard and they’d never hear from me again.
But I didn’t. This was my cross and I was destined to be crucified on it and was apparently to drive the spikes myself. So I walked along my wheel ruts back to the yard and up the porch steps. I went through the mudroom and tapped on the inner door, mortified at having to bring this awful news into a happy family get-together.
Brassard called from the living room: “In here, Ann.”
I left my boots on the porch and went through the kitchen and into the living room, where I was surprised to see no family gathering but just Will in Brassard’s recliner, reading a magazine while Brassard, wearing his reading glasses,
