“My parents were so pissed,” she starts again. “He had been saving to go to a vocational school for mechanics, figured it'd help with the farm. He was just a teen, loved the farm but didn’t know the cost of anything. A horse like that, young, not purebred, not trained, should’ve only been worth a few hundred dollars. One that was truly going off to slaughter should have been free.” She turns to me with a serious expression on her face. “That asshole told Gray it would cost eight thousand dollars … and he paid that.”
My jaw falls as tears well in my eyes. I turn away from Harper, breathing in deeply through my nose. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” she agrees. “Holy shit. You can see why my parents were so pissed. But honestly, I don’t think Gray regrets it at all. He saved her, he loves her, that’s all he cares about.”
I think back to that initial meeting with Maple in the barn. Grayson's hushed, kind words, and his soft nurturing. For a horse that was once neglected, possibly abused, to fall into the hands of such a kind man, no wonder she turned out to be such a trusting soul.
“He loves that stupid farm, but it’s been slowly dying ever since we were kids. They wanted all of us to take care of it, but they also wanted us to do something more than give ourselves over to something that won’t make a life for us.”
“The farm is failing?” I ask with disbelief. I don’t know anything about farms, only what I’ve seen the few times I’ve visited, but to me, I see a beautiful piece of land. I see healthy animals that are well taken care of, and miles and miles of crops that are grown with love. I see buildings that have continued to stand the test of time because hardworking hands have fixed them.
“Maybe failing isn’t the right word.” She shrugs, reaching again for the bottle of water by her feet. “Bills get paid, they don’t have a mound of debt, and everyone makes an average living, but there isn’t anything left over to buy new equipment, to buy more land, give raises and stuff. It’s managing, but each year, I can see the strain on my parents’ face, and the frustration Grayson lives with, wondering how much longer they will be able to afford to keep it.”
My heart aches deep in my chest. I can already see the love Grayson and his family have for the farm. It’s where four generations of Harts made their family, their living. I’ve only known him a short while, but I couldn’t imagineanyone else taking over that land. I couldn’t imagine the walls of the family farmhouse slowly splintering and falling apart when no one lives inside. I couldn’t imagine the roof of the barn caving in during a particularly bad winter.
“Mom, Dad, over here!” Harper raises an arm in the air, waving down her parents as they make their way to the bandstand. “Oh my gosh, my grandma even came!” She rises from her seat to race down the stairs, hugging her grandma as soon as she’s within arm’s reach. She then carefully feathers her fingers through hers and leads her up the stairs to where I’m seated.
I scoot down, moving to the end of the bench that rests against a fenced wall, making enough room for Grayson’s family to sit. When his grandpa is within reach, I stand and give each one of them a big, welcoming hug.
“So, what do you think of your first tractor pull?” Grayson’s grandpa asks, using his hold on my elbow to brace himself as he sits on the bleacher.
“Well, I’ll admit, I have no idea what I’m even watching.”
He chuckles at that, causing the wrinkles around his eyes to tighten. “I imagine it’s not something that happens in the city.”
“Not too often,” I tease. “But I’m excited to see Grayson go.”
The loudspeakers crackle, and a female voice announces the first contestant in the five thousand class, and Grayson’s grandpa leans over toward me. “Five thousand class means the tractor and all its modifications have to weigh less than five thousand pounds.”
I nod along as the explanation finally clarifies the last hour of numbers being rattled off.
“And Grayson is driving your dad’s tractor?”
His grandpa smiles down at me before looking toward the lineup and eyeing Grayson sitting third in line. “He sure is. That boy has had a fascination with that tractor ever since he was a kid.”
I watch him as he watches his grandson, and my heart swells. I love my parents because they’re my parents, it’s my obligation, but love feels different around the Hart family. Maybe it’s because the family is tied together by years of backbreaking work and heartache, or maybe it’s because they all live in such close proximity together, but I can almostseethe love among them. The love stretches across the crowd, makeshift bar, and dirt lane to reach Grayson on his tractor.
He must feel it too, because in no time, he looks toward the stands, his gaze meeting his grandpa’s, and he raises ahand in a salute. His grandpa raises one as well, a simple one-swipe wave, enough of a conversation between two men to know what they are saying.
“I’ll bet you're proud of him,” I say, breaking my gaze from Grayson to look back at his grandpa.
“I’m proud of all my kids and grandkids. I’m a very blessed man.”
I nod along. “Did you ever pull?”
“Oh yes.” He chuckles, stretching out his leg to rest on the bench below us. “When I was a teenager, we all did. We thought we were tough, racing tractors and entering tractor pulls to pass the time, when really, we had no idea what we were doing.”
I laugh along with that, looking at Grayson’s grandpa to see if I can imagine what he was like as a teen or a wild twenty-year-old. He has the same crystal-blue eyes, the ones that must have strong genetics to be given to his children and grandkids. His hair is gray and combed over to hide his balding head, and I wonder if it was once brown like Grayson’s, or more sandy blonde like I think Harper’s was before she started to dye it.
“Grayson has a gift for it, though,” he says, interrupting my thoughts.
“This is going to make me sound like an idiot, probably, but how is someone good or bad at pulling the sled? Isn’t it up to the tractor, how … fancy they made it?”
He chuckles a little at my fumbles, but doesn’t dwell on it. “Sort of,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “Yes, someone who has tens of thousands of dollars to dump into a newer model tractor has a better chance at winning than someone who is limited by time or money, but it also takes some skill.” He raises a hand, and I notice a slight tremble to his fingers as he points at the second contestant while they make their way down the lane. “Someone has to stay under five thousand pounds to be in this weight class, but see those weights added to the front end?”
I nod in the direction he’s pointing, noticing two silver plates secured to the front of the engine.
“That’ll help weigh the front end down and give better traction. But it’s not just about how fancy the tractor is. Sure, a high-end stock diesel engine can run over a hundred thousand dollars, and that’d probably outrun anything participating here today, but in a town like ours, most people are under the same conditions, so it comes down to skill.”
