I grip my arms tighter when Levi’s eyes land on me, and I stare back at him as he shifts his weight and his eyes flick between the guy still typing in the cab, then back to me.
“So…” Levi says slowly, shifting his attention to the tractor again. “Basically, we have the same equipment, but now it can listen to the field a little better. Instead of us setting one rate and running it across the whole thing, it reads the maps as it goes and plants what each section needs.”
When his gaze meets mine again, I see something different in his eyes. I don’t know what it is… but it feels like he’s speaking just to me in this moment.
And my grip on my arms loosens, just a bit.
“This is going to be great,” Dad says, and I force my eyes away from Levi as Dad nods towards the monitors.
“Yeah,” Levi agrees softly, but I don’t look at him.
I shift my gaze past everyone to the open back door and the fields beyond it. Everyone’s voices fade into background noise as I let my mind blur until my only focus is the view of the fields, and a comfortable haze settles over me.
We’ve always planted a fixed rate of 34,000 plants per acre. That’s what I was taught, and that’s what we’ve always done. Every time.
I let my eyes trace the edges of the fields in the distance, where the dirt rolls into itself and vanishes into the sky. The soil needs one more tilling before planting, and I find myself itching to be the one to do it. To feel the tension in the steering wheel, the rumbling of the engine, the smell of fresh soil as it cracks open… everything I know well and can do well.
We’ve always controlled the process. We choose and set the speed and the downforce, and adjust row pressure based simply on feel and instinct.
I’ve always controlled the equipment.
But now… it responds to Levi. It responds to numbers, data, and dashboards.
My gaze sharpens again and lands on Levi as realization dawns on me.
He hasn’t said anything about the hollow heart field since he offered to help the other day. And I’ve been waiting for him to keep pushing it, knowing it’s coming. I was starting to think since I already told Al it’d be the last field planted, he was letting it go for now. But I knew something was coming.
I just wasn’t expectingthis.
I didn’t expect him to just cut me out of it and rewrite the entire system around me.
Levi’s eyes flick to me again, and I stare right back at him as anger once again starts to rise.
“Alright, thanks everyone,” Dad says, but I continue to glare at Levi. “Once these are installed, Levi will walk us through everything.”
Fuck that.
I turn and walk out of the garage, a mixture of anger towards him and myself swirling deep inside me.
I should be excited about this, like everyone else. It’s good for the farm… Iknowthis.
But I’m not.
All I feel is distance.
I’m even further behind now, and my entire world is changing. The one I created to be my safe space when I lost the most important thing in my life.
And now that person is back and pushing me out of my world.
“Silas.”
Levi’s voice cuts through my thoughts, and my step falters before I can stop it. I curse to myself, but still… I stop and turn around.
He looks just as surprised as I am that I did that, and he stops a few feet in front of me as his eyes flick between mine.
And I hate that I see pity in his eyes.
He’s never looked at me with pity before.
