The Planting

The Honest Season

Chapter 3: The Planting

The soil hit fifty degrees on April 28. Ruth knew because she had been checking every morning at 6:00 AM, walking to Section 12 with the soil thermometer, the Reotemp dial-probe with the eight-inch stem, the thermometer she bought in 2009 at the Farm & Ranch supply in Sidney, the thermometer that has measured every planting decision for seventeen years. She pushed the probe into the ground four inches deep, which is seeding depth, which is the depth at which the seed will sit and wait for the conditions that trigger germination — moisture, temperature, the particular combination of warmth and water that tells a wheat kernel it is time to stop being a kernel and start being a plant, the transformation that is not metaphorical but biological, the swelling of the endosperm, the emergence of the radicle, the root pushing down into the soil and the coleoptile pushing up toward the light and the splitting of the seed coat that is the splitting of potential into actual.

Fifty degrees. She pulled the probe and read the dial and wiped the probe on her jeans and put it in her jacket pocket and walked back to the house and called Hector.

"Fifty," she said.

"Monday?" he said.

"Monday," she said.

It was Saturday. They would plant Monday. Two days to finalize. Two days to load seed, load fertilizer, check the drill one more time, check the tractor, check the GPS base station, check the weather, check everything that can be checked, which is almost everything, and accept everything that cannot be checked, which is the weather after Monday, which is the rain or the absence of rain, which is the future, which cannot be checked because it has not happened and which must be accepted because farming is the profession of accepting the future before it arrives and committing to it anyway.

Monday was April 30. Ruth was in the barn at 4:45 AM. The lights were on — the overhead fluorescents that hummed and flickered, the lights that turned the barn into a cold bright space, a space of work, a space where the day's purpose was visible and immediate and demanded action.

The seed was in the tender, the Brandt 1545 grain cart that held the treated seed, the spring wheat, variety SY Ingmar, a Hard Red Spring variety developed by Syngenta, selected for its protein content and its yield potential and its standability, which is its resistance to lodging, which is falling down, which is what wheat does when the stem is weak and the head is heavy and the wind catches the canopy and pushes the plant past the angle of recovery. SY Ingmar does not lodge easily. Ruth liked this about SY Ingmar. She liked that it stood.

The seed was treated with Cruiser Maxx, the seed treatment that protected against wireworm and aphid and the fungal infections that attack germinating seed in cold wet soil. The treatment turned the seed a bright red-pink, an unnatural color, the color of chemistry, the color that said this seed has been altered, this seed has been armored, this seed is not the bare kernel that Arvid planted in 1938 but is a modern seed, a defended seed, a seed that carries its own protection the way a soldier carries a weapon — not because the world is hostile but because the world is indifferent, and indifference is more dangerous than hostility because hostility can be confronted but indifference can only be endured.

The fertilizer was in the second tender, the NH3 — anhydrous ammonia — that would be knifed into the soil beside the seed row, the nitrogen that the wheat needed to grow, the nitrogen that the soil could not provide in sufficient quantity because the soil's nitrogen had been depleted by eighty-eight years of continuous wheat production and because the fallow years restored some but not all and because the deficit between what the soil provides and what the crop requires is the space that fertilizer fills, the gap between natural and necessary.

Ruth checked the air drill. She had checked it Saturday. She checked it again. She checked the openers, each one, forty of them across the 40-foot width, each opener a disc that cuts the soil and a tube that drops the seed and a press wheel that closes the furrow. She checked the depth stops. She checked the seed meter, which controls the seeding rate — 1.4 million seeds per acre, 28 seeds per foot of row at 7.5-inch spacing, the density that research and experience had shown to be optimal for this soil type, this climate, this variety.

She was in the tractor cab at 5:30. Hector was in the yard, the pickup running, the seed tender hitched to his truck. He would follow her to the field, refill the drill when it ran empty, run the anhydrous tender, do the work of the second person, the work that Tom used to do, the work that requires presence and attention and the willingness to wait in a truck at the end of a field for forty-five minutes while the tractor makes its pass and then to spring into action when the drill pulls up and the driver signals and the refilling begins.

The John Deere 9620RX started with a shudder and then a settling, the engine finding its rhythm, the diesel combustion smoothing into the particular hum that a large engine produces when it is warm and loaded and doing the thing it was designed to do. The cab was quiet — the sound insulation reduced the engine to a background frequency, a felt vibration more than a heard sound, the vibration that Ruth felt in her seat and her hands and her boot soles, the vibration that was the tractor's pulse.

She pulled out of the barn. The drill followed, the Great Plains 4000, 40 feet folded to 14 for transport, the hydraulic wings tucked in like the wings of a bird at rest. She drove north on the access road, the road that connected the farmstead to the fields, the road that Tom graded every spring and that Ruth graded now, the road that was not paved and not graveled but was hardpan, packed earth, the road that the farm made by driving on it, the road that existed because the driving existed and that would disappear if the driving stopped.

Section 12. The heart. She turned into the field through the gate, the wire gate that Hector had opened and that Hector would close behind her, the gate that was not a gate but was four strands of barbed wire attached to a post that could be unclipped and swung open, the technology of 1890, the technology that still worked because simplicity works, because the simplest tool is often the tool that endures.

She stopped at the southeast corner. She unfolded the drill — the hydraulic cylinders extending, the wings swinging out, the drill expanding from 14 feet to 40 feet, the unfolding that was mechanical and graceful, the transformation of a compact transport implement into a wide planting implement, the tool becoming itself.

She engaged the GPS. The John Deere StarFire receiver locked onto the satellite constellation — twenty-four satellites orbiting at 12,550 miles, the constellation that gave her position accuracy to within one inch, the accuracy that allowed her to plant rows that were perfectly parallel, rows that were spaced exactly 7.5 inches apart across the entire 640 acres of Section 12, the precision that Arvid could not have imagined when he planted with a horse-drawn drill that wandered and overlapped and left gaps, the precision that technology provides and that the farmer uses but does not worship, because the precision is a tool and the tool serves the work and the work serves the land and the land does not care about precision, the land cares about seed in the ground at the right depth at the right time.

She set the auto-steer. The tractor would drive itself, following the GPS lines, making the turns, maintaining the speed. Her hands were on the wheel but not gripping it. Her hands were resting, supervising, ready to take control if the auto-steer failed but trusting the auto-steer the way she trusted Hector, the way she trusted the drill, the way she trusted everything that had proven itself through use.

She lowered the drill. The openers bit into the soil. The seed meter engaged. The monitor in the cab showed the seeding rate, the depth, the speed, the coverage. Green lights. Everything working. Everything doing what it was designed to do.

She drove.

The tractor moved across the field at 6.2 miles per hour, a walking pace magnified by machinery, the pace of planting, the pace that allows the seed to drop cleanly and the furrow to close properly and the soil to accept the seed without compaction. Behind the tractor the drill moved across the earth, 40 feet of openers cutting 40 furrows simultaneously, each furrow receiving seed and fertilizer, each furrow closing behind the press wheel, the field being planted in 40-foot strips, the strips accumulating, the planted area growing with each pass.

Ruth watched the monitor. She watched the field. She looked ahead and she looked behind and she looked at the soil passing under the drill and she felt the rhythm of the planting, the steady pace, the constant vibration, the accumulation of distance and work and seed in the ground.

The cab was warm. The heater was on. Outside the temperature was forty-three degrees, cold for April 30, but the soil was warm enough and the air temperature did not matter for planting, only the soil temperature mattered, only the temperature at seeding depth, the temperature where the seed sat and waited for the trigger.

She drove and she thought about nothing. This was not meditation. This was not mindfulness. This was the absence of thought that comes with practiced work, the absence that is not emptiness but fullness, the fullness of a mind that is occupied by the work itself, by the watching and the adjusting and the responding that the work requires, the attention that leaves no room for the thoughts that come when the attention is not occupied — the thoughts of Tom, of the offer, of the children, of the future, of the question that the season was supposed to answer.

The first pass was a half-mile. She reached the north end of the field and the auto-steer turned the tractor and the drill lifted and she drove the headland and the drill lowered and she was on the second pass, heading south now, the planted strip to her left, the unplanted field to her right, the boundary between done and not done, between committed and uncommitted.

The boundary moved with her. It moved with every pass. The done expanded and the not done contracted and the field changed from unplanted to planted, from stubble to seeded, from the past crop's evidence to the current crop's potential, and the changing was the work, the changing was the morning, the changing was the thing that Ruth did every spring and that she was doing now for what might be the last time or for what might be the thirty-ninth time of a lifetime that would include more times, and she did not know which and the not knowing was the season's weight.

Hector met her at the end of the fourth pass. The seed tender was positioned at the field edge, the auger ready. She stopped the tractor. She engaged the drill fill. The seed flowed from the tender into the drill's seed box, the treated seed, red-pink, falling through the auger tube, filling the box, the box that held enough seed for six passes before it needed refilling. The fill took four minutes. Hector monitored the auger. He checked the level. He signaled. Ruth engaged the drill and drove.

This was the choreography. This was the partnership. Tractor and drill and tender and truck and two people, one driving and one supplying, the circuit of planting that repeated across the day — drive, fill, drive, fill — the repetition that was not monotony but rhythm, the rhythm that the work required and that the workers provided and that the land accepted.

By 10:00 AM they had planted 160 acres. By noon they had planted 280. They stopped for lunch. Ruth ate in the cab — a sandwich she had made at 4:30, white bread, ham, mustard, the sandwich she made every planting day, the same sandwich, because variation in lunch was energy she did not have and did not need, because the energy went to the field and the field received all of it.

Hector ate in his truck. They did not eat together. They did not need to eat together. Their partnership was not social. Their partnership was functional. It was built on work shared and work understood and work completed, and the completion was the bond, and the bond did not require conversation over sandwiches, it required only the next pass, the next fill, the next section of field that was not yet planted and that needed to be.

The afternoon was warmer. Fifty-one degrees. The sun was out. The sky was enormous — the Montana sky, the sky that is not above you but around you, the sky that occupies the space where trees and buildings and mountains would be if you were somewhere else, the sky that is the dominant feature of the landscape, the thing that dwarfs everything, the thing that makes a 9620RX look like a toy and a 2,400-acre farm look like a postage stamp and a human being look like what a human being is on the high plains, which is small, which is temporary, which is a brief presence on a permanent ground under a permanent sky.

Ruth drove. The field opened behind the drill. The seed went into the ground. The ground received the seed the way the ground receives everything — without comment, without gratitude, without refusal. The ground is the most honest partner Ruth has ever had. The ground does not pretend. The ground does not promise. The ground does not exaggerate its capacity or understate its demands. The ground says: give me seed and water and warmth and time and I will give you wheat. And the wheat is what I give. Not more. Not less. The wheat.

By 4:00 PM they had planted 480 acres. Three-quarters of Section 12. Ruth stopped the tractor at the north end of the field. She sat in the cab and looked south, back across the field she had planted, the field that was now planted, the field that held seed in its soil the way a woman holds a child in her body — the seed present but invisible, the seed doing its work in the dark, the work of germination, the work of becoming.

She thought about Tom. She thought about Tom in the cab because the cab was the place where she had always thought about Tom, the place where she could think about him without consequence, without tears, without the particular collapse that thinking about Tom produced when she was in the house, in the kitchen, at the table. In the cab she could think about him the way she thought about the weather — as a condition, as a fact, as a thing that was and that had changed and that she worked within.

Tom loved planting. He loved the beginning of it, the commitment of it, the moment when the seed left the drill and entered the ground and the thing was done, the thing could not be undone, the season had started and would finish and the finishing was months away but the starting was now, was this moment, was the seed in the ground and the ground around the seed and the farmer in the cab watching the monitor and feeling the vibration and knowing that the work had begun.

He would have been here. He would have been in the truck, running the tenders, the way Hector does now. Or he would have been in the cab, driving, and Ruth would have been in the truck. They traded. Some years he drove, some years she drove. The trading was not a system, it was a mood, a feeling, a negotiation conducted without words — who walked to the tractor first, who climbed into the cab, who settled into the seat and reached for the key. The person who reached for the key was the driver that day, and the other person went to the truck, and the division was clean and unspoken and it worked because the work worked, because when two people share work for thirty-three years the sharing becomes automatic, becomes the default, becomes the way the body moves through the day the way water moves through a channel — following the path that has been established, the path that works.

Tom was not here. Tom was in the barn, on the pegboard, in the order of the wrenches, in the system he maintained, in the space he left. And the space he left was not a gap but a reconfiguration, a rearrangement of the work, the way a field reconfigures after harvest — the wheat gone, the stubble standing, the ground changed but not diminished, the ground still the ground, still capable, still holding the thing it holds, which is the potential for the next season.

Ruth looked at the monitor. 480 acres planted. 160 to go. Tomorrow. She would finish Section 12 tomorrow and then move to Section 8 and then to Section 18 and then to the north sections, the sections that warmed later because they faced north and the sun hit them at an angle, and by May 10 she would have the entire 2,400 acres planted, all fifteen and a half sections, every acre seeded, every furrow closed, the farm committed to another season.

She shut down the drill. She raised it. She drove to the gate. Hector was waiting. He had the gate open. She drove through. He closed the gate behind her. He followed in the truck. They drove the access road back to the farmstead, the tractor and the truck in the same order they had driven out that morning, the procession of planting, the going-out and the coming-in that the day required.

She parked the tractor in the barn. She climbed down from the cab. Her legs were stiff — ten hours in the seat, ten hours of vibration and attention. Her back ached in the place where it always ached, the low back, the left side, the ache that was not injury but use, the ache that was the body's accounting of the day's work.

Hector was in the yard. He had parked the tenders. He had closed the barn doors. He stood by his truck, his hand on the door, ready to go. He was a man who did not linger. He did the work and he left and the leaving was not rudeness but respect — respect for Ruth's privacy, respect for the end of the day, respect for the forty-five-minute drive to Miles City where Maria was making dinner and the kids were doing homework and the life that Hector lived when he was not here was waiting for him.

"Good day," Ruth said.

"Good day," Hector said.

"Same time tomorrow?"

"Same time."

He got in his truck. He drove out. The dust from his tires hung in the air for a moment and then settled. Ruth watched the truck go down the county road until it turned onto Route 16 and was gone.

She went inside. She took off her boots. She stood in the kitchen. The kitchen was dark — she had not left a light on. She turned on the light over the sink. The kitchen appeared: the table, the stove, the counter, the laptop, the coat on the hook. The kitchen of a woman who had just planted 480 acres of spring wheat.

She heated water. She made tea. She did not make coffee in the evening because coffee in the evening kept her awake and she needed sleep because tomorrow she would plant the remaining 160 acres of Section 12 and then she would move to Section 8 and the moving would continue for ten days and she needed sleep the way the seed needed moisture, the way the ground needed warmth, the way the season needed time.

She sat on the porch with the tea. Rust was beside her. The sun was setting in the west, behind the barn, the light going gold and then orange and then red and then gray and then gone. The fields to the east were dark. The planted fields. The fields that held her seed.

She had planted. She had put seed in the ground. She had committed. The commitment was not to the land and not to Tom and not to the memory and not to the future. The commitment was to the season. She had said to the season: I am here. I am planting. I am doing the work. And the season had received the commitment the way the ground received the seed — without comment, without gratitude, without refusal.

The season would answer. The season always answered. But the season answered in August, not in April, and the time between the question and the answer was the time of growing, the time of tending, the time of working the land and watching the sky and waiting for the honest accounting that the harvest provided.

She finished her tea. She went inside. She washed the cup. She went to bed. She slept in the cottonwood bed that Arvid built, in the room at the top of the stairs, in the house on the hill above the fields she had just planted, the fields that held her seed, the seed that was doing its work in the dark, the work of becoming, the work that would continue through the night and through the next day and through the next month and through the summer and into August when the becoming would be complete and the wheat would stand and the combine would cut and the yield monitor would give the number and the number would be the season's answer.

The seed did not know about the offer. The seed did not know about $4.2 million or Prairie View Estates or Jim Grayson's clean truck. The seed knew only the ground and the moisture and the temperature, the three conditions of germination, the three requirements of beginning.

The seed was beginning.

Ruth slept.