Tom's Barn

The Honest Season

Chapter 5: Tom's Barn

The barn is sixty feet by one hundred and twenty feet. Steel frame, steel siding, poured concrete floor, metal roof. Tom's father Carl built it in 1974, replacing the original wood-frame barn that Arvid built in 1939 and that had sagged and leaned and finally surrendered to the wind in the winter of 1973, collapsing on a Tuesday night in February while the family slept, the collapse producing a sound that Carl described as a sigh, a long exhalation, the sound of a building releasing itself from the obligation of standing.

Carl built the new barn with the insurance money and $14,000 of his own cash. He hired a crew from Sidney — four men and a crane — and they erected the steel frame in three days and hung the siding in two more and poured the floor in a single weekend, the concrete trucks coming from the batch plant in Culbertson, three trucks in rotation, the pour continuous, the floor a single slab, no joints except the saw-cut control joints that Carl insisted on, the joints that would control where the concrete cracked because concrete will crack, all concrete cracks, the only question is whether you control the cracking or the cracking controls you.

The floor is still good. Fifty-two years and the floor is still good. The saw-cuts worked. The cracks followed the joints. The slab is level and sound and it holds the weight of the tractors and the trucks and the implements that live in the barn, the weight of the equipment that makes the farm possible.

Tom took over the barn in 1993, the year he and Ruth assumed the operation from Carl and Maryann. Carl was sixty-one and his knees were gone and Maryann wanted him to stop and he did not want to stop but he stopped because Maryann asked and because Tom was ready and because the transition from one generation to the next is not a decision but a recognition, the recognition that the body that has done the work can no longer do the work and the body that will do the work is standing right there, waiting, capable, ready.

Tom organized the barn. This is the thing that must be understood about Tom Enger: he organized. He organized the barn the way he organized the shop and the seed shed and the fuel island and the parts inventory and the maintenance records and every physical system that the farm required. He organized because organization was his language, his way of saying that the world is manageable, that chaos can be held at bay, that if every tool has a place and every place has a tool then the work can proceed without interruption and without the particular frustration of searching for a three-quarter-inch wrench when the three-quarter-inch bolt is looking at you from the belly of a machine that will not run until the bolt is tightened.

The pegboard is on the north wall. It is four feet by eight feet, a single sheet of quarter-inch Masonite pegboard mounted on the studs, the holes spaced one inch apart, the hooks — red plastic, metal, various shapes — inserted into the holes, each hook holding a tool, each tool in its place, the place that Tom assigned when he hung the pegboard in 1994.

Wrenches on the left side. Combination wrenches, open-box, arranged by size from left to right: three-eighths, seven-sixteenths, half-inch, nine-sixteenths, five-eighths, eleven-sixteenths, three-quarter, thirteen-sixteenths, seven-eighths, fifteen-sixteenths, one inch. Below them, the metric wrenches: 10mm through 24mm, same left-to-right progression, small to large. Below those, the adjustable wrenches: six-inch, eight-inch, ten-inch, twelve-inch. Below those, the socket sets on their rails, the quarter-inch drive and the three-eighths drive and the half-inch drive, each socket in its slot, each slot marked with the size in Tom's handwriting, the permanent marker on the silver rail, the small precise numerals.

Screwdrivers on the right side. Phillips head arranged by size: #0, #1, #2, #3. Flat head arranged by width: three-sixteenths through three-eighths. Torx arranged by number: T10 through T55. Robertson, the square-drive screwdrivers that Tom preferred for the sheet metal work on the bins and the buildings, the Canadian screwdriver that does not cam out, that grips the screw and holds it and does not slip, the screwdriver that Tom called honest because it did what it said it would do.

Pliers in the center section. Needle-nose, slip-joint, channel-lock, linesman's, diagonal cutters, snap-ring pliers — internal and external. Each on its hook. Each in its place.

Hammers on the far right. Ball peen, 16-ounce. Claw hammer, 20-ounce. Dead blow, 2-pound. Sledge, 8-pound. Brass hammer for the work that cannot tolerate sparks — the fuel system work, the work near the anhydrous fittings, the work where a spark is not an inconvenience but a fire or an explosion.

Ruth stands in front of the pegboard. She has stood in front of it many times since Tom died. She has stood in front of it the way a person stands in front of a painting in a museum — not to use it but to see it, to read it, to understand what it says about the person who made it.

The pegboard says that Tom Enger believed in systems. It says that he believed a place for every tool and every tool in its place was not a cliche but a philosophy, a way of ordering the world that began with the physical and extended to the abstract, the belief that if you kept your wrenches in order you could keep your life in order, that the discipline of the small thing informed the discipline of the large thing, that a man who could not find his three-quarter-inch wrench was a man who could not find his way through the season, through the year, through the work that the farm required.

She reaches out and touches the three-quarter-inch wrench. The Snap-on. The wrench that was in his hand when he died. The chrome is cool under her fingers. The wrench is clean. Hector cleaned it after the ambulance left, after the coroner took Tom, after the barn was empty and the concrete floor had a stain that was not oil and that Hector scrubbed with a brush and with detergent and with the determined focus of a man who understood that the stain was private, that the stain belonged to Tom and to Ruth and not to the floor, and that removing the stain was an act of protection, a guarding of the intimate from the indifferent surface of the concrete.

The stain is gone. The wrench is clean. Tom is in the Culbertson cemetery, in the plot beside his father Carl, who died in 2008, and his mother Maryann's reserved plot, the plot that waits for her, the empty ground beside her husband that she will occupy when she is finished occupying the wheelchair at the facility in Sidney.

Ruth removes her hand from the wrench. She steps back. She looks at the pegboard the way she looks at the fields — with assessment, with attention, with the understanding that what she is looking at is functional, that it exists to serve the work, and that the work continues regardless of who hangs the tools and who uses them and who dies with them in their hand.

She has not changed the arrangement. She wants this to be clear. She has not changed a single tool's position on the pegboard. Not because she is sentimental. Not because she is preserving a shrine. She has not changed the arrangement because the arrangement works. Tom's system works. The wrenches are where you need them when you need them. The screwdrivers are accessible. The pliers are logical. The hammers are on the far right because the hammers are used least frequently and the things used least frequently should be farthest from the center of the workspace, which is the workbench, which is directly below the pegboard, which is the surface where the work happens.

The workbench is eight feet long, built from two-by-sixes, the top surface a single sheet of half-inch steel plate that Tom welded in place in 2002, the steel plate that has been ground on and welded on and hammered on and that shows the marks of twenty-four years of use — the grinding marks, the weld spatter, the hammer dents, the burns from the cutting torch, the history of repair written in the steel the way the history of cultivation is written in the soil.

The vise is on the left end. A six-inch Wilton, bolted to the bench with four half-inch grade-eight bolts, the vise that Tom bought at the Snap-on truck in 1999, the vise that grips and holds and does not let go, the tool that Tom said was the most important tool in the shop because it gives you a third hand, because it holds the thing you are working on so that both of your hands are free to work, and the freedom of both hands is the freedom to do precise work, to do careful work, to do the work that the machinery requires when the machinery breaks.

The machinery breaks. This is the constant of farming. The machinery breaks and the farmer fixes it or the farmer calls someone to fix it, and calling someone takes time and time during planting or harvest is the thing you do not have, the thing that the season does not provide, the thing that the weather does not care about, and so the farmer fixes the machinery, in the barn, at the workbench, with the tools on the pegboard, with the vise on the bench, with the knowledge that Tom accumulated over thirty-three years and that he passed to Ruth through proximity and repetition and the particular pedagogy of shared work, which is not instruction but demonstration, which is not teaching but doing, which is the education that a person receives by standing beside a person who knows and watching the person who knows and absorbing the knowing through the skin.

Ruth knows how to fix things. She does not know how to fix things the way Tom knew. Tom knew the way a musician knows — intuitively, fluently, the knowledge deeper than the conscious mind, the knowledge that lives in the hands. Ruth knows the way a student knows — correctly, competently, with the occasional pause to consult the manual or to remember the sequence that Tom showed her. The difference between Tom's knowing and Ruth's knowing is the difference between native and learned, between a person who was born to fix things and a person who was taught to fix things, and the difference is real but it is not disqualifying, because Ruth can still fix things, she can still diagnose the hydraulic leak and replace the bearing and adjust the belt tension and do the hundred small repairs that the season demands.

She cannot fix the auger motor. She has not tried. The auger motor is still on the workbench, disassembled, the bearing pulled, the housing cracked, the motor that Tom was fixing when he died. It has been on the workbench for three years. She has not moved it. Hector has not moved it. They work around it. They work around the auger motor the way they work around Tom's absence — by accommodating it, by adjusting to it, by treating it as a permanent feature of the landscape, a thing that cannot be changed and that therefore must be incorporated.

The auger motor should be repaired or replaced. The grain auger has not run in three years. Ruth uses the grain vac instead, the vacuum system that pulls grain through a tube, the system that is slower than the auger but that works, that fills the bins, that does the job. The grain vac is a workaround. The grain vac is the solution to a problem that Ruth does not want to solve, because solving it would require her to pick up the auger motor from the workbench and finish the repair that Tom started, and finishing the repair would be finishing Tom's last act, completing the last thing he began, and the completion of the last thing is the thing she is not ready for.

She knows this about herself. She knows that the auger motor on the workbench is not a practical problem but an emotional geography, a landmark in the landscape of her grief, the point on the map that says: here is where he stopped. Here is where the work ended. Here is the bolt he was turning and here is the bearing he was pulling and here is the motor he was rebuilding and here is the concrete he fell on and here is the wrench he held and here is the time — 2:15 on a Tuesday in January — when the work stopped and the man stopped and the barn became the place where Tom Enger ended.

She walks down the center aisle. The barn is organized the way Tom organized it, which is by function and by season. The planting equipment on the south side: the air drill, the seed tenders, the anhydrous applicator, the tools of spring. The harvest equipment on the north side: the combine, the grain cart, the grain truck, the swather, the tools of August. The tillage equipment in the back: the field cultivator, the chisel plow, the harrow, the tools of fall. Each implement in its bay, each bay marked — not with signs but with position, with the understanding that this is where the drill goes and this is where the combine goes and the understanding is not written but known, known by Tom and by Ruth and by Hector and by anyone who has worked in this barn long enough to learn the system.

The combine occupies the northeast corner. The John Deere S790. It is green and yellow, the John Deere colors, the colors that dominate agricultural equipment the way blue dominates the sky — not by choice but by market share, by prevalence, by the fact that more farmers run John Deere than any other brand because John Deere works and works is the only adjective that matters.

The combine is resting. The combine has been resting since September, since the last load of grain went through it, since Ruth shut it down and Hector blew it out with the air compressor and they parked it in the barn and closed the doors and the season ended. The combine will rest until August, until the wheat is ripe, until the moisture drops to thirteen percent and the heads are golden and the stems are dry and the combine wakes and goes to the field and does the work that only a combine can do, which is the work of conversion, the conversion of standing wheat into grain.

Ruth walks past the combine. She walks past the grain cart, the Brent 1596, the cart that holds 1,500 bushels and that shuttles grain from the combine to the truck. She walks past the grain truck, the Peterbilt 378, 1997, the truck that has hauled grain to the Culbertson elevator for twenty-nine years, the truck that Tom bought used and that Hector maintains and that Ruth drives during harvest, the truck that smells like wheat and diesel and the particular sweetness of grain dust, the smell that is the smell of harvest, the smell that is the smell of work completed.

She reaches the back of the barn. The parts shelves. Tom's parts inventory: filters, belts, bearings, hydraulic fittings, electrical connectors, the components that break and that must be replaced immediately because the dealer in Sidney is sixty miles away and the nearest John Deere dealer is in Williston, ninety miles, and ninety miles during harvest is four hours of down time and four hours of down time is sixty acres of wheat not cut and sixty acres of wheat not cut is money and weather and the risk that the weather changes and the wheat is lost.

Tom kept the parts organized the way he kept the tools organized. Filters in one section, arranged by equipment: tractor filters, combine filters, truck filters. Belts in another section, each belt on a nail, each nail labeled. Bearings in plastic bins, the bins labeled with the equipment and the location — "9620RX, Left Track Idler" or "S790, Feeder House, Upper Shaft." The labels are in Tom's handwriting. The permanent marker. The small precise letters.

Ruth touches a label. "S790, Rotor Drive, Rear." She reads it. She reads it and she hears Tom's voice, not speaking the words but speaking the logic behind the words, the logic that says: label everything, know where everything is, do not waste time searching when you could be working.

She misses him. She misses him here, in the barn, more than she misses him in the house. In the house she misses the person — the man at the table, the man in the bed, the man who came through the door at 6:00 PM with his boots in his hand and the day's work on his clothes. In the barn she misses the competence — the hands that could diagnose a problem by sound, the mind that could calculate a repair sequence in seconds, the presence that made the barn not a building but a workshop, a place where things were fixed, where broken things became working things, where the entropy of farming was held at bay by a man with a wrench and a system and the belief that every problem had a solution if you stayed long enough and worked carefully enough and did not panic.

She does not panic. She has learned not to panic. She learned from Tom and from the farm and from the particular education that comes from living in a place where the nearest help is forty-five minutes away and the problem is now. She does not panic when the hydraulic line breaks on the drill in the middle of planting. She does not panic when the combine plugs during harvest. She does not panic when the fuel truck does not come and the tractor is at a quarter tank and the field is half finished. She does what Tom did. She assesses. She calculates. She fixes or she workarounds or she waits, and the waiting is not panic and is not patience but is the thing between, the thing that a farmer does when the problem is larger than the farmer and the solution requires time or money or help that is not immediately available.

She walks back to the workbench. She looks at the auger motor. The motor is a Baldor, 5 horsepower, 230-volt, three-phase. The bearing is a 6308, a common bearing, a bearing that costs $23 and that she could order from the bearing house in Sidney and have in two days. The housing crack could be welded. Hector could weld it. Hector welds the way Tom welded, which is well, which is the only way to weld on a farm where a bad weld is a failure and a failure is a breakdown and a breakdown during harvest is a catastrophe that is not dramatic but is financial, the loss measured not in headlines but in bushels.

She could fix the motor. She could fix it today. She could pull the old bearing, press in the new one, have Hector weld the housing, reassemble, test, and the auger would run again, the auger that has not run in three years, the auger that Tom was fixing when he died.

She does not fix the motor. She stands at the workbench and she looks at the motor and she does not fix it because fixing it would be finishing Tom's work and finishing Tom's work would be a completion and completion is an ending and she is not ready for the ending, not yet, not this season, maybe not ever, because the motor on the workbench is the last task Tom began and the leaving of it unfinished is a way of keeping Tom in the present tense, of keeping one of his verbs active — fixing, repairing, working on — even though the man who was doing the fixing is gone and the fixing has stopped and the motor sits on the steel plate of the workbench in the state he left it, disassembled, exposed, waiting for hands that will not come.

She turns off the barn lights. She walks to the door. She stands in the doorway and looks at the barn — the dark interior, the shapes of the equipment, the pegboard on the far wall, the workbench beneath it, the motor on the workbench. She looks at it the way she looks at the planted field from the tractor cab, with the knowledge that what she is looking at contains something she put there, something she maintains, something that is hers.

Tom's barn. She calls it that. She has always called it that, even when Tom was alive, because the barn was Tom's domain the way the kitchen was Ruth's domain and the fields were shared domain, the division of space that a marriage creates, the territories that two people establish by habit and preference and the accumulation of daily use.

Tom's barn. The place where he worked. The place where he organized. The place where he died. The place where his tools hang on the pegboard in the order he established and his motor sits on the workbench in the state he left it and his system persists because his system works and because the living do not change the systems of the dead unless the systems fail and Tom's systems do not fail, Tom's systems endure, Tom's systems are the most reliable thing in the barn, more reliable than the machinery, more reliable than the electricity, more reliable than the concrete floor.

Ruth closes the barn door. She walks across the yard to the house. Rust is on the porch. The sun is setting. The planted fields are dark. The season is beginning.

In the barn behind her, the tools hang in their order. The motor sits on its bench. The wrench hangs on its hook. The system holds.

The system holds because the system was built by a man who understood that systems outlast the people who build them, that a place for every tool and every tool in its place is a sentence that can be spoken by anyone, not just the person who wrote it, and that the speaking of the sentence by someone other than the author is not theft but continuation, not imitation but inheritance, the inheritance of order from the dead to the living, the bequest that does not require a will because it is written on the wall, in hooks and holes and the chrome-plated surfaces of tools that were used by hands that are gone and that will be used by hands that are here and that will be used, if the land is not sold, by hands that have not yet arrived.

Ruth goes inside. She does not look back at the barn. She does not need to look back. The barn is behind her the way Tom is behind her — present, permanent, the foundation on which the day is built, the structure within which the work is done.

She makes dinner. She makes dinner for one, which is not the hardest thing about living alone but is the most precise thing, the reduction from two to one measured in portions, in the amount of rice in the pot, in the number of potatoes peeled, in the single plate on the table instead of two, the arithmetic of absence that she performs every evening and that she has become proficient at but not comfortable with, because proficiency and comfort are different things, the way skill and happiness are different things, the way knowing how to do something and wanting to do it are different things.

She eats at the table. The ash table. Tom's chair is empty. Tom's chair has been empty for three years and it will be empty tomorrow and the day after and the emptiness is not a hole but a fact, and facts do not require response, facts require only acknowledgment, and Ruth acknowledges the empty chair the way she acknowledges the empty side of the bed and the empty hook where Tom's cap used to hang and the empty passenger seat of the truck — by seeing it, by knowing it, by living with it the way she lives with the weather, which is by acceptance, which is by the understanding that some things cannot be changed and that the inability to change them is not defeat but reality.

She washes her plate. She washes her fork, her knife, her glass. She puts them in the rack. She turns off the kitchen light. She goes upstairs. She brushes her teeth. She gets into bed. The cottonwood bed. Arvid's bed. The bed where Elsa did not want to sleep because Elsa did not want to be here, in Montana, on this ground, in this house, and the not-wanting was a wound that Elsa carried for thirty-three years until she died in this bed in 1971 and the dying was the end of the not-wanting, the only end that the not-wanting allowed.

Ruth wants to be here. She wants this to be clear. She has always wanted to be here, on this ground, in this house, in this bed. The wanting is not romantic. The wanting is not nostalgic. The wanting is the wanting of a person who has found the work that fits her and the place that holds her and the life that makes sense to her, and the finding of these things is not common, is not guaranteed, is the particular luck of a person who was born near good soil and who had the sense to stay.

She closes her eyes. The house is quiet. The barn is dark. The fields are planted. The season is beginning.

In the barn, Tom's tools hang on the pegboard. In the morning, Ruth will go to the barn and she will take a wrench from the pegboard and she will use it and she will return it to its place and the taking and the using and the returning will be the day's work and the day's tribute and the day's honest reckoning with the fact that the man who hung the wrench is gone and the woman who uses it is here and the wrench does not care who holds it as long as someone holds it and the holding is correct and the bolt is tightened and the work is done.