But it didn’t last long enough. Spring came. So it started all over again. Only this time my dad wouldn’t have it, not any of it; he made it all stop. But at first it was just the same: I was driving the pickup and we were going to check cattle or fix fence, something of the sort, and it was Saturday morning, early, bright, with not enough wind to blow the sand off the tops of the hills, and there, out there in the field, there was that damn John Deere tractor again. Two heads were sticking up beyond the exhaust stack, one somewhat higher than the other, and the tractor was coming toward us from across the corn stubble pulling a disk. My dad didn’t have to tell me to stop. I braked the pickup to the side of the road, and this time he not only opened the door, he got out. “You stay here,” he said.
He walked down through the weeds in the ditch, stepped up over the fence, and stood waiting in the stubble on the exact ground the tractor would have to use if it was to make another turn and go back out across the field. But no matter what the tractor did, my dad wasn’t going to move; he was planted there. The tractor came on. The two heads above it took shape, became Edith’s straw hat and the old man’s hard face. There were stump-arms ruining the air above her hat. The tractor still came on. Its discharge and explosion increased steadily as if someone had loaded it with firecrackers, lady fingers when it was far across the field, and now cherry bombs as it got nearer. My dad stood still, waiting.
Have you ever seen one of those documentary movies, or a TV news clip, say, showing a little white farmhouse with some outbuildings spread around it, and off in the distance but not too far off, not far enough, sure not, there is a tornado coming? It’s all darkness and huge, massive, the tornado coming black all the time and the white house standing there waiting for the damage. And you know it’s all inevitable; you know it’s going to get it: the windows are going to burst, fly out in space, scatter like thrown water, and the roof’s going to crash, and you wish the damn fool running the projector would have the sense to reverse the goddamn film so that afterwards you wouldn’t have to note the straw sticking out of any tree trunk or watch while an old woman lifts the chimney bricks and the two-by-fours and the window shade off the little girl in her pink dress. If you have seen that then you know how my dad looked waiting in front of that tractor. I won’t forget it. I won’t forget how his back looked.
But the tractor came on and I thought: Jesus, at least her feet can reach the brake pedals. At least she will remember to kill the throttle. At least by now she knows how to turn the goddamn steering wheel. Doesn’t she?
Because my dad wasn’t going to move. And he didn’t move. He didn’t have to. Edith got the tractor stopped a foot in front of him; it stayed there racing in idle like a leashed dog growling, wanting to gobble his pants zipper. The old man was wild.
“Stand back, Roscoe,” he yelled. “Get away. I ain’t got time for no jaw.”
My dad didn’t say anything.
“Well, by God,” the old man screamed. “Run him down then. If he don’t move, run him over.”
But of course Edith wouldn’t do that, didn’t do it. Besides, now my dad was doing all that needed to be done. He stepped up to the tractor and jerked the magneto wire out, ripped it off and threw it away from him into the weeds of the barrow ditch. The tractor coughed and died.
So then I thought the old man had finally gone completely crazy. I had never seen anyone go full-out wacko before, flat rage and spit, scream murder, but he was doing all of that. And all the time too he was hitting at something with his arms, flailing them windmill fashion, hitting again and again, hard, until the blood showed red on his wrists and bad stubs. Watching him from the pickup I thought at first he was trying to hit Edith, punish her, but that he was so mad, so far gone, that he couldn’t even do that, because in fact he wasn’t hitting her. Then I saw that it was the belt he was hitting, that leather contraption buckled behind him between the tractor fenders, which kept him in place, and he was trying to break it with his stumps and wrists because he had no fingers left to work the buckle. He was furious. He kept hitting at it; Christ, then he was kicking at it. It was raging lunacy.
But I don’t suppose it lasted all that long, not as long anyway as it takes me now to tell it, because when she understood what he was doing and actually managed to believe it, Edith ducked her head, reached past him, and unbuckled the damn thing. He stumbled off the tractor, fell to his knees, stood up, and came running around the tractor to my dad.
My dad stood waiting for him like a bulldog might stand and wait to see what injury a gopher with rabies might do him. The old man hit him in the throat. My dad stepped back. Blood from Goodnough’s stump was smeared across his neck. The old man swung again and missed.
“Daddy,” Edith yelled. “You old fool.”
He hit my dad again, in the face this time, under the eye, leaving some more of his own blood. My dad caught him by the front of the shirt, held him eye level, then flung him hard onto the ground. The old man faltered, seemed to catch his breath; he pushed himself up from the plowed sand with his red stumps and came again, flailing his arms. My dad blocked most of that wildness but caught one in the ear. So he had the old man’s blood all over his face, and that was enough. He hit the old man with all his weight on the point of the chin, rocking his head back. The old man went down. I thought he was dead. My dad must have thought so too; he knelt beside him and lifted his eyelids. Edith scrambled off the tractor. Together they carried him over to the pickup, let down the tailgate, and laid him flat in the back. He was one hell of a mess: his hands were caked with sand; there was a raw blue swelling beginning to show on his chin; he had sandburs stuck all over his clothes. He wasn’t dead, though. He was still alive and mean in his eyes.
They stayed in the back with him while I drove the pickup over to the Goodnough house. At the house my dad carried him like he was folded clothes up the steps and on up to the bedroom, where he laid the old man down on a bed.
“Wash his face off and get some ice. He’ll live.”
Edith went back downstairs. The old man stared at my dad out of yellow watery eyes. He didn’t move any but just lay there, making a bad mess of the bed and watching my dad. Then his eyes filled and ran down his cheeks. I suppose I felt sorry for him then, too, the old bastard. He wasn’t any good; he was less than no good. His face was all pinched up, and there was that water grizzling down his cheeks into his shirt collar. But for the first time I did feel sorry for him.
Edith came back with a wet cloth and a bowl of ice cubes. She cleaned his face and hands and applied the ice to his chin, picked the sandburs from his clothes. The old man paid no attention. She took his shoes off.
“I want him out of my house.”
“Be quiet,” Edith said. “Haven’t you done enough?”
“This is my house.”
“It doesn’t matter whose house it is. Be quiet.”
“I want him out.”
“Forget it,” my dad said. “I’m going.” He leaned over the old man. “But don’t you ever put her on that tractor again. You hear me?”
“Get him out of here.”
“Next time I’ll kill you.”
“Get out.”
“I mean that. I’ll kill you first.”
The old man’s eyes were full of water again and he began to shiver in his bed like he was cold. We left then. At the bedroom door I looked back, and Edith was covering him with a blanket. She was crying now too.