No Sensible People- Chapter One (part 1)

Daddy died in one of those freak tractor accidents you think only happens in the movies. I was out playing with the chickens, and I heard the horses and cows go loopy. When I looked out toward the wheat field, the tractor wasn't facing normal, and Daddy wasn't in the driver's seat anymore.

I was nine and a half, and Mama never asked how I felt about the whole mess. She went on and on about how the wheat harvest was cursed and the tractor possessed. Father Oliver had arranged for a couple older boys from
church to get a couple days off school to come out to the farm to help take care of the field and the animals until Mama could decide what she wanted to do.

But before the boys came, Mama had a favor to ask Taffy. She and Daddy called him Denny, but I called him Taffy. He brought me saltwater taffy nearly every time he came out to the farm. Only Mama had been frantic when she called him, and he didn't bring me any that day.

"I want you to save Nathaniel's soul," Mama stated.

Taffy looked down, took a handkerchief out of his back jeans pocket, wiped his forehead, and put it back. It wasn't the first time Taffy heard crazy talk out of Mama.

"You're seeing things right, aren't you, Molly?" Taffy asked carefully. "You know who I am?"

Mama burst out laughing. "Of course I know who you are, Denny Ferguson! What did you think? I was mistaking you for Our Lord Jesus Christ?"

Taffy laughed too. Mama had a way of making the people around her doubt their own sanity. That had usually been Daddy, before he died, but sometimes it was Taffy or me. Maybe she figured if she got us laughing it
would calm us down, prepare us for the real craziness.

"I want you to bury the John Deere engine in the wheat field," Mama said. "Molly, I can't bury a tractor engine in the field. There are laws against that."

"Well, go on then. Never mind. Just don't let me see you at Nathaniel's wake."

"Mama!" I said. "You can't do that. Taffy was Daddy's best friend."

"It's okay, Jennie," Taffy told me. "Your Mama's sad about losing your Daddy. She doesn't mean it."

"Don't tell Mary Jeanette what I mean!" Mama scolded. "I know what I mean. Those boys from church are coming first thing tomorrow morning. Satan is in that tractor. It killed my Nathaniel, and I don't want it doing anybody else in. What if Mary Jeanette would've been out there with him? I want this taken care of now, and if you won't help me, I'll sit out there myself till sunrise if I have to with my screwdriver and my pliers...."

"Stop, Molly," Taffy interrupted. "I'll do it. Only I'm not burying it. The EPA will have a field day. Besides, you don't want it on your land. I'll take it in my truck; haul it out to the junkyard. It'll be gone for good."

Mama nodded. "You're right. It's best to remove it completely."

Taffy took his tools and tinkered with the tractor the way he and Daddy had a million times before. The tractor had been around over ten years, since before he, Mama, and Daddy all graduated from Leifton High School. Taffy told me that was why Daddy had lost control while he was driving out in the field. The tractor was too damn old. It was an accident, plain and simple. The Devil had better things to do than play around with a John Deere. But I wasn't to correct my mama. She needed to think the way she needed to think.

"Don't even worry about it Jennie," Taffy told me. "You have enough to handle with your Daddy gone."

Taffy got the engine off the land, and he and I both thought Mama seemed better. She visited with Father Oliver and made all the funeral arrangements at Saint Anne's. She thanked him for finding the boys to come over and help with the animals, she only wished she could offer them more than her famous hot chocolate, which she always made with real cocoa and whipping cream.

The day of the funeral, Mama withdrew into herself again. Father Oliver told Taffy and me it was her way of grieving, and she had to experience it in her own way. Taffy offered to stay with us a day or two. He suggested that he knew the farm better than the high school boys, and maybe he could show them a few things, so they could be more useful. Mama insisted they were doing fine, and reminded Taffy he had his own job at the
mill. Larry Lutzen would not like him putting his job on the back burner to help her out. He had already taken more time than he should have before and during the funeral. Mama managed to extend Mr. Lutzen the basic Christian courtesies whenever necessary, but the whole town knew the two didn't get along.

Mama was still up when I turned in that night, and when I got up in the morning she was already making my favorite breakfast; French toast and bacon. She made it whenever she thought the last loaf of bread she'd baked
might go bad. Mama's own plate sat in the sink, and I knew she'd already eaten her share. She sat at the yellow Formica kitchen table waiting for me to get up and eat mine.

Daddy used to let me feed the chickens and my horse every morning, and I had woken up that morning at five a.m. out of habit. I offered to help, but as Mama headed toward the screen door she told me to stay put and eat
my breakfast. She'd take care of the chickens, and my horse.

"Stay put, Mary Jeanette," she said. "I'll take care of everything."

part 2

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