Chapter Eighteen #2
I watch him as he watches his grandson, and my heart swells.
I love my parents because they’re my parents, it’s my obligation, but love feels different around the Hart family.
Maybe it’s because the family is tied together by years of backbreaking work and heartache, or maybe it’s because they all live in such close proximity together, but I can almost see the love among them.
The love stretches across the crowd, makeshift bar, and dirt lane to reach Grayson on his tractor.
He must feel it too, because in no time, he looks toward the stands, his gaze meeting his grandpa’s, and he raises a hand in a salute. His grandpa raises one as well, a simple one-swipe wave, enough of a conversation between two men to know what they are saying.
“I’ll bet you're proud of him,” I say, breaking my gaze from Grayson to look back at his grandpa.
“I’m proud of all my kids and grandkids. I’m a very blessed man.”
I nod along. “Did you ever pull?”
“Oh yes.” He chuckles, stretching out his leg to rest on the bench below us. “When I was a teenager, we all did. We thought we were tough, racing tractors and entering tractor pulls to pass the time, when really, we had no idea what we were doing.”
I laugh along with that, looking at Grayson’s grandpa to see if I can imagine what he was like as a teen or a wild twenty-year-old.
He has the same crystal-blue eyes, the ones that must have strong genetics to be given to his children and grandkids.
His hair is gray and combed over to hide his balding head, and I wonder if it was once brown like Grayson’s, or more sandy blonde like I think Harper’s was before she started to dye it.
“Grayson has a gift for it, though,” he says, interrupting my thoughts.
“This is going to make me sound like an idiot, probably, but how is someone good or bad at pulling the sled? Isn’t it up to the tractor, how … fancy they made it?”
He chuckles a little at my fumbles, but doesn’t dwell on it.
“Sort of,” he says, shrugging his shoulders.
“Yes, someone who has tens of thousands of dollars to dump into a newer model tractor has a better chance at winning than someone who is limited by time or money, but it also takes some skill.” He raises a hand, and I notice a slight tremble to his fingers as he points at the second contestant while they make their way down the lane.
“Someone has to stay under five thousand pounds to be in this weight class, but see those weights added to the front end?”
I nod in the direction he’s pointing, noticing two silver plates secured to the front of the engine.
“That’ll help weigh the front end down and give better traction.
But it’s not just about how fancy the tractor is.
Sure, a high-end stock diesel engine can run over a hundred thousand dollars, and that’d probably outrun anything participating here today, but in a town like ours, most people are under the same conditions, so it comes down to skill. ”
“What does he have to know?”
Pops claps for the last competitor, leaning over to answer my question, raising his voice over the cheers from the crowd.
“A driver has to be able to feel what’s going on with the tractor.
They need to find that sweet spot between maximizing power without spinning out.
It looks like they’re just hitting the gas and pulling, but they aren’t.
Each second of the pull they’re feeling the tension between their tractor and the dirt under the wheels.
He has to know what the tractor is capable of and not burn it out right at the start, while also taking it to its limits toward the end. ”
“Wow…” I exhale. I wouldn’t have guessed any of that from what I’ve already seen.
“Grayson puts his heart into everything he loves,” his grandpa says, and when I look back up at him, there’s a sparkle in his eye that wasn’t there before. “Once he cares about something, he’s all in, he’s a good man.”
I don’t know if his message is one of kindness, or a slight warning.
But either way, I smile up at him and bring a hand up to rest on his shoulder.
“He’s a great man. I could tell that from the first night we met.
” I’ve noticed how he cares for things too.
From his older home that he’s fixing up, to the truck that many would say needs to be replaced.
These things might be older, aged, yes, but he takes such good care of them it doesn’t matter.
He nods at that, and his hand falls to my knee. His wrinkled fingers rest atop mine and I tangle them together. “Grayson’s next.”
My heart stalls, and a swallow catches in my throat as I see Grayson at the start.
The moderator announces his name, his weight class, and the crowd moves to the edge of their seats.
This isn’t just Grayson to them, this is the man who set a local record when he was just a teenager.
Someone who was likely victorious at tractor pulls each year only to suddenly stop and dedicate his time to the family farm.
It would’ve sounded silly to me a month ago, even yesterday, but after talking to his family and learning from his grandpa, my insides begin to twist with nervous energy.
Grayson doesn’t exude that same nervous tension.
His face is flat, his composure intact as he backs up.
Staff attach the sled, and he pulls to the start line.
The horn blares, and he starts. He’s slow, calculated, just like his grandpa said.
I watch his steady grip on the wheel with one hand feeling the long rod that extends atop the engine.
He lets it gently brush against his palm, and I wonder if he can sense the slightest change in tension.
A change that might indicate he needs to increase the power or decrease if he’s giving too much too fast.
He’s halfway down the track, and I can’t tell if much is happening. Grayson’s face doesn’t give anything away, and the crowd continues to watch on bated breath. The front of the tractor bounces just a hair, and the front wheels lift off the ground a few inches before slamming down again.
I must gasp because Grayson’s grandpa chuckles, squeezing my hand a bit tighter.
Grayson’s tractor passes us, and he must have made it further than the last two who pulled, but I can’t quite tell.
The second the tractor seems to slow, he veers just a little to the left and his big back wheels start to spin.
It all happens so fast, the back wheels spin and the front end bounces off the ground once, then twice, before a red flag is waved, signaling the end of the run.
The crowd is cheering, and I let go of my death grip on his grandpa’s hand to clap. “Did he do good?” I ask, raising my voice so he can hear me over the crowd.
He nods, pointing to the monitor that reads: three hundred and sixteen. “A full pull is three hundred and thirty feet, he made it three hundred and sixteen. As it stands right now, Grayson is in first place.”