Page 113 of Teach Me How

Skyler

I find my dad tinkering with the planter in the shop. Four months until planting starts up, and he’s already getting started. He looks up as I close the door behind me. I breathe in the familiar smell of diesel and grease. It’s bright in here and warm enough to shed my coat.

“Your mom send you out here?”

I lean against the workbench. “No. I’m here on my own accord.”

“Oh?” He glances at me over the top of the grain box before bending his head over his work. “Hand me that wrench.”

I glance over my shoulder. He doesn’t mention which size, but I can guess based on where he’s working. I hand it over and he passes it awkwardly from his damaged hand to his left.

Before the accident, he was right-handed. He had to start over from scratch with his left hand.

“That still bother you?” I ask.

He follows my gaze, frowning slightly. This isn’t a topic we usually broach.

As in… ever.

“You get used to it.”

This is probably a terrible place to start the conversation I need to have with him, but I have the impulse to just purge it all. “I still haven’t gotten used to the leg. It gets a little worse every year.”

His movements crawl to a stop and he just stares at his hand for a few seconds before looking up at me. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for what happened to you.”

You could knock me over with a feather. “Oh. Dad. That’s not what I was trying to say.”

He lets his arm drop to his side. “Might not have been, but it's what I’m trying to say. You shouldn’t have ever been on that tractor.”

“I drove that tractor every day. It was my own damn fault. I wasn’t focusing.”

“No. Because I’d been riding your ass all morning. You should have been at football practice. That’s where you wanted to be, but I forced you to stay home. I should’ve let you go. I didn’t just keep you from that practice, I kept you from your entire senior year.”

I shrug, shoving my hands in my pockets. “Accidents happen.”

“That wasn’t an accident, son. That was carelessness on my part. I’ll carry that with me for the rest of my life.”

A laugh slips off my tongue, surprising us both. He frowns at me, and I bite back my smile. “All these years I’ve been stewing in my own personal mud puddle, feeling bad about your hand. And turns out, you were doing the same thing.”

“My hand?” He glances down at it. “Son, that wasn’t your fault. I was the dumb ass that put my hand on that rotor.”

“Because you were trying to help me.”

We stare at each other for a few heartbeats. I clear my throat. “How about we both let it go and call it even?”

He frowns, tipping his head like he’s about to argue.

I hold up my hand. “Dad. For god’s sake. Just let it go. Life’s too short to hold on to bad feelings.”

A reluctant smile touches his eyes. “Throwing that in my face, are you?”

“The Uncle Don feud? You bet your ass I am.”

He thinks that over and shrugs. “Alright. I’ll try taking your advice for a change. That what you came out here for?”

“No.” I trail off, trying to think of the best way to approach this.

He leans over the planter box, fitting the wrench to a rusted-out bolt. “Is this about that Olson girl?”