His son is challenged in ways a lot of us aren’t.

His son often roamed the yard, lips moving rapidly, brows knit together; something heavy on his mind.

His son had an affinity for rocks.  He had a wicked backhand throw that sent them spinning through the air a high rate of speed.

His first choice of target was the mirrors on his dad’s farm equipment; It was often when I was on the yard that I looked up and saw broken mirrors staring back at me from their vantage point.

His second choice of target was the moving fan blades in front of the engine on his dad’s tractors.

If his rock made it into that 6-inch gap between the fan shroud and engine, and made contact with the moving fan, one of two things would happen.  Either the rock made it through the blades and got hit by them on the backside of the fan, where it was propelled at tremendous speed into the radiator, or, the rock came in contact with the blades on the front side of the fan, and was propelled at horrific speeds back out in any random direction.

I don’t know how many mirrors and radiators his dad had to purchase during the time he lived with them.  For a while, his dad hung heavy canvas tarp material from the sides of the hood on each tractor as a sort of protection to deflect the rocks away before they hit the fan.  But he couldn’t fasten them on the bottom, because then the air couldn’t make it out, and the engine would overheat.  So, when the tractor ran, the canvas flapped open at the bottom, giving his son just a fraction of an angle shot, up into the fan blades.

It worried us mechanics to work there.  It was more than once that I was charging the A/C and I heard a sharp clang, and looking up, I saw his son some yards distant, cheering at his good shot.  I guess I must have been lucky not to have been hit.  I’m sure if I had, it could have been fatal.

But his dad.  Was so, kind.

He was just enough mysterious that you believed him. 

He carried a sort of deep strength about him.

He tried to stay in the area where we were working to keep tabs on his son.

And if his son got a shot off, and if it was one of those nerve shattering, rock smashing hits with the fan, I saw him go to him.

And I saw him gently wrap his arm around his son’s bent shoulders.

And he eased him off to the side, so that he couldn’t harm us.

And when he spoke softly to him, I saw the creased, troubled face of his son smooth over in peace.

I saw his son smile, then, and I saw his son put his arm around his dad. 

And I saw them stand there, arm in arm, while I worked on his tractor.