Don pulled into the field at one-thirty in his old white Chevy pickup, Barb beside him. Behind them came a red Ford, and behind that, two more trucks.
By three, there were six people. By five, there were nine. By dusk, there were eleven of them. Ethan made twelve.
They wore orange jackets and blue ones, seed caps and stocking hats. Every one of them carried a flashlight, even in the daylight, because Don had told them they’d still be at it after dark.
There was Don and Barb. Ethan’s dad, Gary Schuler, who farms near Geneva. The Kruse brothers, Lyle and Dennis, who’d quit cutting their own beans two miles east to come. Their beans were standing in the same forecast I was, and they came anyway. There was Pastor Ingrid Holm from Our Savior’s Lutheran, in jeans and a Hampton-Dumont Bulldogs sweatshirt. Marlys Fenske, a retired schoolteacher who’d taught Morris in fourth grade. Two young guys from the co-op who worked with Truman. And Rick Anderberg, the crop insurance agent, who’d driven out in his town shoes and immediately ruined them.
Don lined them up along the west edge of the third terrace, one person per bean row, about thirty inches apart.
“Nice and slow,” he said. “Bend over. Look at the ground, not the plants. Keys are heavy. They’ll be on the dirt. Don’t stomp. These are Anna’s beans.”
They started walking west, bent over, moving at the speed of a slow funeral procession.
I couldn’t search. Every time I stepped into the beans, my hands started shaking, and Don sent me back to the combine.
“You hold the light for us,” he said. “We’ll need something to aim at when it gets dark.”
So I stood on the step of the green combine in my gray hoodie and gloves and held a big spotlight on the cab, so they’d have a landmark.
The sun went down at 6:22. The sky turned orange, then pink, then the deep blue of an Iowa October. The line of flashlights moved slowly west through the beans, eleven yellow circles bobbing in the dark, then turned and came back east one row over. Then west again.
Around seven, Barb came back to the combine with a thermos of coffee and two ham sandwiches wrapped in wax paper.
“Eat,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“You can. You haven’t had anything since breakfast. I can tell by looking at you.”
I ate half a sandwich standing on the combine step. Barb stood beside me, watching the lights move through the field.
“Don’s mad,” she said quietly.
“At Truman?”
“At himself. He’s been watching Truman fall apart since spring and didn’t say anything to you. He didn’t think it was his place, with Morris gone.” She sipped her coffee. “Now he thinks it was.”
“What do you mean, fall apart?”
Barb looked at me for a long moment. Then she shook her head.
“That’s Don’s to tell. Or Truman’s.”
At 7:48, just after full dark, a voice came up out of the rows.
“Got ’em!”
It was Barb. She’d gone back out in the last pass. She stood up in the middle of the beans about a hundred and forty yards in and held the key ring over her head like a prize walleye.
Eleven flashlight beams swung toward her at once.
Somebody whooped. Lyle Kruse started laughing. Pastor Ingrid called out, “Thanks be to God,” the way she does on Sunday mornings.
I climbed down off the combine and walked out into the beans toward Barb. My legs felt like they belonged to somebody else. The bean stalks scraped against my jeans.
She put the key ring in my gloved hand. It was cold and gritty with dirt. The John Deere key, the shop key, the house key, and a little brass tag Henry had made at Cub Scouts that said MY DAD in stamped letters.
I closed my fist around it.
“Thank you,” I said. My voice cracked.
“Don’t thank me,” Barb said. “Thank whoever it was that made Truman throw like a girl.” She grinned. “I throw like a girl, and I’d have put ’em a lot farther than that.”
Everybody laughed. It was the first time I’d laughed in three weeks.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.