The house went with the job. We never paid rent on it, and we never owned a single board of it. That was the arrangement. It was a fair one. It’s how a good many people out here have raised a family.
Dale died two years ago in March. He was greasing the planter in the machine shed, and he sat down on an overturned bucket to rest. And that was all.
Jim found him.
Jim Olson cried harder at that funeral than I did. Because I hadn’t started yet.
The house went with Dale’s job. So by rights, I should have been out of it the spring he died. The Olsons let me stay anyway. Two years and seven months, and they never once brought it up. Jim’s wife sent over sweet corn every August. Jim plowed my lane every winter without being asked.
But their boy was coming home to farm. He and his wife had a baby and another on the way. They’d been renting in Kearney. And the hired man’s house was the only place on the farm to put them.
