“Because I sold the company, Walt,” I said. “That paper is the equipment schedule of the sale. Line seven is the Air Tractor out at the airport with the sign on the propeller.” The father of Jan, a big, white haired rancher named Walt Bergstrom, had read the letterhead twice, and I watched his lips move over the name of the buyer, the biggest agricultural services company in the northern states. The grandfather clock in the hall ticked. “Eleven planes, four hangars, two hundred contracts,” I said. “Fifteen million seven hundred thousand dollars. October the ninth. The buyer owns that plane, and my signature on the schedule is the proof.”
Nobody breathed. The turkey steamed on the platter. Tyler stood at his place with his mouth open and one hand on the back of his chair, the way a man stands who has been told the floor is made of glass. The sister of Jan, a thin, nervous woman, whispered, “Oh, Tyler.” And Walt Bergstrom turned in his chair, slowly, and looked at his grandson, and I saw the face of the old man do something I had never seen it do in thirty one years. It crumpled. For a moment he looked eighty, and frightened. He said, to the room, “Duster has got himself fifteen million dollars,” and then he began to laugh, helplessly, with his hand over his eyes.
It was a terrible laugh. It went on too long. Jan got up from her chair, my Jan, who had looked at her plate for the whole toast, and came around the table and stood next to me and took my hand in hers. “Dad,” she said, “that is enough.” He stopped. She said, “Thirty one years you have called my husband the duster. He flew your wheat. He sprayed your ranch for free. He plowed your driveway tonight for sixty dollars and a slice of pie.” She was not crying. She was white and still and very calm. “And Tyler, Wade paid for your license. Every hour. Every rating. And you took his plane.”
A yellow Air Tractor with a sign on its propeller was named on an equipment schedule and gave one crop duster the evening to bring his nephew home to the hangar.
Tyler sat down. He is thirty two, a lean, sunburned young man with good hands, and he put them flat on the tablecloth and stared at them. “Uncle Wade,” he said, hoarsely, “I thought the company was folding. You told me the canola contracts dried up.” I said, “I did tell you that. I wanted to surprise you at Christmas.”
He shook his head slowly, like a man wading upstream. “I thought if I got ahead of the sale, I could buy the plane from the bank, and start something on my own, and then, I do not know. I thought you would never need it. I thought you were done.” His voice broke. “I wanted to be somebody.”
I looked at my nephew for a long time. I thought of the first morning he came to my hangar, a gangly boy of twenty six with a brand new commercial license and a nervous grin, and I put him in the Pawnee with a bag of sand and said, take her around the pattern. He landed it so softly I did not feel the wheels. I said, son, you have a gift. And he looked at me as if I had given him a medal. “Tyler,” I said, “you are somebody. You have been somebody since that day. You did not need my plane to prove it. You needed to ask me.”
I laid out the terms right there. The Air Tractor would go back to the hangar by Saturday morning, and the spray rig and the GPS units with it, and Floyd would check every rivet. Tyler would call the buyer himself and tell them what had happened, and he would take whatever came of it. And Walt Bergstrom, who had not yet said one word to me in a respectful tone, would stand up and say it aloud. “That is the only thing I ask,” I said. The old rancher looked at me, and then at his daughter, and then at his plate. He wiped his mouth. Then, to my astonishment, he stood.
“Wade Pickett,” he said. His voice shook. “I have been a stubborn, small minded old man. I called you duster for thirty one years because I could not bear that you were happy doing what you loved, and I was not. I sat on a ranch and sold tractors and wished I had your nerve.” He put his hand out across the platter, past the sweet potatoes and the green bean casserole. “You are the finest man at this table, and the best husband my daughter could have found. I am ashamed.” I took the hand. It was dry and enormous, like a catcher mitt. “Walt,” I said, “pass the turkey.”
The buyer was reasonable. A woman in Billings with a calm telephone voice listened to the whole story and said that the company had been looking for experienced young pilots and had no wish to prosecute a nephew who returned the property. Tyler flew for them from March on, in a company jacket, on a salary higher than I had ever paid him. He sent me a photograph the first week. He was standing next to a yellow and black Air Tractor, number 502B, with his arm over the cowling, grinning like a boy at a county fair. The caption said only: Taking good care of her.
At Christmas, Walt Bergstrom drove up to our house in his big truck without calling first. He climbed down stiffly and stood on my porch with a package wrapped in brown paper. Inside was a small wooden sign, hand painted, that he had made in his workshop over three weeks of evenings. It said, in green letters: Pickett Aerial, Great Falls, Montana. The best duster in the Hi Line. I held it in both hands and could not speak. Jan stood in the doorway behind me with a dish towel on her shoulder. “Hang it up, Wade,” she said. I hung it over the door of the hangar that same night.