Linda Swanson read the last name aloud with a voice that cracked on the second syllable. “Her name is Ruth Voight, Your Honor. She is the wife of Mr. Voight of sixty eight years.” Judge Brennan sat very still. Nobody in the courtroom moved. Officer Kessler, who had been writing in his notebook, had stopped, and was looking at the old man in the front row as if for the first time. Ernest Voight did not take his hand from his eyes. His big shoulders, in the clean white T-shirt, were shaking. I have stood by that door for twenty two years, and I have not often had to look away. That morning I looked at the flag.
Linda went on in a gentle voice. Ruth had been living at the Elm Street Care Center for three years, since the disease took her memory. She did not know her own children. She did not know the year. “But every day at two in the afternoon, when his mower comes up the drive, she sits up in her chair,” Linda said. “She calls him Ernie. She says, There is my farmer. He sits by her bed and holds her hand for an hour, and he feeds her strawberries from his garden, one at a time. He tells her about the weather, the cows, the corn. She does not understand a word. But she smiles.”
The judge leaned forward on his elbows. “Mr. Voight,” he said, very gently, “why did you not tell me this?” The old man took down his hand. His eyes were red and his face was wet, and he held his cap in both fists. “Sir, I did not want a fuss,” he said. “She was always the one for talking. I am not. I lost my license in May, and my son lives in Arizona, and the bus does not run out our road. I have a mower. I have a wagon. It is four miles. It takes me an hour and ten minutes. I figured the Lord would not mind.”
Carl Lindstrom has served as a bailiff in Wapello County for twenty two years and had never seen a lawnmower case.
Officer Kessler cleared his throat. He stood and took off his hat, and he looked a good deal younger than twenty six. “Your Honor, I withdraw the recommendation of the state,” he said. “I would like to say something. I stopped Mr. Voight on Main Street, and I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was going to the store. I did not ask him another question. I wrote him up.” He swallowed. “I have driven past that care center two hundred times. I never once thought about who was inside.” Judge Brennan told him that it was an honest thing to say.
Linda lifted the first card from the box. “Dear Ernie, you are the best part of my week,” she read. “Dear Mr. Voight, the sweet corn tasted like my kitchen of my mother. Dear Ernest, I told my daughter about you, and she cried. Dear Ernie, I am ninety one and I have never been given a tomato by a man in my life.” There were two hundred and sixty of them. Some were written in the shaky hand of residents, some typed by aides, and some, from the dementia ward, were only drawings of a sun, or a tractor, or a red tomato with a smile.
The judge was silent for a long moment. Then he took off his black robe, folded it on the bench, and came around the front of the courtroom in his shirtsleeves. He knelt on one knee in front of Ernest Voight. “Mr. Voight, I have been on this bench for nineteen years,” he said, “and I have never wanted so badly to dismiss a case. I cannot overlook the law. But I will tell you what I can do.” He rose, put his robe back on, and read from the bench. Case dismissed on the motion of the state. Ernest was fined one dollar, which Officer Kessler paid out of his own wallet.
The next morning, the courthouse had a visitor, the mayor of Ottumwa, who had read the story in the Courier. She brought a representative from the state department of transportation, and together they found a way. A restricted permit was issued allowing Mr. Voight to operate a lawn tractor on county roads, between the hours of one and five, to the Elm Street Care Center only. A flashing orange light was mounted on the back of the wagon by the volunteer fire department. The mayor presented it to him in a ceremony in the parking lot, with the whole care center watching from their windows.
Officer Kessler asked if he could do something more. Every day at one thirty, he now pulls his cruiser in front of the Voight farm, and he drives ahead of the mower with the lights flashing, all four miles, down Main Street and up Elm. Cars pull over. People wave. Children run to the curb. The department has quietly adopted it as a standing detail. A reporter from the Des Moines paper asked the officer why he did it. He said, “Because a man should not have to drive alone to see the person he loves.”
In October, the care center held a harvest dinner in the dining hall, for forty one residents and two hundred guests. Ernest wore a pressed suit. He pushed Ruth in her wheelchair to the front table, and the whole room stood. The mayor made a speech. The children from the elementary school sang. When the cornbread came out, Ruth looked up at her husband across the table, and I swear she squeezed his hand and said, “Ernie, you are late.” He laughed until he cried, and so did half the room, including the judge.
Ernest still comes every day at two in the afternoon. The orange light flashes, the wagon rattles, and the old mower sputters up the drive of the care center, loaded with the last tomatoes of the season. I have seen it a dozen times now. Each time I think about that cardboard box, set down on the prosecutor table by a nurse with cartoon cats on her scrubs. There are laws that keep us safe, and there are laws that are still being written, one kindness at a time. I am only the bailiff. But I know which one I would rather enforce.