80 slows to 70, to 60, 40, 30, 20 miles an hour. I’m stuck behind a tractor. A mustard yellow behemoth with rear tires as big as boulders. It rolls along lazily, watched by me, watched by the traffic coagulating behind it. The road is a one-laner, with too many turns and thickets on either side for anybody to feel comfortable flooring it and attempting to overtake the crawling road block. Cars whiz by the other lane, the other way. The tractor keeps chugging.
We’re in hillbilly country. That part of Pennsylvania that could be Kentucky. It’s dense and dull. The dirt is dreary. The bushes are drab. The trees are green but they can’t be described as colorful. Rotting houses dot the road every mile or so, flying rattlesnakes declaring “Don’t Tread On Me.” The tractor slows down. It puts me in an “I’ll Tread On You” mood.
What’s it doing out here? Last time I checked, you can’t till a road. You can’t plant crops on asphalt. “Go back to the fields,” I say. I feel the swell of agreement behind me. “Get off the road,” the pileup says. The tractor doesn’t stop chugging. It hears, but it doesn’t listen. I can’t see the driver but I can guess that he’s a smiling old farmer, dressed in dirty dungarees with a straw hat and a stem of wheat hanging from his mouth. He’s leaning back, hands behind his head, humor in his eyes, while us tenderfoots simmer with annoyance in our air-conditioned Camrys, our Explorers fitted with radio and GPS, our minivans with built-in movie theaters.
Our eyes are glued to its rusty ass, but the tractor takes in the summer smells and smiles at the sun. Cottony clouds mill about like sheep in the sky. The dirt is dark with moisture and exploding with life. The bushes are bundles of thin branches that have fireworked into shape over years of slow content growth. The trees join together in lush barriers that shield this little one-lane road from the world.
Then it opens up. The thicket grows sparse, opening up into fields that are so green it hurts to look at, and the road grows more visible. Cars slip into the other lane, roaring ahead while the way is clear of oncoming traffic. They leave the tractor in the dust. Pretty soon, I’m the only one left. A procession of one. Then I too leave the tractor behind, taking off from 20 to 30, to 40, 60, 80 miles an hour.
It’s probably off the road now, rolling through fields and tilling soil, scattering seeds, harvesting crops, engine thrumming with horsepower and full of mechanical muscles all pumping and pushing like a hard-working flesh and blood farmer. His sleeves rolled up, dirt caking his arms, the sun beating down on a weather worn face full of smile lines. Maybe I’d have those smile lines too if I drove at a tractor’s crawl and spent more time playing around in the soil.
Lance is a senior graduating this May with an economics degree. He has been published a handful of times in past editions of “KLIO,” “Kalliope,” and “Folio,” as well as the online literary magazine “A Thin Slice of Anxiety.”