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Pa died doin’ what he loved most: drinkin’ corn liquor and ignorin’ basic safety protocols.

The accident happened out in the south forty, right where the clay breaks bad and the weeds grow spiteful. According to the sheriff’s report—which was dictated mostly by cousin Cletus who found the body while huntin’ for scrap iron—Pa had been ridin’ high on the 1945 McCormick-Deering Farmall B, half a jug deep into his “medicinal batch,” when he ran over a pair of gophers in the throes of passion.

The gophers survived. Pa did not.

Cletus claimed he saw “love bites and teeth marks” on the brake line, but Deputy Sloan insisted that was just dry rot and Pa’s poor choices catching up. Either way, the Farmall hit a divot, Pa flew like a gospel hallelujah, and the last sound he made on Earth was a mix between a hiccup and “aw, hell.”

They buried him under the pecan tree, the one he swore he’d cut down if it didn’t start producing like the neighbors’ tree. It never did. Still doesn’t. Stubborn tree, just like him.

After the funeral, Ma stood in the kitchen, still wearing her black dress and orthopedic sandals, stirring sweet tea with a gravy spoon. Her hair was in curlers. Her grief was fresh. Her mind was made up.

“We’re sellin’ the damn tractor,” she declared.

The boys—Lonnie and Judd—both dropped their sandwiches in unison.

“But it’s a damn fine implement,” Lonnie argued, full of mortadella and outrage. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that tractor ‘cept maybe the mild stank of death and a bent clutch lever.”

“And the seat smells like bourbon and despair,” Judd added, hoping honesty might somehow help.

Ma glared. “He died on it. I ain’t keepin’ no metal coffin out in the yard where I can see it from my canna lilies.”

“But Ma,” Lonnie said, voice trembling like the last leg of a folding chair, “we only got seven payments left.”

“It’s cursed,” she said. “That’s why the back tires got cracks. That’s why the exhaust stack whistles at night. That’s why your Pa’s ghost keeps openin’ the barn door when I’m in the tub.”

“Maybe it’s just wind,” Judd offered.

“Then the wind’s got a beer gut and a guilty conscience.”

The next day, the boys tried to hide the tractor. Moved it behind the barn and draped it in a tarp like some red steel elephant at a bad surprise party. Ma walked out on the porch, took one look at the suspicious bump in the blue tarp, and hollered, “I KNOW WHAT A TRACTOR LOOKS LIKE EVEN IF IT’S WEARIN’ A SHEET, YOU IDIOTS.”

That night, Ma called a family meeting—which in their house meant she banged a spoon on a casserole dish until everyone sat down and pretended not to be scared.

She said she’d found a buyer.

“Lady from Kermit. Runs a lavender farm and drinks herbal teas. Says she wants to put flowers in the seat and take it to festivals.”

“Festivals?” Lonnie whispered, horrified. “That tractor pulled the drag harrow through six summers of goathead burrs. It don’t deserve to end up full of potpourri and free-range stickers.”

Ma didn’t flinch. She had grief, hot flashes, and a Craigslist login.

Judd made one last plea. “Give us one week,” he said. “One week to show you the Farmall still belongs here.”

Ma narrowed her eyes. “You got three days.”

The boys got to work. They scrubbed it with vinegar, sanded the rust off the fenders, and polished the graphics ‘til they shone like a fire truck on Sunday.

They even fixed the backfire that made it sound like it had gastrointestinal regrets. Lonnie swapped out the rear light bulb with one he “found” in the school exit sign. Judd zip-tied the seat back on and stuffed the holes with dryer lint and squirrel fur.

By the third day, the tractor had regained its dignity.

They rolled it out front and started it up for Ma, who stood on the porch with her arms crossed and her eyebrows in full combat mode.

“Show me what it can do,” she said, chewing on an orange push-pop.

Lonnie took the wheel. Judd grabbed the old plow. The engine coughed, rattled, and roared to life like a drunken bear remembering its purpose. Lonnie popped the clutch and did two full laps around the chicken run, just to show it still had gumption.

And then… the left rear brake gave out.

The Farmall veered east, clipped the fence, ran over Ma’s canna lilies, and took out the cement goose in her yard that wore a different outfit each season.

Ma didn’t say a word. Just turned and walked back inside with the quiet fury of a woman whose decorative yard poultry had just been decapitated.

The lavender lady showed up that evening.

She wore a poncho, Birkenstocks, and a necklace made of driftwood.

“This must be the energy vessel,” she said, gazing at the Farmall like it was a wounded horse.

Lonnie hid behind the shed and wept softly into a pile of baling twine.

Ma stood beside her, arms folded, eyes locked on the horizon like a war general preparing to surrender a fort.

The woman climbed onto the seat.

“Oh,” she whispered. “You can feel the trauma in the steering column. This is powerful.”

Ma opened her mouth to say something. But then she stopped. Looked over at Judd. Then at Lonnie, whose tears were now visible. Then down at the cement goose’s cracked head on the porch steps.

“I can’t do it,” Ma said. “He loved that damn thing. And as much as I hate it, I hate the idea of some driftwood-wearing nutbag using it to hawk essential oils at a farmers market even more.”

The lavender lady blinked. “I’ll also be painting it with chakra symbols.”

“GET OFF MY PROPERTY,” Ma screamed so loud the dog peed.

The tractor stayed.

Ma still glares at it from time to time, especially when it whistles through the stack or when the barn door creaks open with no wind in sight.

She planted new lilies, painted the goose’s head back on, and took up tai chi in the mornings, mostly to help with her anger management.

Lonnie and Judd make the payments—only six left now.

They don’t drive the Farmall much. But they keep it parked out front sometimes, just so Pa’s spirit has somewhere to sit and judge them from.

And every now and then, Ma passes the window, sees that red steel silhouette under the pecan tree, and mutters, “It is still a damn fine implement.”

And it is.

And so was Pa.

Most days.

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