Potato Salad

Potato Salad

It could have gone any number of ways. There was no reason for anyone to pay attention, what with the baked beans and potato salad, the tire swing and the lawn chairs. It was the familiar commotion of a family gathering, kids chasing farm cats through the yard, adults chatting while my uncle manned the barbecue.

At one end of the yard stood the shop, where as kids we were never supposed to go without an grown-up. It was full of rusty tools, sharp blades, and various cans of paint and varnish. There was always an ancient tractor at one end, and a nest in the back corner that we’d long ago decided belonged to a wizened barn owl. The apple orchards began at the opposite edge of the yard, with the bank of the canal rising in the distance. When we were little we’d walk the half mile to the canal and throw rocks into its roiling summertime current. It was one of the countless things that made my grandma tell us to be careful.

Don’t slide down the laundry chute. Don’t tip over the outhouses, unless Grandpa tells you to. Don’t do what all the cousins did and try to get up to ninety on Thatcher road leading up to the house. Don’t drink from the big metal bucket that caught the water from the gutter over the shop. That one should have been a no-brainer, but it wasn’t.

Grandpa was gone now, and the Slonekers leased the farm from Grandma. As we ate our hamburgers and potato salad, Jim Sloneker zipped around in the loading yard, moving piles of unused wooden pallets to the warehouse on the other side of the yard. His two young daughters played with the newborn kittens on a stack of pallets to the side. Occasionally he would let them ride on one of the forks as he came back to reload.

Like I said, though. It could have gone any number of ways. The way it went this time is I finished my potato salad. Potato salad isn’t usually a life-changing thing. Unless you find out that you’re dating your second cousin because your moms both have the same potato salad recipe. But this wasn’t that.

As I went to toss my paper plate in the garbage, I glanced across the yard. The pallets were gone, so Jim must have finished moving the pallets. I was about to turn back to the family chatter but paused.

In the middle of the loading yard Jim Sloneker sat frozen on the forklift, his hands gripped tightly to the steering wheel, his foot pressed firmly on the brake. Beneath the forklift, her leg pinned under one of the front wheels, was one of Jim’s daughters.

Another don’t. Don’t ever play on moving farm equipment.

“Dad,” I said, but it came out too quiet, and like a question.

“Dad!” I said again, this time louder. He looked up from the conversation. I couldn’t put the situation into words, so I just pointed.

There are few things my dad does quickly, but this was one of them. In half a second, all the commotion and chatter had stopped, and my dad was laying on his stomach on the gravel next to the forklift. I got down next to him and held the little girl’s hand. My dad talked Jim through it, directing him to inch the fork backward slowly.

The whole thing lasted maybe five minutes. It seemed like ten or twenty. It’s one of those things where you’re there and you’re in it, but you’re glad it’s not you. But in a way it is you, or at least a part of you, because although the whole thing could have gone any number of ways, you were a part of it, and you just happened to be there at the right time.

I never saw that girl again. I’m pretty certain that being stuck under a forklift is a memory she’ll have for the rest of her life. I’m less certain that she’ll remember me or my part in it. Which isn’t so important, I guess. I was there, and I helped, because I could. I’m okay with that.