Chapter Text
Cold Open
09/23/1997
Copper Lake, NY
11:21 a.m.
Jimmy steered his tractor from the road onto the headland and stretched his neck to look for the chopper. Almost half a mile off he could see Frank’s tractor, the brand new John Deere 7810, chugging along Pete's chopper that was regurgitating the sweet smelling green mass into the trailer on its side. While Jimmy was still pissed Frank always got to drive the new and fancy tech and he therefore had to take their old tractor with its non-functional a/c and defective radio, he was glad they had the new self-propelled chopper Pete had bought three years ago. He shuddered as he remembered the times when he had to drive the really old 4020, without a cabin, because the tractor he was driving now would have to tow the old New Holland chopper. He would find black snot in his handkerchiefs for ages after the harvests back then.
He had hoped to find his colleagues a lot nearer to him than they were, really no fun in hurrying across a field in a tractor with a bouncing trailer in tow, thank you very much, and he knew he had to speed up. He could already see the mountain of chopped corn plants on Frank’s trailer and he knew Pete would be pissed if he had to stop and wait for him. He guessed where he had to take over the place parallel to the chopper and hurried on. As he bounced in his seat, squinting against the late summer sun and careful not to crack his skull on the roof liner, he carefully watched whether they would get to the headland and turn together or if he would have to step in earlier. They reached the end of the row and he could see Frank speed up a little to prepare for the well-practiced dance in which chopper and tractor had to circle one another on the little space the headland gave them to align anew in order to munch through the next rows of corn.
Jimmy had almost caught up to them when he registered that, yes, Frank was circling his tractor/trailer unit carefully around, but Pete was driving the chopper straightforward over the balk. And into a line of trees. Jimmy had no chance to do more than mutter a plain shit under his breath before he saw the corn head make contact with the wood. Shit, shit, shit, he thought again, and this will take ages to repair and thank goodness it was Pete himself, he would have killed any of us for this. He was positive Pete had fallen asleep at the wheel, as crazy as it was during the corn harvest, where you had to concentrate hard on the fine tuning between your chopper and the trailers. What the fuck, Pete?
He stopped his 4850 beside the now also standing 7810 and rammed the gear lever in park. In the corner of his eye he saw Frank climbing down the cabin and starting over to the chopper. He was just reaching the ground when he registered that the chopper was still pushing forward, risking toppling the tree over. Suddenly he was concerned Pete may have had a heart attack or something like that; no way he could sleep through such an impact. Frank seemed to think the same and they both hurried over to the chopper. Jimmy arrived first and climbed up its side as fast as possible. He reached the small platform, looked inside and saw – nobody. The cabin was empty. His jaw almost dropped to the floor and he gestured to Frank to come up, no use in talking over the combined noise of the three machines. He tore the door open and immediately registered Pete’s clothes in a heap on the seat. What the fuck, Pete?
“What the fuck?” Frank’s voice piped up behind him and Jimmy thought maybe the both of them should read a book once in a while, you know, to widen the vocabulary.
He slipped inside and stopped the engine. No trace of their boss, just a pile of work clothes and a wrecked chopper. Both men looked at each other in the glaring sunlight. “What the fuck?” both of them muttered simultaneously.
A small bird almost collided first with Frank and then with the glass door, but got the hang of it at the last moment and fluttered away, quickly gaining height over the fields and flying off into the late summer sun.
A pair of eyes watched the scene unblinkingly from behind a tree.