It’s been one month since I harrowed my relationship with my former girlfriend after I told her that I had gone for a walk in an orange grove near our house, peaceful and green, until i saw a kid sitting on a large rock, crying miserably
“qué pasa, niño?” i asked, crouching beside him
“my tia Consuelo died”, he said, and i asked him “was she ill” and he said no, “the tractor. she died under the tractor”, and i said that im sorry what a terrible accident, the government must take measures to reduce worplace accidents and ensure the safety of us all
“then last week my cousin Jordi died too” he said with a trembling voice.
“Santo cielo! But how?”
“because the tractor. he died under the tractor”
I began to feel unease, told him that it was a dreadful tractoring tragedy and that I hoped The Policía is investigating the incidents
But he shrugged, staring at the dirt. “The police didn’t have time. My abuela and abuelo were crushed by a tractor at the funeral”
My jaw dropped and I screamed “But that’s abominable! it must be a time of great sorrow and i hope your parents can accompany you through it”
“mamá and papá were checking the brake lines on the tractor until…”
at that point I choked and held up a hand and said “Stop. this is atrocious are you telling me your entire family is dead”?
he nodded
So I shrieked “but how could you manage to survive this godforsaken massacre this… agricultural apocalypse?”
and he said:
“i was driving the tractor”
when i finished telling this to my girlfriend, her initial reaction was “Ariel, cariño, this is probably an urban legend as there aren’t any known historical cases of a kid killing his entire family with a tractor. Stories like these typically emerge from exaggerated accounts, cautionary tales, or local folklore meant to provoke shock. Or fear.”
“Mi amor, you underestimate the power of the weight of the iron in the wrong hands.”
“Ariel.”
“It’s the quiet of the fields that hides the loudest tragedies.”
“Ariel, it’s not a real story, cariño”
“Mi amor, these stories aren’t easy to grasp for someone who’s never spent much time pondering… the quiet terror of rural life.”
Her ensuing stare punctured my head. The ensuing silence was insidious, a suffocating pressure, like the inside of a tractor tire.
Days passed. Neither of us spoke. Every moment felt like I was stuck, spinning wheels in the mud.
The silence grew like weeds taking over a forgotten pasture. One evening, I put on my suspenders and long leather boots and cuddled up next to her. She said:
“Ariel, cariño, you keep planting things in me, but nothing grows.”
She crushed my straw hat with her knee and left for the day, sowing silence. Our engine had stalled, our gearbox had jammed, our wheels had sunk in stubborn clay. I could feel it in the way she avoided my gaze and the 40cm long stem of hay in my mouth with which I attempted to caress her face, her once warm eyes now as cold and distant as an old, abandoned barn.
At night, the silence between us pressed down like a roller, dragged across rough ground. Our bed, once a fertile plot of comfort, now felt coarse and lifeless, like soil stripped of structure and starved of biological activity. Evidence of excessive compaction from repeated heavy machinery traffic was apparent; porosity was lost and roots could no longer push through. We lay side by side, yet felt acres apart, separated by a fallow field of unspoken words.
In the dead of night I found solace in corn movies.
And then the anxiety hit me like a runaway tractor tumbling down a slope. What if we were stuck in this rut forever? What if this silence was the final breakdown, and there was no mechanic who could fix it? My mind raced like a tractor on overdrive but the silence was relentless, mowing down my thoughts like an unstoppable force with 400 horse power and a diesel engine.
I was a farmer whose crop had failed, staring out at the empty fields. Unable to attract her. Only detract her. A tractor of troubles, trapped in traction, treading tracks through traumatic transitions. And tragic transient trampled terrains.
Yesterday, her rage sprouted up: “I thought we were building something together, cariño, but it turns out you were just dragging me behind. Like one of those agricultural vehicles designed to provide tractive power, but for clowns.”
I said: “Mi amor, I lay everything at your feet, i pour every kernel of my heart into you, i go the extra mile for you. And this joke is…”
Her eyes ignited as I continued: “outstanding in its field…”
And she sneered as she foresaw my following sigh:
“… like a tractor, mi amor.”
“You promised a harvest, Ariel, but all I got was dust.” My beloved shed a tear as she closed her suitcase and walked out the door and got ran over by a tractor.
I thought about adopting that kid, but then again I don’t need a chauffeur.