Saving time.

Summer was a time for coming home.

His father needed him more in the summer. There was more work on the farm and fewer hands to do it. There was a timeless quality to this kind of labor. A kind of toil wrapped up in seasons. Like judging the time of year by the way the shadows fell across the fields.

Time was thicker on the farm. It wasn't the thin, frail thing that city people had grown accustomed to. Every day contained echoes of the days before. The way his father's hand grasped the hammer. The oily smell of the old John Deere tractor and the Nebraska dust that turned the sunset russet and gold. Scenes he had witnessed again and again from his boyhood into his middle age.

It was different now for Tom Mueller. He had left the farm to become a priest in Omaha. His parents were proud of him, but his work did not allow him to visit as often as he would like.

Tom's father had called his children home for one last gathering. He was selling the farm. None of his children would work the land as he and his brother had. They had gone to the city to find work. There was no future for them in the farm. Land had grown too expensive to purchase outright, and the tax laws kept him from just giving it to them.

His father was too old now to do the work by himself. Tom's uncle was keeping the farm next door, but his father was moving to town. Now it was time to drag out the old machinery and tools and sell it to neighbors and strangers.

It was only a few hours' drive to the farm from Omaha, and Tom enjoyed the quiet time just to think. When he arrived, his father and uncle already had the equipment laid out, and the early birds were getting a sneak peek at what was for sale.

His first thought was how old everything looked. There was rust on the equipment and scratches and dents he had never noticed before. A jagged splinter in his father's favorite hammer left a scar that was illuminated by the bright morning light. Hidden in the shadows of the barn, these flaws went unnoticed. Everything seemed always to be the same--unchanging, like the land and the seasons. He saw it all now for what it truly was, tools and machines grown old in the service of a man and his family.

He did not know most of the people who walked through the rows of machinery laid out on the lawn. A few remembered faces returned his brief nod of recognition. Most of them prowled the yard looking for bargains.

As he observed the scene before him, his embarrassment turned to anger. He heard the comments that strangers made, the muttered "Look at this piece of junk." He saw their smirks, the way they handled things quickly and impersonally.

In the bright morning light these things had beauty for him. They were the bones of his life. Memories attached themselves to every item. The ancient John Deere tractor, the first vehicle he had ever driven, stood at the end of the drive. The green paint was chipped and scratched, but it still shuddered to life every morning.

He picked up a leather tool belt into which he had scratched his initials when he was 7 and knew it was not the things themselves that were valuable but the times they recalled--times spent with his parents and siblings, smiles and handshakes and laughter.

There in a pile of assorted pots and pans was a simple glass vase. A woman picked it up and turned it in her hand. To her it was a cheap knickknack worth less than a dollar. To Tom it brought back a vivid memory of his father.

It was one of those hot summer days so common to that part of Nebraska. His father had been fighting weeds all summer, but nothing he tried seemed to kill the hearty plants. He stormed into the house holding a handful of buttonweeds, grabbed the vase, shoved the weeds into it, and placed it on the fireplace mantle. "There," he shouted. "I've tried everything else. Maybe if you think I like you, you ornery sons-a-bitches will die!"

At first his mother had scolded, "Now, Arthur." But one look and a quick grin from his father and they both began to laugh. It was a strong, cleansing laugh that told the children everything was OK, that there was nothing that could stand up to the power of a man and woman growing in love.

By nightfall, most of the items had been sold. The few things remaining were split among family members or piled on the pickup truck for a trip to the dump. Tom kept the tool belt and the vase. He would give it a place of honor in his room at the parish rectory.

At first his father looked at the vase in Tom's hand questioningly. Then he pulled his wife to him and chuckled, seeing the ghost of the buttonweeds dimly through the glass.

His parents moved to Columbus, not far from their old place near Platte Center. In the years that followed Tom tried to get home as often as he could. He came for the holidays and family gatherings. On every visit his father would ask, "Do you want to drive out to the farm?"

They would pile into the old blue pickup truck, a '60s vintage Ford repaired so many times that few original parts remained. "That's why I like it," Tom's father remarked. "It's just like me."

The years had taken their toll on him. He now wore a hearing aid and false teeth and had undergone two knee replacements. All those years sitting on a tractor had jarred his body until every bone was loose, and walking just gave the joints a chance to grind against each other.

His father liked the old pickup. It had good shocks and he could slide in and out of the bench seat with a minimum of pain. The leather on that old seat was cracked and seamed. Every time you sat down a cloud of dust rose in the air. It was dust Tom's father had breathed many times, and some of it was from the farm, so he was content to breathe it again.

For Tom the trips with his father to the farm felt like a chore. He had acquired the habits of the city, where every moment must be filled with noise and movement. If he drove the car, the radio was on. If he watched TV, he flipped between channels during commercials.

There was never enough time to do everything he wanted. Like most people, he was always willing to trade time to acquire things he thought were important--a nice car, a good home, an important job.

After one weekend visit, Tom complained to his pastor, Father Dan, that riding with his dad to the farm took far more time than he thought it should. It should have been less than an hour from Columbus to Platte Center, but the trip always lasted several hours because his father took his time. He stopped to look at how black the dirt was in some farmer's field. He remarked at how the weeds poked above the bean rows in another man's field. He got off the highway and turned down dirt roads to look at signs and to see how this crop or that crop was doing. He stopped and looked at the water level in Shell Creek. He looked for standing water or dry spots where the corn was stunted.

Tom, on the other hand, looked at his watch and thought of all the things he could be doing back in Omaha.

His father didn't seem to notice Tom's impatience. He was content with his son beside him wandering the fields and back roads of his youth. He didn't know Tom had come to dread these trips. He didn't see that every pause, every turn down a back road made him squirm with impatience to get this chore over and done with so he could head back to Omaha and get some important things done.

His father always thanked him and told him he looked forward to their next trip together. Tom knew how much his father loved these short visits to the farm, so he buried his anger and frustration and told his father he looked forward to it, too.

Tom's mother was the one who called and told Tom his father was very sick. He had developed a bad infection in one of his knees from a recent surgery, and they weren't sure he was going to make it. The next several times Tom came to visit, everything seemed changed. His father had lost 40 pounds and appeared shrunken in spirit as well as body. He was confined to a wheelchair and spent his days gazing out the window, looking at everything but the inside of his own house.

In the spring, when the weather was nice enough to open the door, his father sat in the kitchen and gazed at his old pickup parked in the driveway. He smiled wistfully and said, "Just look at her. She doesn't know what to do with herself. Poor old girl."

Tom thought of all those trips to the farm and how he had hated them. Now he knew he might never get a chance to go with his father again. He thought of crossing Shell Creek and pausing to watch a fish rise to the surface. He thought of his father's stories of neighbors long gone. He thought about driving down dirt roads to watch the wind blow the corn silk like waves of the sea.

He thought of time. Time spent with his father just looking, pausing, waiting for their souls to catch up.

When he got the call from his mother, he expected the worst. "No," she said, "actually, he's feeling better. He wants to see you. Can you come out this weekend?"

Excitedly, he told Father Dan that his dad was doing better and that he was driving out to see him. When he got to Columbus, his dad stood waiting by the door. He was leaning on a cane, but he was standing. He smiled as Tom drove into the driveway. His body seemed too thin, but his work-hardened grip was strong.

After lunch, his father turned to Tom and said, "The doctor tells me if I'm careful, I can go out now. I thought you might want to take a drive."

He grinned as Tom helped him into the driver's seat of the pickup. His hands trembled slightly as he put the keys in the ignition. Tom slid onto the old bench seat and smiled as the springs squeaked with his weight. He slid his arm along the top of the seat and dusted it with his fingertips. As they pulled out of the driveway, he saw the matching glisten in his father's eyes.

As he looked out the windshield, he realized he had never been more certain of who he was. "My name is Tom Mueller," he thought. "I'm the son of Arthur Mueller, the farmer. And we're going to visit the farm."

HUGH REILLY is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.