Shoveling Sunflowers With a Time Bomb
One or Two Never Hurt Anybody
Based on a true story.
Names changed. Some details blurred.
But the silence? That’s real.
Travis hadn’t said a complete sentence. Just grunted and swore under his breath, jaw tight enough to cut steel. He looked like a man holding back an explosion with his bare hands.
One load left. One hour. Just enough time for something to go wrong.
The inside of a grain bin on a 90-degree Friday feels like a slow death.
Especially when the man shoveling next to you keeps muttering to himself.
We'd been shoveling confection sunflowers—the gas station kind, roasted and salted—off the bin floor and into the sump pit. From there, an auger dragged them to a conveyor and out to the semi.
Hell job. Sunflowers are as light as dandelions, so you have to heap the trailer full to hit legal weight. Takes forever once you're down to the bottom of the bin.
Travis and I were on hour six, maybe seven.
Sunflower dust hung like fog, thick enough to stick to your teeth.
Every few minutes, I’d peek out the manhole door.
The trailer filled slow. Like bad news you could see coming.
Shovel. Peek.
Shovel. Peek.
Shovel. Peek.
Travis had been quiet for weeks. Not like before when he wouldn’t shut up.
Talked and talked, this guy. Tales from the road.
Women he’d conquered. Benders he’d crawled out of.
Half of it was bullshit. Maybe more. But he told it like gospel.
Now his eyes were bloodshot. Sweat rolled off his nose like oil from a busted valve.
No mask. Just muttering. Shoveling.
Over and over.
Like a man in prayer.
Or one step from snapping.
I stopped for a minute and leaned on the wood-handled scoop shovel, forearm resting on the splinters, back aching. A single drop of sweat ran down my spine. I took off my cap and used my forearm to push the sweat back into my thinning hair, adjusted the grain mask, and looked over at him.
He didn’t meet my eyes.
Something about the way he was moving, not faster, just … harder, gave me the chills.
I’d seen that look before.
In bars. In basements. In the mirror once or twice.
Then, out of nowhere, Travis stopped shoveling and bolted for the bin door, curses and cocksuckers flying into the afternoon sun.
I stood there for a second, shovel in hand, not sure whether to follow him or let it ride.
I had taken a few extra scoops to catch up, forgot to peek, and by the time I stuck my head out the manhole, I saw what had Travis all wound up.
Sunflowers rained down the sides of the trailer.
Shit.
Travis was already out by the loader, an old John Deere with a front-end bucket we hadn’t touched all week.
I figured he’d blow off some steam. Cuss a little, slam the door, maybe scoop the spill, and save our backs. Smart thinking, really.
But the way he climbed in, that stiff, locked-in way, set something off in me.
Then he dropped the bucket too low.
Didn’t scoop. Didn’t curl it. Just dragged it forward like a dull plow, ripping grass, mud, and dirt—everything but sunflowers.
Travis revved the engine.
Backed up.
Roared again.
Pushed the whole goddamn pile in circles like a man trying to stir concrete with a canoe paddle.
I watched him for a minute.
He dumped one load, if you could call it that, then took another swing and dumped again. It was more destruction than cleanup.
I gave a small wave. Just enough to say, Hey, maybe ease up?
He didn’t see it. Or he ignored it.
After a few more sloppy passes, he parked the loader and climbed out without saying a word. Walked straight to the trailer where my grain shovel leaned against the rear axle.
He picked it up. Looked at it for a second, like it’d just insulted him.
Then he swung.
WHANG.
The sound cracked through the afternoon like a gunshot.
Right into the aluminum trailer wall.
Once. The whole thing shuddered.
Twice. Metal screaming against metal.
Three times. The trailer rang like a church bell hit by lightning.
I didn’t move. Just watched.
Heart hammering.
The fourth swing cracked the handle, wood splintering like bone.
The fifth folded the blade like tinfoil.
The sixth blew it apart. The mangled ball of aluminum bounced across the grass, spun once, twice, and came to rest by the tires. Travis stood there holding the broken shaft, breathing through his teeth, chest rising like he’d just run a mile.
For a moment, nothing moved.
Then, in the calmest voice I'd heard him use in days, he said:
"I'm going to fucking kill somebody."
Matter of fact, like he was commenting on the weather.
Something in his voice chilled the air.
Then silence.
Travis dropped the handle, climbed into his truck, and peeled off—gravel flying, rooster tails curling behind the trees.
I just stood there, sweat and dust caked to my nose, the busted shovel still warm where he left it.
I didn’t know what else to do.
So I went back to shoveling.
That was a Friday.
By Tuesday, Dale called.
“Hey Adam, you hear about Travis?”
“No… why? He kill somebody or something?”
I was joking.
Dale wasn’t.
Before that call, before the bin, before the loader, I was just a guy looking for a job.
I was sitting on a tractor-seat barstool in Tom and Dale Larsen's shop, surrounded by the organized chaos of green toolbox drawers and oil-stained workbenches, wondering if I should have worn something nicer than an old brown Carhartt with welding holes in the sleeves.
Tom was quiet, nodding as he looked over my resume. Dale did the talking.
“We just hired a new guy, too. His name’s Travis. Seems like a really solid guy. Been out of rehab a few months. Really seems to be turning his life around.”
That line stuck in my head like a stripped-out screw.
I’ve been around long enough to know that when someone says “turning it around,” they usually mean the wheels are still spinning, but oftentimes, there’s nobody behind the wheel.
Still, I nodded. Smiled. Told Dale I was happy to be on board.
A week later, I met Travis.
He pulled up in a white Silverado with blacked-out wheels, chrome steps, spotless like it had just rolled off the lot. Not a speck of gravel dust, even after six miles of sandy, washboard road.
He stepped out in wraparound shades and a sleeveless shirt, energy already too hot for 8 a.m. on a Wednesday.
“You the new guy?”
“Yeah. Adam.”
“Travis. Good to meet ya. You a beer guy?”
I paused. Not sure what the right answer was.
“Sometimes.”
He grinned. Didn’t wait for me to ask anything back.
Travis talked a mile a minute, constantly firing questions, never waiting for answers. Where was I from? What’d I think of strip-till? Did I believe in God? Ever done coke?
Before I could blink, he was on to the next thing, like channel surfing through a conversation.
The first real red flag came one afternoon when Travis and I ran to town for parts. We stopped at a burger joint on our way back from dropping a trailer off at the welder’s.
I went back to use the bathroom. When I came back, he had a six-pack of Busch Light tucked under one arm and was chatting with the bartender like they were cousins.
“Hey man,” I said. “Thought you weren’t drinking anymore?”
He froze. Looked at me like I was speaking Arabic.
“One or two never hurt anybody.”
That’s when I knew. This guy never stopped. He’d just hit pause for the job interview.
Still, I liked the guy. That’s the fucked-up part. And there were days, brief little flashes, where he seemed like he really gave a shit. He’d ask about your family, your truck, your favorite tools.
One Sunday morning that spring—Mother’s Day—I got a text from Dale asking if I was coming in to finish a field. Before I could reply, Travis texted me himself:
“I got it. Go hang with your mom. It’s Mother’s Day, man.”
He took my spot in the tractor so I could spend the morning with Ma, Grandma, my wife, and our four-month-old boy.
I never forgot that.
There was a decency buried under the chaos. You just had to catch it on the right day.
But then the disappearances started.
Two days here.
A weekend there.
We’d be short-handed, scrambling to finish fieldwork before the weather turned, and nobody’d know where the hell Travis was.
Then he’d waltz in like he’d just gone to grab lunch, not vanished for 48 hours.
“Sorry boys. Got caught up.”
Caught up in what? He never said.
Tom was getting sick of it. Dale kept giving him chances. I just kept my head down. I knew that edge. I’d danced near it myself. You don’t push a guy like Travis.
All you can do is hope he cools down before something breaks.
That’s what I told myself.
The day we emptied that bin, I felt the crack forming. The loader. The shovel. That line he said before tearing off in the truck.
“I’m going to fucking kill somebody.”
I laughed about it later, telling my wife how the day went.
But even then, something in me knew I shouldn’t be laughing.
That Friday, he tore off in that Silverado like the devil was riding shotgun.
I figured he’d cool down somewhere. Drink himself sideways. Maybe disappear on another bender. Maybe not come back.
Honestly? Part of me hoped he wouldn’t.
But come Monday, he was back. Sort of.
Not at the farm. No call. No text.
He was two states away.
At a Subway.
9 a.m.
Drive-thru.
I’m still not sure what set him off. Maybe the line was long. Maybe someone honked. Could’ve been anything. But something snapped.
The girl in front—local kid, couldn’t have been more than twenty—must’ve taken too long at the speaker.
That’s all it took.
Travis grabbed a golf club. No idea where the hell it came from. Maybe it had been rolling in the backseat. Maybe he found it in a ditch and thought it looked cool. He never struck me as a golfer. That much I know.
Locals say it was a nine iron.
He started smashing the back of her car.
Window. Trunk. Taillight.
Over and over.
She screamed and tried to drive, but he blocked her in.
Kept swinging. Unhinged. Smiling the whole time.
Witnesses said they couldn’t tell if he was yelling at her or jabbering to himself.
Then came the sirens.
Travis dropped the club, climbed back into the Silverado, and floored it.
Southbound. Pedal pinned. Dust flying.
He didn’t get far.
Some poor bastard and his wife were hauling a car trailer behind their Ford, just easing into the week, doing forty in the right lane.
Travis rear-ended them, doing well over ninety.
Didn’t graze them. Piledrived them.
Travis didn't stop. Just kept pushing the whole twisted mess forward, sparks flying, tires screaming.
Then it got worse. He tried to flee.
Still hooked to the wreck, mashed into the Ford, he jammed it into reverse. Then drive. Then reverse again. Over and over. Like he thought he could shake loose and outrun what he’d done.
When the cops finally showed up and yanked him from the cab, Travis wasn’t panicked.
Wasn’t angry.
Wasn’t even sorry.
He was laughing.
Not a grin.
Not a smirk.
Laughing.
Like it was all a game. Like he’d just nailed the final scene in some screwed-up movie where he got to play the villain.
They cuffed him. Stuffed him.
Sent him straight to the state pen.
Far as I know, he’s still there.
Eight years since that Friday in the bin. Since the cracked shovel. Since Travis said the quiet part out loud and drove off to make it real.
Out here, a lot of men walk the edge—one bad week from making the news. Nobody says anything. You just keep your head down and hope the wheels stay on.
There’s no therapy. No hotline. Just long days, loud machines, and the hope that nobody snaps.
What stays with me isn’t the sirens or the crash. Not even the laugh.
It’s the silence before it.
The way Travis moved in that bin, shoveling harder each time, like he was digging himself out of something only he could see.
I tell myself I couldn’t have known.
But deep down, I did.
And I still don’t know what the hell to do with that.
Wow, that gave me the shivers, too close to home. Good to read another piece from you Adam. Great writing.
Oh, I know this too well. I have a brother that tolerated alot of crap for years, then lost his shit one night at the bar. If you want to read that one, here's the link: https://tinadixon1.substack.com/p/understanding-why?r=1fmq4q