The Woman Who Ordered Me Off

I Sat On The Tailgate And Watched

I dropped the tailgate, sat down on it, and I waited.

Eli leaned out the window and asked me what was happening. I told him we were going to sit and watch a little while, and that sometimes the smartest thing a man can do is nothing at all, right up until the moment it is the wrong thing. He did not fully understand that, but he took it on faith, the way he takes most things I tell him, and he settled in next to me on the tailgate. Cole climbed back and sat on my other side. The three of us, on the back of the truck, watching a birthday party we had not been invited to, on land we owned.

The music started back up. I could see her working the crowd, telling the story, gesturing back toward me with her champagne. I could not hear the words but I did not need to. I have seen that performance before, in other forms. The wronged woman. The brave hostess menaced by a stranger.

It did not take long before the ambassadors started coming.

The first was a man about fifty in a golf shirt, the confident kind, who walked over with his hands in his pockets like he was doing me a kindness. He informed me that this was a private party on private property, that the owner had been more than patient, and that it would really be best for everyone if I went ahead and moved along. I asked him if he had seen the deed to the property. He blinked at me. He said he did not need to see a deed, that everyone there knew whose party it was. I said that was not the same thing, and I thanked him for his time. He went away confused.

The second was a woman about my daughter-in-law’s age in a yellow sundress. She actually looked embarrassed to be there. She said, and I could tell she was only repeating what she had been sent to say, that the hostess was asking me to leave and did not want any trouble in front of the children. I told her I did not want any trouble in front of the children either, and I nodded toward my two grandsons sitting next to me. She looked at the boys, and something crossed her face, and she went back without another word. I felt for her. She was the only one out there who seemed to sense the ground was not level.

The third was a big fellow, younger, broad through the shoulders, and he did not bother being polite. He put his boot up on my bumper and told me that if I was not gone in five minutes, there would be sheriff’s deputies out here writing me up for trespassing, and that a man my age did not want that kind of trouble. I looked at him a good long while. Then I told him I agreed completely, that a man did not want that kind of trouble, and that he should hold that thought. He did not know what to do with that, so he left too.

Three of them. Three grown adults who came to run an old man off a piece of ground. And here is the thing that I keep coming back to, the thing I want the boys to remember from that day.