The Night My Nephew Called Me

The story they had ready

Wayne got to me before Cody could open his mouth. That was the first thing I noticed, and once I noticed it I could not stop noticing it. Every time Cody’s lips parted, Wayne’s voice came in over the top.

“Roy,” Wayne said, sliding the phone into his pocket and putting his hand out like we were meeting at a ball game. “Man, I’m sorry we woke you. It’s nothing, it really is. Kid took a spill on his bike out on the gravel by the creek bridge. Went over the handlebars, caught himself wrong, snapped the wrist. That’s all it is. One little bone. They already set it. We were just about to head home.”

He said it smooth as anything. He said it like a man who had said it before, in the truck maybe, or in his own head on the drive over, smoothing it down each time until it lay flat.

“Out by the creek bridge,” I said. “At midnight. In November.”

Just the smallest hitch in him. “You know how boys are. Couldn’t sleep, went out riding. We’ve told him a hundred times.”

I looked at Sharon. “Is that what happened?”

And here is the thing I will never forget. My sister-in-law, a woman I have known for twenty years, a woman I carried a casket beside, did not look at her son when she answered. She looked at Wayne. Just a flick of the eyes, quick, checking. Then she said, “That’s what happened, Roy. He was on his bike. I don’t know why he’s making it into something.”

Making it into something. Her fifteen-year-old boy, in a cast, red-eyed, begging over the phone, and she called it making it into something.

Cody’s uninjured hand had a fistful of the blanket. He was staring at that blanket like it was the only safe thing in the room.