The Garage My Father Made Them Open

The screen changed. It cut to footage that was dark and grainy, shot from up on the pegboard where I now realized my father had mounted one of those little battery cameras that hunters use to watch deer trails. The date stamp glowed in the corner. And in the footage, lit by the one bulb over the bench, was my brother Roy, at night, loading my father’s tools into a milk crate. Not once. The tape cut from night to night, date stamp to date stamp, and it was Roy every time. Roy with the socket sets. Roy with the good cordless drills. Roy, on one long clip, backing his truck up to the open door and walking the Farmall Cub, my father’s Farmall, up a set of ramps into the bed and driving it away into the dark.

Behind me, my aunt Faye made a small sound, like she had been touched with something cold.

The footage cut back to my father on the stool. He looked tired, and he looked sad, but his voice did not shake.

“I called the dealership over in Frankfort,” Dad said, “pretending to be a fella looking for a restored Cub. They had one. Mine. Roy had it on the lot with a two thousand dollar tag on it. I had a man I trust buy it back for me and I put it right where it belongs.” And the camera panned, wobbling, over to the corner of the garage, and there under a canvas cover, when Dad reached over and pulled the cover off, was the Farmall, red and perfect, home.

“I could have called the sheriff,” my father said, turning back to the lens. “I thought about it a long time. But Roy’s my boy, whatever he turned into, and I am not going to spend my last good months sitting in a courthouse. So I am going to do it the only way that fixes what he really broke. He did not just take my tools. He has been telling this whole town that Marian is not to be trusted, so that when I died nobody would believe her over him. He has been stealing my things with one hand and stealing my daughter’s good name with the other.”

My father looked into that camera like he was looking at every single person standing in the driveway, and maybe, in his way, he was.