The Night I Finally Drove Away

Cleora, still holding the keys up like a trophy, glanced over at me and grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ll come get you if that old truck of yours ever quits on you.”

My truck. The one I had driven forty five minutes on ice covered county roads to get here, the one I had paid off myself, two years early, working weekend call outs for the electric cooperative so I wouldn’t owe anybody a dime on it. The one that had gotten me to trade school at five in the morning for three winters straight.

I looked down at the two dollar bills again. Then at the truck in the driveway with a temporary tag still taped in the back window, sixty some thousand dollars of steel and leather with a bow on it.

That wasn’t a mix up. A mix up looks different than that. That was a message, and I understood it the second I felt my own face go still.

I had spent two months’ worth of overtime on their gifts that year. A good leather tool belt for my dad, the kind he’d pointed at in a catalog and then put down without saying anything. A necklace for my mother, small garnet stone, because she mentioned once that garnet was her birthstone and nobody had ever gotten her one. A car charger and a set of good work gloves for Cleora, because she’d complained about hers falling apart on a hospital shift.

I’d also brought news I’d been sitting on for two weeks, waiting for the right moment. I’d been made crew leader at the co-op. Youngest lineman in the history of Ozark Valley Electric to run his own crew, full benefits, a truck of my own from the company on top of the one I already had paid for. I had practiced how I’d say it the whole drive over, some version of maybe this year they’d look proud instead of looking past me.

My father was still watching Cleora turn the key fob over in her hands. My mother was still watching Cleora. Cleora was asking if the truck had a remote start.