The Toys My Brother Threw In The Fire

Noon

I asked Noah whether he wanted to go. I told him he did not have to, and that I would stay home with him and not be one bit sorry.

He wanted to know if Uncle Kyle would be there. I said yes. He wanted to know if Grandpa would be there. I said yes, and that Grandpa had something he needed to say, and that Grandpa was a little scared to say it.

“Grandpa gets scared?”

“Everybody does.”

He thought it over while he ate a bowl of cereal with Clover propped against the milk.

“I’ll go,” he said. “But Clover stays in the car.”

“That’s a good plan.”

We pulled in at ten to twelve. Kyle’s black pickup was already parked by the machine shed. I felt my stomach go tight, and I saw my father standing by the garage waiting for us with his cap on straight and a clean shirt, and I got out.

My mother came down the back steps and held on to me longer than she ever has. She did not say anything. She had the gray thread still stuck to her sleeve.

Everyone was in the yard again. The same lawn chairs in the same circle. Brenda was unwrapping foil pans of cold chicken. Somebody had shoveled out the fire pit, but not all the way. There was a white plastic corner showing in the ash, and I looked away from it.

Kyle was at the cooler. He saw my car and he grinned.

“Well, look who got over it,” he said. “Told you, Mom. Give her a night.”

I did not answer him. I took Noah’s hand and I walked over and stood beside my father.

“Everybody come on out by the pit a minute,” my father said.

He did not say it loud. He has never needed to. But people in my family are not used to my father calling a meeting, and they came. Brenda set the chicken down. Don got up out of his chair with a grunt. Amy came from the house with a dish towel over her shoulder, and Tyler and Ben drifted in behind her and stopped at the edge of things.

“What’s this, a prayer meeting?” Kyle said. He stayed by the cooler.

“You too, son.”

Kyle came. He stood across the cold fire pit from us with his beer.

My father looked at the ash for a long moment. I could hear him breathing. His hand was hanging at his side, and I saw it start to shake, so I put my shoulder against his arm. That was all. I just leaned.

“You all know the one about Pal,” he said.

Uncle Jeff chuckled, out of habit. Nobody else did.