The Fifth Snowman in the Front Yard

Telling them

He didn’t argue. I’ll give him that, too.

I called the kids out. They came out in their boots and their coats over their pajamas, because nobody in our house got dressed that whole day, and stood in a line on the walk in front of their snowmen without being told.

Cody got down on one knee in the snow. He’s a big man and it took him a second.

“I said something last night that wasn’t true,” he said. “About Santa not coming here. About your mom. That was a lie, and I’m sorry I said it.”

Lily looked at him very seriously. “Why?” she said.

“Because I was sad about something,” he said. “And I wanted to make myself feel bigger. And I made your mom feel small instead. That’s a thing grownups do sometimes, and it’s wrong. Your mom is not poor in any way that counts. Look at this yard.”

Kenzie and Brody went to him. Lily went to him. They’re little, and they love their dad, and they forgive fast.

Jace didn’t move. He stood by his snowman with his sign under his arm and looked at his father, and his face didn’t change at all.

Cody saw it. I watched him see it. That was the real consequence, more than anything I could have said. His oldest son, standing in the snow, not coming.

“Okay, bud,” Cody said quietly. “That’s fair.”

Earl’s terms

Earl had come out on his porch by then. He’d been watching the whole thing, the way he watched everything, without seeming to.

Cody walked over. I didn’t follow. I stood on my porch steps with Lily on my hip and watched two men talk across a property line, which is how most of the important business in our town gets done.

I couldn’t hear all of it. I heard Cody say thank you, and I heard him say something about the sled. And then I heard Earl, plain as anything, because Earl’s voice carries like a man who used to call cows in from a back forty.

“My walk needs shoveling,” Earl said. “I’m seventy-nine years old.”

Cody stood there.

“You’ve got a plow on that truck, I’ve seen it,” Earl said. “But I don’t want it plowed. I want it shoveled. By hand. Walk and the front steps and a path out to the mailbox. Every time it snows over two inches. Before seven in the morning, because that’s when I go for the paper.”

“Yes sir,” Cody said.

“All winter,” Earl said.

“Yes sir.”

“And you’ll do it whether those kids are watching or not,” Earl said. “That’s the part that counts.”

Cody nodded. Then he went to his truck and got a scoop shovel out of the bed, and he shoveled Earl’s walk right then, on Christmas afternoon, even though Earl had already done it at six that morning. Earl stood on his porch and let him.

Barb

Cody’s mother called me that night at nine.

Barb and I had never been close. She’d always made it clear she thought Cody could have done better, and she’d been quick to take his side in the divorce. I didn’t expect much from that call.

“I was at that table,” she said. “I heard him say it. And I didn’t say a word. I sat there and passed the potatoes.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I should have stood up,” she said. “I’ve been sick about it all day. I’m sorry, Amanda. I’m sorry for my part.”

I told her I appreciated her calling. I meant it. It was the first time in eleven years she had ever said my whole name without making it sound like a question.