The Night I Towed His Cadillac Home

Sunrise

The sun came up over the grain elevator at 7:41. I know because I was watching for it through the windows in the big door. In January in southern Minnesota, sunrise is something you wait for.

The light came in long and orange across the shop floor and climbed up onto the stool, and Harlan woke up. He blinked at it. Then he looked at me, standing by the bench wiping my hands on a red rag.

He got down off the stool. He stood up straight, the way he stood at the head of every table I’d ever sat at with him. He was still wearing my coat.

“Dale,” he said.

Thirty-one years. It was the first time he had ever said my name.

Then he took his right hand out of my coat pocket and held it out to me.

“I’m Harlan Wiese,” he said. “I don’t believe we were ever properly introduced.”

I looked at that hand for a second. It was an old banker’s hand, long and pale, with a gold ring on it Margaret had given him for their fortieth. It was shaking a little, and I do not think it was from the cold.

I wiped my own hand one more time on the rag. It did not do much good. It never does. Then I took his hand, grease and all, and he gripped mine hard.

“I should have shaken this hand in that church basement,” he said. “I was wrong for thirty-one years, and I was too proud to say so for every one of them. I’m sorry, son. I am.”

He had never called me son, either.

“Well,” I said, and my voice did not come out quite right, “you’re shaking it now.”

Tyler was standing in the office doorway with the coffee pot in his hand. He did not move. I think he was afraid to.