The Truck Driver at the VFW Breakfast
We got our plates from the Auxiliary ladies. Sixteen dollars for me and Mark, eight for Emma, and Todd paid for himself and made a joke about putting it on his expense account.
The hall was full. Farmers in seed caps. Old men in their post caps and their wives in their good sweaters. Young families with babies in car seats. Our whole table filled up, cousins and neighbors and the Pagels from down the road.
Ray had said he would be there by eight fifteen. At eight twenty he was not there. At eight twenty-five I had decided he was not coming, and I had started telling myself that was all right, too.
Then the door opened and the sleet blew in, and there he was.
He was not tall. He had a gray goatee, a Packers stocking cap, and a canvas Carhartt coat dark with sleet. Behind him was a boy of about fifteen, all elbows and ears, with the same jaw.
Ray stood in the doorway and looked around the hall the way you look for somebody at an airport. Then he found our table. He found Mark.
I was watching my husband’s face. I will remember it for as long as I live.
Mark was lifting his coffee cup. He saw Ray, and the cup stopped halfway. Then he set it down very slowly, like it might break. Then he stood up so fast his folding chair went over backward and hit the floor with a crack that made the whole room look.
He did not say a word. He walked across that hall, between the tables, past Lyle, and he took Ray by the back of the neck with one of those scarred hands and pulled him in.
They stood there in the doorway for a long time. Neither of them said anything. Mark’s shoulders were moving. Ray had one hand flat on the middle of Mark’s back, patting it, slow, the way you settle a horse.
The boy stood behind his father with his hands in his pockets, looking at the floor, trying not to be there. Lyle Schaefer stood beside them with his cane and did not move, and did not let anybody else come close.
I picked Mark’s chair up off the floor. My hands were shaking.
When they finally came back to the table, Mark’s eyes were red, and he would not look at me. Ray was smiling. He held out his hand to me and said, “You must be Diane.”
“I’m Diane,” I said.
Mark looked at me then. Just once. I could not tell if he was angry or if he was something else. I think he did not know either.
Ray hung his coat on the chair on Mark’s right, pushed up the sleeves of his flannel shirt, and sat down. His boy sat beside Emma, and she gave him her orange juice because the Auxiliary had run out of cups at that end. They put a plate in front of Ray, three pancakes, two sausages.
Todd leaned across the table with his hand out. “Todd Krueger. I’m the older brother. The good-looking one.”
“Ray,” Ray said, and shook it.
“So how do you know Mark? You another truck guy?”
Ray looked at him for a second. “Yes sir,” he said. “Another truck guy.”
“Ha,” Todd said. “Well, you’re in good company.” And he picked up his fork.