One Quiet Question Before the Pageant

We said nothing across the gravel lot. I buckled him into the Buick and sat with both hands on the wheel, looking at the church where I’d been baptized and married.

“Am I still a shepherd?” Dustin asked.

“You are a shepherd,” I said. “Aunt Jeanette changed the plan. It’s not about anything you did.”

He thought about that the length of Main Street, past the elevator and the feed store with its Christmas lights strung crooked along the eaves. Then he looked out at the corn stubble.

“My line is eleven seconds,” he said. “I timed it.”

“I know you did.”

“That is not slow.”

“No, bud,” I said. “It isn’t slow.”

Here is what you should know about my son. He is fascinated by the gravel roads of Adair County. He can tell you every county road by its letter and number, G61 to N54 to P20, which farm sits at each corner, and how many bridges you cross between our mailbox and the courthouse square. For his ninth birthday he asked for a plat book. He keeps it in his backpack and has worn through the corners.

He is funny, in a dry way that takes most people a beat to catch. He does not tell lies and does not understand why others do. Noise and surprise overwhelm him, and he has strategies for that, and he does not need anyone to feel sorry for him. He needs people to ask him before they decide things about him. That is almost all of it.

On the sixteenth of November, Jeanette had stood in this same hall and passed out the parts. Dustin’s hand shot up before she finished.

“I would like the line about Bethlehem,” he said. “It has good syllables.”

“Are you sure, hon?” Jeanette asked.

“I am sure,” said Dustin. “I will practice.”

And he did. Every morning at 6:40, in the kitchen in his socks, to our beagle Sarge, who lay on the heat register with his chin on his paws. Every evening in the bath. He said it to the mailbox. He said it so many times I could say it in my sleep, and one night I did.

He did not cry in the car. Dustin does not cry in public. At home he lined his shoes up by the door, put his headphones on their shelf, ate his buttered noodles, and sat with the plat book for an hour.

Then he came out to the kitchen at eight o’clock and stood by the stove while I did the dishes.

“I will say it at home,” he said. “Even if no one hears it.”

“You can say it as many times as you like.”

“It is still true if no one hears it.”

I turned off the water so he wouldn’t see my face.

“That’s right,” I said. “It is.”