The Last Ten Feet on Senior Night

He had his hands between his knees and he kept rubbing his thumb over the side of his first finger, a thing he does when he is nervous.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“Fine,” he said. The same flat voice she had used. For a second they sounded so alike I almost laughed, except nothing about it was funny.

The junior varsity played the visitors from two towns over and lost the first set and won the next two.

Mason cheered for both teams because he did not entirely understand which side was ours.

At six o’clock, I watched the side door. At six oh five, I watched it harder.

Dad has never been late, but he has never been seventy-nine with a new hip on a cold night before, either.

Travis noticed me watching. “Who are you looking for?”

“Nobody,” I said. That was a lie, and it sat in my mouth like a sour mint.

At twelve after six, the side door opened and my father came through it, and my whole chest let go of something I had been holding since Tuesday supper.

He had on his tan Sunday sport coat, the one he wore to my mother’s funeral and to Mason’s baptism and to nothing in between.

Under it was a white shirt buttoned all the way to the top.

And on his head was his seed corn cap, the good one, the green one he keeps on the hook by the back door and only wears to town.

He had his cane in his right hand. His shoes were shined.

He did not come up into the bleachers.

He went straight down to the end of the gym where the seniors were lining up and stood beside Kaylee like he had been assigned there by the governor.

Travis saw him. I watched it land on his face. First confusion, the plain kind, like a man who sees his own truck parked somewhere he did not leave it.

Then understanding. Then something I did not have a word for.

He turned and looked at me. I looked back at him. I did not explain. He did not ask.

“Jodi,” he said quietly.

“She asked for him,” I said. “Tuesday night. After you went out to the shed.”

He nodded slowly. He looked back down at the floor, where Kaylee had taken her grandfather’s free arm and was laughing at something he said. Her laugh carried over the whole gym.

Travis did not say anything else. He put his hands back between his knees.

But he stopped rubbing his thumb. He went very still, the way a man goes still in a deer stand.

The junior varsity cleared the floor. The varsity girls from both teams lined up along the far sideline for the ceremony.

Our girls in maroon, the visitors in white, everyone with their hands behind their backs.

Mr. Halvorson does the announcing at every home game.

He taught shop for thirty years and has a voice like a man calling hogs who has been to a little bit of college. He tapped the microphone twice.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “please welcome our senior volleyball players and their families, as we honor them on their final home game of the regular season.”

The first girl was announced with her mother and father. They walked out to center court together, and she handed her mother the rose, and they turned for a picture, and everybody clapped.

The second girl had her mother and her stepfather. I noticed that. Of course I noticed that.