The Last Ten Feet on Senior Night

I did not look at Travis, but I felt him notice it too. The rose went to the mother, and the stepfather put his arm around both of them.

The third girl was the Larson twins’ older cousin, and she had both parents and a grandmother in a wheelchair, who got pushed out by an uncle and got the loudest cheer so far.

Then Mr. Halvorson looked down at his card, and I saw him pause just slightly, the way Mrs. Larson had paused on the phone. Then he read it.

“Number seventeen, a middle hitter and four year letter winner, Kaylee. Escorted tonight by her grandfather, Mr. Duane Ostrem.”

A murmur went through the bleachers. Half the people in that gym had bought milk off my father at one time or another, or ridden the school bus with him in the seventies, or sat on a church council with him.

Kaylee put the rose in her left hand and her right arm through his left. He planted the cane. They started across the floor.

They walked slow, because he walks slow now. Cane, step, step. Cane, step, step.

The rubber tip squeaked on the varnished floor every time it came down. You could hear it all the way up to the top row.

Mr. Halvorson kept reading, because there is a list for every senior and he reads all of it.

“Kaylee has been on the honor roll all four years. She is a member of the National Honor Society and has shown dairy heifers in 4-H for eight years…”

Then somebody in the top row stood up. I do not know who. I have asked around and nobody will claim it.

It might have been Mrs. Bauer, but I doubt she can stand that fast.

Then the row under that stood up. Then the whole top section.

It went down the bleachers like water down a hill, row after row, until the entire home side was on its feet.

Old men who had hauled milk with my father stood up. Women from his church circle stood up. Kids who had no idea who he was stood up because everybody else was standing.

And then the girls on the visiting team, in their white jerseys on the far sideline, started clapping, and then their parents on the other side of the gym stood up too.

I had both hands over my mouth. I did not decide to put them there. They just went there, and stayed, and I could feel my face getting wet against my palms.

My father did not look up at any of it. He kept his eyes on the floor in front of the cane, the way he always watched his footing in the barn.

Kaylee had her head turned toward him and was saying something low.

Beside me, Travis stood up.

At first I thought he was just standing because everyone was standing. But he was not clapping.

His hands were at his sides. He was looking at the bleacher steps at the end of our row.

His jaw was working, side to side, the way it does when he is about to say something hard.

I have seen him do it twice in nine years. Once when he asked me to marry him, and once at his mother’s funeral.

He put his hand on the metal rail. And he took the first step down.

Mr. Halvorson was still reading. “After graduation, Kaylee plans to attend Minnesota State in Mankato to study nursing…”