The Tools That Came Home Early

He was a diesel mechanic at Tri-County Implement in Cullen for 22 years. Farmers drove sixty miles to have Heath Wiebe look at their combine, because he would tell them the truth about it, even when the truth was that they needed to buy a new one.

He had one son. Landon was 14 that winter, quiet, with big hands for his age, the kind of boy who would rather hold the light than talk about it. The two of them had rebuilt the transmission in that white 1997 F-250 the summer Landon was twelve. Seven-point-three Power Stroke, 4-speed automatic, a truck Heath would not let anybody else touch.

In December, when Heath could no longer stand at the bench, he had the men from the shop come out to the house. They sat in the kitchen, five of us with our caps in our laps: Verle Ogden, who ran the service department and had since before I was married; Rex Sayre and Jeremy Whitaker, who had come up under Heath; Brock Drummond, the youngest; and me, because he asked me to be there.

Teri made coffee. Heath sat in the recliner with a blanket and an oxygen line he hated.

He said it in a voice you had to lean toward.

“The truck is Landon’s. The box is Landon’s. All of it. When he’s sixteen, and not before, and I want you men to see that nobody puts a hand on it between now and then. Not Teri. She’ll have enough to do. Not me, once I’m gone. Not anybody she brings into this house after.”

Teri looked up sharply. “Heath.”

“I mean it kindly, Teri,” he said. “You’re 44 and you’re going to be alone, and some man is going to come along. I want that boy’s things to be his things. That’s all.”

She had her hand over her mouth.

Verle answered. He was 68 even then, with a face like a weathered fence post.

“We’ll see to it, Heath,” he said. “You have my word. And you have theirs.”

Rex said it. Jeremy said it. Brock, who was 24, said it last and loudest.

Then Heath had Landon come in from the shed and sit on the arm of the recliner. He took a plain white index card out of his shirt pocket, folded once, and put it in the boy’s hand.

“Don’t read it yet,” he said. “Put it in the top drawer of the box. When the box is yours, you’ll find it there.”

Landon did not cry. He walked out to the shed and put the card in the top drawer himself, on the foam liner.

Jeremy took one more thing that day, because Heath asked him to. He took a photograph of the pegboard, every wrench in its black outline, “so the boy can put it right someday if it ever comes apart.”

I called Verle from the road.

It was 10:51. He answered the way he always did, with the shop’s name and then a grunt.

I said, “Verle, it’s Kenny Wiebe. Rudy Pate sold the box and the truck this morning.”

There was a silence on the line so total I thought we’d lost the call.

“Say that again.”

I said it again.

“Who has them?”

“Fogle has the box and the tools. Reuben Haldane has the truck. Forty-three hundred between them. Landon’s bus comes at 3:49.”

“I heard you,” Verle said, very quiet.