The Tools That Came Home Early

Brock called from Haldane’s lot at 2:10.

“Mr. Haldane wants to talk to you.”

I was driving back from Fogle’s with the heater going. “Put him on.”

Reuben Haldane is 71 and has owned Haldane Auto since he was 28. “Kenny,” he said. “That’s Heath Wiebe’s pickup.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I know it. I sold Heath that Ford. Rudy Pate came in this morning and said it was his wife’s truck and she was fine with it and he had the title. I didn’t ask a second question. I’d like to have that back.”

“Brock has the money, Reuben.”

“I’ve got $2,400 in it, and I’ll take $2,400. It says $5,200 on the windshield because it’s a nice truck. Not because I’m that kind of man.” He paused. “Here’s the trouble. I signed the title over to my dealer number this morning, and the county treasurer’s office closes at four. I can’t get it put back in Teri’s name before tomorrow. I’ll bring it out myself in the afternoon with the paper in my hand. I won’t hand a boy a truck he can’t prove is his.”

“That’s fair.”

“It’s not fair,” Reuben said. “But it’s the way I can do it.”

I understood, and I told him so. It meant the boy would come home that afternoon to a shed that was whole and a driveway that was still short one truck. I would have to tell him that myself.

By the time I got to the Pate place at 3:05 there were four trucks in the yard.

Gil’s trailer was backed up to the shed. Rex, Jeremy, Verle, and Gil himself were walking the red chest down the ramp, better than seven hundred pounds with the drawers loaded, and rolling it across the concrete to its pale rectangle. The four wheels went into their four dark marks. Verle put his palm flat on the top and left it there a moment.

Then they started on the pegboard.

Jeremy had the photograph on his phone. They held it up beside the wall and hung the wrenches back one by one, each into its own black line, and every one of them fit. I watched four grown men fit my brother’s wrenches into my brother’s lines without a single mistake.

“There’s one outline with nothing in it,” Rex said, tapping the board. “Ten millimeter.”

“There was never a ten millimeter in the picture,” Jeremy said. “Heath said it walked off every month. He had six of them and he was always short one.”

“Then leave it,” said Verle.

Rudy had not moved from the porch step.

He had another can of Busch now, and a look on his face I had not expected. Not anger. He looked like a man watching a house he had set fire to come back together by itself.

I walked up and stood in front of him.

“You said Teri didn’t need to know a thing,” I said. “She knows.”

He didn’t answer.

“She’s in Sioux Falls with a sister who might not walk right again. You picked the week.”

“I didn’t pick,” he said. “I got behind, Kenny. All right? I lost the job at the elevator in June, and nobody hires at 52. I’ve been drinking some. A lot. I owe $620 at the Hitching Post and another $900 to a man in Barton who doesn’t send letters. I didn’t want her to know. I figured I’d sell the stuff and fix it all and buy it back when the unemployment came through.”