The Tools That Came Home Early

Then he slid the drawer shut with two fingers, and it closed with the soft sound those drawers make, and I understood that he was going to wait. His father had told him sixteen. The box was not his yet.

Verle cleared his throat and looked at the sky.

Rudy’s brother’s truck was in the lane at five, and Rudy came out with two suitcases and a cardboard box. He didn’t look at the shed. He put them in the bed and got in the passenger side. I do not know what was said in that cab on the way to Barton. I never asked.

Teri got home at 9:20 that night, driving too fast, with her coat half on.

She had not planned to leave Sioux Falls before Sunday. Vicki had told her at suppertime to go home, that she’d been crying into the hospital pudding all afternoon and it was making the other patients nervous.

Leann and I had brought Landon to our house for supper, and he had eaten two bowls of chili and said maybe six words. When we pulled in at the Pate place, her car was already in the drive and the porch light was on.

She stood at the door of the shed. The lamp was lit. The red chest was in its place. She looked at the empty spot beside the shed for a long time.

“The truck comes tomorrow afternoon,” I said.

“I know. Verle called me.” She turned. Landon had come up beside her, and she took his head in both her hands and kissed him on the hair, and neither said anything at all.

Then she went and stood at the kitchen table, looking at a ticket I had hung on the back door, the one for 38 gallons.

“You filled the tank.”

“It was on the list.”

She nodded slowly. “Monday I’m going to the county treasurer’s office,” she said. “His name comes off that title. I’m not deciding the rest tonight. After Christmas.” She put the ticket in her pocket. “Thank you for the tank.”

Reuben Haldane drove the white Ford out himself on Friday afternoon, a few minutes before four.

He came slowly down the lane with Brock following in a work truck to take him back. He parked it in its old spot beside the shed, shut it off, and sat there a minute. Then he got out with a manila folder under his arm and handed it to Teri at the porch step, the title signed back over, and a receipt for $2,400 marked paid in full in his own handwriting.

“Your boy’s truck,” he said. “I washed it Thursday and I haven’t driven it since.”

Landon had come out onto the porch. Reuben looked at him and put a hand out. They shook once, a short and serious handshake between two people who did not need to say anything.

“It’s a good truck,” Reuben said. “Your dad kept it right.”

Teri locked the keys in the kitchen drawer. They would stay there until December. Landon didn’t ask for them.

Monday she went to the county treasurer’s office in Barton and had Rudy’s name taken off. She did not tell Landon what it cost her. In November she had a letter from a lawyer in Pierre, and in January I heard Rudy had taken a job hauling grain for a man up toward Gettysburg. He did not come back to the Pate place. He did not send money, and Verle never asked for any. If Rudy and the boy ever spoke again, I don’t know it.