The Cardboard Combine on Main Street

The Drive Home

Darlene did not say a word for six miles. She sat with her purse on her lap and looked out at the stubble fields going blue in the dark.

The beans were mostly off by then, and you could see the yard lights of every farm for miles.

I kept both hands on the wheel. I was not angry the way I would have been at forty. I was something else.

I was sad for the boy and a little ashamed of how much it stung me, a grown man, over a cardboard box.

At the stop sign by the elevator, Darlene finally turned and looked at me.

“You’re not done, are you,” she said.

It was not a question. She has been married to me for forty-four years.

“I’ve got one box left,” I said.

“Leon.”

“I’m not going to make a fuss. I’m not going to say a word to him. I just don’t think that combine ought to go to waste.”

She studied me a while in the light from the dashboard. Then she shook her head and faced front again.

“You’ll need a bigger frame,” she said. “Your shoulders aren’t six.”

That is the closest Darlene comes to saying she is on your side.

The Next Morning

Amy called at seven the next morning, which is about an hour before she usually wakes up on a Monday.

I was already out in the shop with my coffee, measuring myself against the last refrigerator box.

“Dad,” she said, and then she didn’t say anything else for a second.

“It’s all right, honey.”

“It’s not all right. He shouldn’t have said that. I should have said something. I just sat there.”

“You did fine.”

“I didn’t. Brody cried himself to sleep. He wanted to sleep with the suit on, and then he cried anyway.” Her voice broke. “Jared feels terrible. He does. He just doesn’t know how to say it, so he’s acting like nothing happened.”

I set my tape measure down on the bench. I could hear her kitchen behind her, the coffee maker and the dog’s tags on the bowl.

“Can I tell you something?” she said. “And you won’t hold it against him?”

“I’ll try.”

“His mom made all his costumes when he was little. Out of paper grocery sacks. They didn’t have anything. She worked nights at the packing plant in Sioux City and she’d come home and cut eyeholes in sacks and draw on them with markers. He was a knight one year. A robot. A pumpkin.”

I didn’t say anything.

“The kids laughed at him every single year,” Amy said. “He told me once he used to take the sack off before he got to school and carry it under his arm. He swore his own kid would have a store-bought costume like everybody else. He’s been talking about buying that suit since August.”