The Knock on My Own Front Door

He sat there. One minute. Two. I could see the shape of him behind the wheel, both hands on top of it and his forehead down against them.

Across the street, Vern stood at his front window and did not pretend not to watch. Pam Henderson was out on her step with a broom she was not using. The Lindquist boy had stopped shooting baskets in his driveway.

In a town that size, a man sitting in his truck in front of his folks’ house with his head on the steering wheel is not a private thing. The whole street had seen the Toyota pull in. Now the whole street saw my son unable to get out of his truck.

That was the first consequence, and I did not have to lift a finger for it.

Finally he pulled up behind Austin’s pickup and shut it off. He came up the walk slowly, in his feed mill jacket and a seed cap I had given him two Christmases ago. He did not use the side door the way he had his whole life. He came to the front.

And he knocked.

I do not know if he even knew he was doing it. My son knocked on the front door of the house he grew up in.

Ardis got up before I could, and she opened it.

He stood there on the step. He looked at his mother. He was thirty-six years old, with a little gray in his beard already, and he looked eight.

“Hi, Mom,” he said.

“Hi, honey,” she said. “Come in, it’s cold.”

He came in. He saw Jade in the chair by the door and Austin standing in the kitchen. He saw me at the table. He took his cap off and held it in both hands, the way I taught him to hold it in church.

“Dad,” he said. “I can explain.”

“I know you can,” I said. “That’s what worries me.”

That landed. I saw it land. I did not say it to hurt him, but I will not pretend it did not.

Then I stood up and took my coat off the back of the chair.

“Put your cap back on,” I said. “We’re going for a drive.”

“Gordon,” Ardis said.

“Just a drive, Lo,” I said. “Have supper at seven. Make enough for five.”

Jade looked up at that. So did Austin.