The Pinewood Derby in Our Hayloft

He was standing next to his mother with his hands in his coat pockets, and he looked like he wanted to sink into the gym floor.

He would not look at Carter. I think he knew something was wrong before any of the grownups said it.

I had the rule sheet in my coat pocket. Every family got one in January, a single page with the pack’s derby rules typed out by Jen herself and copied on the church office machine.

Five ounces, no more. Seven inches long. The official kit block, the official wheels, the official axle nails.

And one line near the bottom: “Adults may help with power tools for safety. The Scout should do as much of the work as he or she is able.”

I knew that line by heart. I had read it out loud to my dad at the kitchen table the day Carter brought the kit home, and Dad had nodded and said, “That’s how it should be.”

So I could have argued. I could have pulled that sheet out of my pocket and read it to her in front of everybody, and I would have been right, and everybody in that gym would have known I was right.

I did not. I am going to tell you why, because I have asked myself a hundred times since then whether I should have, and I still land in the same place.

Jen is family. She is Kevin’s wife and the mother of my nephew, and she will be sitting across from me at Easter and Thanksgiving and every birthday for the rest of my life.

If I had fought her in that gym, Carter would have heard every word of it again at Easter dinner.

He would have heard it from his cousin and from his grandma and from the kids at school who heard it from their parents.

I could have gone to the cubmaster too. His name is Rick, he runs the hardware store, and he is a fair man.

But Rick would have had to overrule his own den leader in front of the pack, and then it would be a pack fight instead of a family one.

And I knew, even standing there, that a ruling from Rick would not fix the thing that was actually wrong.

Carter did not need a grownup to win an argument for him. He needed to know he had not done anything wrong.

My brother was not there. Kevin drives truck for the co-op, hauling grain to the river terminals, and that week he was somewhere in Nebraska sleeping in his cab.

If he had been there, I believe he would have said something.

Carter’s own dad has not been around since Carter was two. He lives out in Rapid City now and sends a card at Christmas, most years.

I took my maiden name back after the divorce, which is why Carter and I are both Thorsons, same as Jen.

So it was me, and it was my dad.

Dad was standing by the end of the bleachers in his barn coat with his cap in his hand. He is 68.

He taught shop at the high school for 31 years, and there are men all over our county who learned to run a table saw because of him.

He did not say a word to Jen. He did not raise his voice. He did not shake his head or make a face.