The Birthday Box on His Porch

I worked nights and slept days, and some weeks we hardly saw each other except passing in the kitchen.

But I know what Cody is like when he is ashamed. He does not get loud.

He goes away inside himself, and he does whatever he can to keep from having to look at the thing that is hurting him.

I thought about that past Post, climbing the caprock with the box sliding a little in the seat. I put my hand on it to steady it the way I used to steady Tanner’s cup.

And then I remembered the phone call from Wednesday, the one I had not thought anything about at the time.

Tanner had called me in the afternoon, the way he does when he is bored at his dad’s. We talked about baseball, and a girl in his English class, and how his dad’s girlfriend Raylene had gotten him a job mowing the church yard in town for the summer.

Then, just before we hung up, he said, “Dad’s been up real late, Mom. Like every night. I can hear the television through the wall at like three in the morning.”

I had asked him if his dad was all right. He said he guessed so. He said his dad had been home a lot. I had thought he meant home on days off. I said, “Well, let him be,” and told him I loved him.

Somewhere around Slaton I put it together. Home a lot. Up every night at three in the morning. Playing a game meant for his son, in the dark, with the sound turned down.

That is not a man having fun. I have worked nights for fifteen years. I know what three in the morning looks like on a person, and it is not fun.

I did not feel sorry for him yet. I want to be honest about that. I was still angry.

But the anger had gotten a little quieter, like a dog that has barked itself out and is just lying in the yard watching.

Lubbock, then the flat

I took the loop around Lubbock and came out on the Levelland highway, and the land went so flat you could see a water tower ten miles before you got to it.

I stopped once, at an Allsup’s in Levelland, because the gas light had been on since Lubbock. I bought a burrito out of the warmer because I had not eaten a real meal since the night before.

I sat in the truck with it on my knee and couldn’t take a single bite. I wrapped it back up and put it in the cup holder, and it rode the rest of the way there and all the way home again.

Cody’s place is about eight miles past Levelland on a county road, a little tan brick house with a cotton field across the road. He rents it from an older couple who moved into town.

I have been there exactly twice before. Once to drop off a prescription Tanner forgot, and once when Tanner was sick and I came to bring him home early. Both times I stayed in the truck.

It was late afternoon when I came down that county road. The sun was low and gold straight ahead of me, and it lit up the field and the fence posts and the little house, like a picture somebody had colored in.

Cody’s pickup was in the drive. Raylene’s car was gone. I knew she worked Saturdays at the bank in town, Tanner had told me that, and I was glad of it. Whatever was about to happen did not need an audience.

I parked on the road by the mailbox, not in the drive. It is his house. I did not want to pull in like I owned the place.

I got out with the box. My legs were stiff from four hours of sitting, and I was still wearing navy scrubs under my old gray zip jacket, and my hair was in the same messy bun I had put it in the evening before.

I looked like exactly what I was, which was a tired nurse who had come off a long night and kept going. I did not care. I had not come to look nice.

I walked up the little concrete path to the porch with the box in both hands. I could hear a ballgame playing inside, the radio kind, the announcer’s voice going up and down.

I had just stepped up onto the porch when the screen door banged open and Tanner came out.