The Deer Blind Where Our Bed Used to Be
“How you feeling?” Rusty asked.
“Better,” I said. I was sitting up against four pillows with a library book. “I walked to the mailbox and back this morning. Mama timed me. Eleven minutes.”
Dale pulled the vanity chair over and sat on it backwards. “Mama told us about the bed money,” he said. “And the blind. And the couch.”
I looked past him at the kitchen, where my mother was very busy wiping a counter that was already clean. She did not look at me.
“It’s between me and Kyle,” I said.
“It is,” Dale agreed. “And we’re not going to say a word to him. We’re not going to call him. We’re not going to show up at the co-op and make a scene. You know us better than that.”
I did know them better than that. I also knew that when Dale agreed with you that fast, he was about to do something.
“Kyle’s on a haul up past Decorah,” Rusty said. “Hog site. He won’t be back until ten, ten thirty. We checked with Brian at the scale house.”
“Why would you check with Brian at the scale house?”
Dale held out his hand, palm up. “We need your house key,” he said.
I asked them what for, and Dale told me, and I laughed so hard I had to hold a pillow against my stomach, the way the nurses showed me.
Then I stopped laughing and thought about it. I want to be honest about this part too. I did not say yes right away.
I lay there and thought about whether it was mean, and whether it was something I would be ashamed of if my pastor heard about it.
“He’s going to be embarrassed,” I said.
“He’s going to be surprised,” Dale said. “That’s different. Hol, he’s a good guy. We like Kyle. We’ve hunted with him for fifteen years. We’re not trying to run him off. We’re trying to wake him up.”
“He told you to try the couch,” Rusty said. “After surgery. Seems fair he tries the blind.”
I thought about the coffee can. I thought about my father in the shop until midnight. I thought about how Kyle, in all those quiet days, had never once asked me what the surgery actually was.
“Rules,” I said. Dale grinned, because he knew that meant yes.
“Nothing gets broken. The bed comes apart careful, and it goes in the garage, not the dump and not your truck. The heater stays in its box, because nobody is lighting propane in my bedroom. You’re out of the house before he gets home. And nobody posts a single picture of it on Facebook.”
“Deal,” said Dale. “But you’re coming.”
“I’m not supposed to ride in a truck,” I said.
“Doctor said no driving,” Rusty said. “Didn’t say no riding. Mama checked the paper.” Behind them, my mother finally turned around from the counter and held up my discharge sheet like it was a winning bingo card.
My mother helped me into my pink fleece robe over my pajamas, because I was not about to try to get jeans on, and the boys walked me out to Dale’s truck one on each side, like I was the queen of England.
Dale drove those ten miles like he was hauling a load of eggs.
He slowed down for every pothole on the gravel and took the turn onto the blacktop at about four miles an hour. Rusty, in the back seat, kept saying, “You okay? You okay?”