The Front Pew and the Choir

The Drive Home From Town

On the drive home he would not let me turn the radio on. He wanted to hear the truck.

“The blinker clicks,” he said, delighted. “I’d forgotten the blinker clicks.”

At the farm he went out to the barn, empty for twelve years, and stood in the middle of it and listened to the pigeons up in the haymow.

“Your mother used to say they were up there gossiping about us,” he said. “I’d forgotten what they sound like.”

That evening he called me. The phone rang at my house at seven o’clock, and it was my father, and he said, “Just checking that this works.”

I told him it worked. We talked for twenty minutes about nothing. I could not remember the last time we had talked on the phone for twenty minutes.

Before he hung up he asked, “What do I owe you for these?”

“Nothing,” I said. “They’re paid for.”

“Teresa. Where’d it come from?”

I did not answer. I am not good at lying to my father and I have never tried very hard.

He was quiet for a second. Then he said, “Your trailer’s gone. I saw it when I drove past Wednesday. I thought maybe Dan moved it.”

“A girl from Loyal bought it for her new horse,” I said. “She’s going to keep peppermints in the tack room for Penny.”

There was a long pause on the line. Then my father said, very quietly, “Well. All right then.” And he said good night, and I heard him set the phone down carefully.