The Jon Boat in My Driveway

The Driveway

We live on a gravel road with six houses on it, about four miles outside of town.

Everybody on that road knows everybody’s truck, everybody’s dog, and everybody’s business. And everybody on that road knows Rusty Cole’s green jon boat.

I backed it into the side yard by the driveway, right next to the mailbox, and I unhitched it there.

I did not hide it behind the shed. I thought about it, and I did not. It was not my shame to hide.

Inside, I ran Eli a hot bath, and I filled the old galvanized stock tank out back with the hose so the catfish would have someplace better than a bucket for the night.

Eli sat on the edge of the tank in his pajamas and his coat and watched it swim around and around.

Corey’s alarm went off at five like it always does, and he came out of the bedroom at half past five scratching his head.

He found me at the kitchen table in dry clothes with my hair still wet, holding a cup of coffee I had not drunk.

“Whose boat is that in the yard?” he said. Then he saw my face. “Brandy. What happened? Where’s Eli?”

I told him. I told him all of it, from Kim’s call to the doorway. He did not interrupt me once.

Corey is like his daddy that way. He listens all the way to the end before he says anything, and when he does say something it is usually short.

When I finished, he got up and went out the back door without a word, and for a minute I was afraid he was going to Rusty’s.

Instead he walked out to the stock tank and squatted down beside our son, and I watched through the window as Eli showed him the catfish.

Corey put his big arm around that boy and held on to him for a long time. When he came back in, his eyes were red. He said, “I should have been up.”

“You’d worked twelve hours,” I said.

“I should have been up,” he said again. Then he said, “You did right. Leave the boat where it is.”

“You’re not going over there?”

He shook his head. “If I go over there tonight I’ll say something I can’t take back. He’s my brother.” He looked out the window at the boat. “Let him come to us.”