The Names Sewn Inside the Collars

What Darla told me

She told me she had pulled into the Casey’s at about four on Saturday, and he was already there, standing beside a gray truck with the tailgate down and the clothes folded in two laundry baskets.

She didn’t know Travis, not to look at. She knew the name Hale, because of June, but there are Hales all over our county.

She only knew who he was later, when she saw the names.

“He was polite,” she said. “He apologized for the wrinkles. He said, ‘They’re good clothes, my girls only wore them a couple times.’ He said it like he was proud of them.”

She gave him three twenties. She said he counted them twice, standing there, the way a man counts money he’s already spent in his head.

“Then he put sixty dollars in the gas pump,” Darla said. “Not some of it. All of it. I watched him. His gas light was on when he pulled in. I could see it through the windshield.”

She said she asked him, just being friendly, if he was moving or cleaning out. And he laughed, but not like anything was funny.

“He said, ‘No, ma’am. They cut my overtime in July, and I’m behind on my support, and I’ve got to get to Decatur five days a week on a half a tank.’ He said, ‘My girls have got more clothes than I ever had. They’ll be all right.'”

Darla stopped there and looked at me. “Then he said something else, and that’s the part I came out here to tell you.”

I waited. A car pulled out behind us. Somebody honked a little wave at Darla and she waved back without looking.

“He said, ‘Their mama buys them good things. She always did.’ And then he got in his truck and he sat there a minute with his hand over his eyes before he drove off.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I stood there in the church parking lot with my girls’ clothes against my chest and I cried, quietly, the way you cry when you don’t want anybody coming over to help.

Darla didn’t make a fuss. She just stood beside me with her hand on my arm, the way women in this town do, until I was done.

“He’s not a bad man,” she said finally. “I’ve known bad men. He’s a drowning one. But he’s drowning in your girls’ clothes, and that’s not right either.”