The Sixteen Hundred Dollars at His Table

The sun was low over Doug’s place when we pulled in, that late August light that turns everything gold. The two long pale hog barns lay out beyond the house, side by side, with their curtains rolled up and the big fans quiet at the ends.

Lisa’s car wasn’t by the house. Bryce’s bike was on its side by the shop. Doug’s pickup was parked crooked by the back step, the way it always is.

Doug was standing at the kitchen counter when we came in the back door, cutting the fat off pork chops on a cutting board. He had on a gray t-shirt and the same sweat-stained ball cap he’d worn all summer, and his neck and forearms were burned red from three months in the sun.

“Hey, there’s my wash crew,” he said when he saw Ethan. He wiped his hands on a towel and turned around. “Lisa ran to town for ice. Bryce is in his room. You get your check okay, bud?”

“Yes sir,” Ethan said.

“Good man. You earned it.”

He meant it. That’s the hard part. He wasn’t sneering. He said it the way you’d say it to any kid who worked hard for you.

The kitchen window over the sink looks straight out at the barns, and the light came through its plain curtain. Every evening of that summer Doug had stood at that window with his coffee and looked at those buildings, and I suppose that’s where he had done his figuring.

I pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. I set my purse on the table and took out the credit union envelope.

“Ethan,” I said, “pull up a chair by me. Hold out your hand.”

He came around the table and sat down in the chair next to mine. He looked at his uncle, then at me, and then he held out his right hand, palm up, flat and steady. His hands are bigger than mine already.

Doug leaned back against the counter. “Tina, what’s going on?”

I took the first bill off the top of the stack and laid it in Ethan’s palm.

“Twenty,” I said.

Then the next one. “Forty.”

“Sixty.”

Doug crossed his arms over his chest. He did it slowly, like a man settling in to see where something was going. The late sun was coming in that window behind him, and he was mostly a dark shape against it, except for the red of his arms.

“Tina,” he said. “What is this?”

“This is the difference,” I said. I didn’t look up from my son’s hand. “Ten dollars an hour. A hundred and sixty hours. Bryce got twelve. Ethan got two. This is the ten.”

“Eighty,” I said. “One hundred.”

It got very quiet in that kitchen. I could hear the clock up over the window, and the refrigerator, and a single fan running out at the far barn.

“One twenty. One forty.”

“Now hold on a minute,” Doug said. He didn’t raise his voice either. I’ll give him that too. “Hold on. You don’t know what kind of year it’s been out here.”

“I’m listening,” I said. “One sixty.”