The Sixteen Hundred Dollars at His Table

“The last two groups lost money. Both barns. We had a sickness go through in the spring and the death loss was bad, and the integrator docks you for it. Then the generator went out in July and I had to put a new one in on credit. You know what a generator costs?”

“I don’t,” I said. “One eighty. Two hundred.”

“Twelve thousand dollars. And the payment on these barns doesn’t care whether the pigs lived or died.” He took his cap off and put it back on. “I was scraping, Tina. I’m still scraping.”

“I believe you,” I said, and I did. “Two twenty. Two forty.”

Ethan sat straight beside me. He wasn’t looking at the money. He was looking at his uncle’s face.

“Bryce has been saving for a truck since he was eleven,” Doug said. “He’ll be able to drive to school at sixteen. He’s going to need something to drive. I figured I’d help him get there.”

“Two sixty. Two eighty. Three hundred.”

“And Ethan,” Doug said, and then he stopped.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Say it. I’d rather he heard you say it than hear it from somebody else someday.”

Doug looked at the floor. “I figured Ethan was just helping family.”

“He was,” I said. “Three twenty. He was helping family every morning at six o’clock, Doug. In ninety-degree heat. Three forty. With a mask on his face and a hose in his hand.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know you didn’t. Three sixty. Three eighty. Four hundred.”

There is no fast way to count eighty twenty-dollar bills into somebody’s hand. I didn’t try to find one. I laid each one down square on top of the last one, and I said each number out loud, and I let every one of them land.

“Four twenty. Four forty.”

I want to be honest about this. Part of me wanted Doug to squirm, and I didn’t like that part of me. So every time I felt it come up, I looked at Ethan’s hand instead of Doug’s face. It was Ethan’s money. It was for Ethan.

“Four sixty. Four eighty. Five hundred.”

Somewhere around six hundred, Ethan’s palm started to get full, and the bills started to slide. Without me saying anything, he brought up his other hand underneath to hold the stack steady.

“Six twenty. Six forty.”

Doug said, quieter, “Tina, you don’t have that kind of money to be throwing around.”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “This is our furnace money. Six sixty. Six eighty. Seven hundred.”

That stopped him. He knew our furnace. He had been in our basement with Rob last winter when it quit on a Sunday night, and he had helped hold the flashlight.

“Seven twenty,” I said.

Ethan cleared his throat. His voice cracked, because he is thirteen, and he pushed through it anyway.

“Uncle Doug,” he said, “I never missed a day.”

“I know you didn’t, bud.”

“I came every day you said. Even the day Grandma had her surgery. I came after.”

“I know.” Doug’s voice wasn’t right anymore. “I know you did.”

“Seven forty. Seven sixty. Seven eighty. Eight hundred,” I said. “That’s half.”

I didn’t hear the car come in. I found out afterward that Lisa had pulled up just about the time I said “one hundred,” seen through the screen door what was happening at her table, and stopped dead on the back step with a bag of ice in each hand.