The Sunday Drive That Settled Daddy’s Rent

“I’ll have the fall check out the first of the month, same as always.”

I felt Daddy go still under my hands on the handles of the chair.

“Bobby,” he said. “Where do you send my rent?”

Bobby glanced at me, then back at Daddy. He looked puzzled, the way a man looks when somebody asks him what color the sky is. “To Sherry’s. Half in March, half in November. Like she asked me to.”

“Since when?”

“Since you went in, Clayton. She came by the house that first fall. Said you’d want it going to her now, since she was handling your expenses. She had the paper from the lawyer saying she was over your business.”

Daddy did not move. His hand was still on the corner post.

“Have I ever once,” Daddy said, “in twenty-two years, told you I was short on anything?”

Bobby took his seed cap off and held it in both hands. His face had gone a dull red. I could see him starting to put it together, and I could see he did not want to.

“No sir,” he said. “No sir, you never have.”

“Do you know what Teresa here has been doing for three years?”

Bobby looked at me. I shook my head a little. I did not want to say it. But Daddy said it for me.

“She’s been paying my bill at that home out of her own pocket. Twenty-one hundred dollars a month. Because her sister told her I didn’t have a dime. And her sister told me the rent was paying it.”

Bobby stared at him. Then he stared at me. He opened his mouth and closed it again.

“Clayton,” he said finally, and his voice cracked on it. “I swear to you, I didn’t know. I’d never have. If I’d thought for one minute that money wasn’t getting to you.”

Daddy was quiet a long time. The wind came across the pasture and moved the grass and a few of the cows lowed up on the hill. His hand stayed on that post.

Then he turned his chair a little toward Bobby, as much as he could turn it himself, and he looked up at him.

“Bobby,” he said. “You did exactly what you were asked to do by a member of my family holding a paper with my name on it. That’s what an honest man does. Don’t you carry one ounce of this home with you tonight. You hear me?”

Bobby nodded. He could not say anything.

“Now here’s what you’ll do,” Daddy said. “The first of November, you write that check to me. Clayton Akers. And you mail it to me at the home in town, room fourteen. Not to Sherry. Not to Teresa. To me. And every one after that, as long as I’m living.”

“Yes sir,” Bobby said.

“And if anybody comes to your house with a paper saying different, you call me first. I’ve got a telephone by my bed and I can still dial it.”

“Yes sir. I will.”

Then Daddy put his hand out again, and Bobby took it, and Daddy said, “Thank you for taking care of my ground. It looks good. You’ve always kept it like it was yours.”

Bobby walked with us back to the car. He helped me get Daddy from the chair into the seat, lifting him like he weighed nothing, and he folded the wheelchair and put it in the back for me. When he closed the trunk he stood there a minute with his hand on it.