The Farm Sign at the End of Our Lane
We set him up in a lawn chair at the end of the lane, on the gravel, with a quilt over his knees and a blanket over the quilt and a cup of coffee he was not supposed to have.
Then we got to work.
Jared sanded the panel. He primed it. I held the pattern against the board while Owen snapped a chalk line, and then I showed Jared how to pounce, to pat the little cloth bag of chalk dust against the pinholes so the whole lettering showed through in dots of white. His hand shook the first time. He is a man who can drive a combine through a corn row with an inch to spare, and he could not draw a straight line across a board.
“That’s all right,” I said. “Mine shook, too. Stand closer to it. Breathe out when you pull.”
He breathed out. The first P came out of the brush as clean as a bell.
From the lawn chair, Stan said, “R’s gonna lean.”
“Is it?” Jared said.
“They always lean. Your mother’s do.” Stan sipped his coffee. “I always liked it.”
My son laughed out loud, and then, right in the middle of the laugh, put his wrist to his eyes and kept painting.
Around nine, Orville Banks, who has farmed the section north of us since before I could drive, stopped his truck on the shoulder, took in the old man in the lawn chair and the man on his knees in the gravel with paint on his chin, and asked no questions. He lifted his cap to Stan, turned off his engine, and stood with his hands in his pockets, watching Jared paint as if it were a barn raising.
On Sunday, when we got to the second line, there was a disagreement.
I had the pattern laid out and Jared stopped with his brush in the air.
“Dad,” he said. “Where do you want me to put my name?”
Stan looked at him. He had a good hour in front of him that morning, one of those clear stretches, and I could tell he had been waiting for the question.
“Where do you think it goes?”
“I don’t know,” Jared said. “I don’t think it goes anywhere. I think I gave up that right when I…”
“Hush.” Stan raised a hand. “Hand me that pencil.”
Owen gave him one. Stan took the pattern from me, unrolled it across his knees, and with a hand that shook but did not hesitate, he drew a short line beneath Since 1976 and printed, in his old square engineer’s capitals, and Son.
Then he looked up. “Your mother’s pattern has room for that. She left room for it in 1976. Did you know that? We were hoping for a baby. She made a space at the bottom.” He put the pencil behind his ear. “Always figured the boy would fill it.”
I had forgotten that. I truly had. I had forgotten that on a spring day in 1976, with a quart of black enamel and a number-four brush, I had left a little blank at the bottom of that board, and Stan had stood back and said nothing about it, and I had never had to say why.