The Route They Gave His Nephew

The grudge, said out loud

I want to be fair to Dennis, because Ruth, if she were reading over my shoulder, would want to know the man had a reason and got a chance to say it. He did have a reason. He told me himself, later, and I will give it to you the way he gave it to me.

It was Wednesday. He came out to the lot where I was coiling the hose at the wash bay, and he stood there a minute watching me work, and I think the sight of me still showing up bothered him more than quitting would have.

“You’re a stubborn man, Walt,” he said.

“I’ve been told.”

“Kyle’s my sister’s only boy. She raised him alone. I promised her I’d get him on somewhere steady.” He said it like it settled the matter. “A route’s a good living. He’ll grow into it.”

“On my route,” I said. “The week before my thirty.”

He looked at me then and dropped the part about his sister. “You never did think much of me, did you. Fifteen years I’ve run this depot and you’ve never once come to me like I was the boss. You go to Pam. The crew goes to you. You think I don’t see that.” His jaw worked. “A man gets to decide who runs his routes. That’s all this is. I’m deciding.”

So there it was. Nepotism for the nephew, and a fifteen-year grudge against the old driver the other men still went to first. He had wrapped it in his sister and his promise, but he had just said the real thing out loud, and he did not even know he had said it.

“All right, Dennis,” I said. And I kept coiling the hose.

That was the last thing I said to him before Toledo.