The Truck My Husband Built With His Hands
So I made a plan, and the plan was plain. I would not call a lawyer. I would not call the sheriff, though Dale sat three pews behind us for years and would have come. I would not tell the church, and I would not make Kari choose. I would go to the man, somewhere he could not duck my calls, and say what I needed with respect, on my own two feet.
I called Thursday night. Shane did not pick up, as I knew he wouldn’t, so I left a voicemail, and I kept it short.
“Shane, it’s Joanne. Wyatt told me where you’re working this week, and he’s a good boy who loves you. I’ll be there Saturday at seven in the morning for Roy’s truck. Please have your things out of it. I’m not angry. I just need it home. I love you and I love Kari. That’s all.”
I hung up. My hands were shaking so hard I had to hold one with the other.
Then I did what I know how to do when I am scared. I cooked.
At five on Saturday morning I was in my kitchen, in the dark, frying sausage.
For twenty-six years I fed three hundred children a day, and what I know about people is that they are very hard to stay angry with when they are holding something hot and good. I made forty biscuits from scratch, tucked in sausage and a slice of cheese, and packed them in a feed sack. I filled Roy’s big green thermos with coffee. I put on my good gray slacks and my church blouse and a cardigan, and I wore my pearls, even. I dressed that way on purpose. Dignity is partly a matter of showing up as the person you are, not a smaller version.
The job site was the old Ferris place, east of town, fourteen miles on a washboard road. Shane’s crew was setting corner posts on a new pasture fence, the sun just coming up red over a stand of blackjack oak, four men standing around a stack of treated posts with their coffee. And parked off to one side in the grass, shining, with the red-and-white sign on the door and the steel toolboxes bolted in the bed, was my husband’s truck.
I pulled the Buick in beside it and cut the engine.
For a moment I just sat. I would like to say I felt brave. I felt seventy-three. My knees were jelly, and I thought, Joanne, you can start the car and go home and no one will ever know.
Then I thought of the eleven ticks on the calendar. And I got out.
Shane had gone pale. I watched him see me. He was holding a post-hole digger, and I saw it slowly lower, like a flag.
The other three men turned. There was Dwight Pruitt, sixty-three, who has run Shane’s crew for twelve years and knew Roy from the co-op coffee table. And two younger ones, Cody and a tall boy named Marcus who could not have been twenty.
“Good morning, boys,” I said.
I walked to the tailgate of the Buick, and I took out the feed sack and the thermos, and I passed out biscuits.
I did it one at a time. I handed Dwight his, and he took off his cap. I handed one each to Cody and Marcus, who said “Thank you, ma’am,” with his mouth already half full. I poured coffee into the thermos lid and passed it down the line. The only sound was the wind in the oaks and somewhere a meadowlark.