The Buick We Brought Our Boy Home In

The Phone Call

The call came on a Tuesday, four days before Jen was due. I was in the elevator break room wiping grain dust off my hands when my brother Kyle’s name lit up the phone.

I thought he was calling to say the RAV4 was finally ready. I was already smiling when I answered.

“So here’s the thing,” he said. I could hear his truck running behind him, the heater fan going. “I had it looked at. Blue Book came back higher than I figured.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I can’t let it go for fourteen five, Travis. It’s gotta be sixteen five. Just to be fair to me.”

I stood there with a paper towel in my hand. Two thousand dollars. He said it the way a man says a thing when he thinks he has already won.

“Kyle, the baby’s due Friday,” I said. “We shook on fourteen five in October. In your kitchen.”

“Yeah, well. Things change.” He gave that little laugh he does when he has you cornered. “You of all people should understand money’s tight.”

I did not say anything for a second.

“It’s a good truck,” he went on. “You won’t find better. Not for what you’ve got to spend.”

I hung up. I leaned against the vending machine and looked out the dirty window at the gray Illinois sky.

My wife had been catching rides to the plant for four months on his word. Four months of standing in the dark. And he moved the price the same week our son was coming.

I did not yell. I have never been a yeller.

I just stood there and felt something go cold and quiet in my chest. It felt the way a field looks the morning the first hard frost takes it down.

Then I wiped my hands the rest of the way, clocked the end of my shift, and called my grandpa.