The Buick We Brought Our Boy Home In

“Come on,” he said.

We walked out to the shed. He pulled the cover off the Buick and ran his hand along the fender like you would run it down a horse’s neck.

The paint still shone. The chrome was clean. Inside, the maroon cloth seats looked like nobody had ever sat in them.

“I quit driving at night about a year ago,” he said. “Your grandma’s gone. I got no business keeping two cars and a truck for one old man.”

He patted the roof once.

“This car ought to be out carrying somebody somewhere. It’s no good to anybody under a sheet.”

“Grandpa, I can’t take your Buick.”

“You’re not taking it.” He reached in his coat pocket and held out his flat old hand, palm up. “You’re buying it. Give me a dollar.”

I just looked at him. “A dollar.”

“A dollar makes it legal. A dollar makes it yours. And it means I never have to hear you argue about it again.” He wiggled his fingers at me. “I’ve watched you hand a dollar over easier than this for a scratch-off. Pay up, now.”

I dug a wrinkled single out of my wallet and laid it in his hand.

He folded it once and put it in his shirt pocket and buttoned the pocket shut, like it was a hundred-dollar bill.

“Sold,” he said. “Now the other half of the price.”

“What other half?”

“A promise.” He looked right at me. His eyes were wet, and he was not one bit ashamed of it. “You promise me that boy rides in this car. That’s the rest of the price. A dollar and a promise.”

Before I could answer, he reached in and opened the passenger door. He touched the dash with two fingers, light.

“Your grandma rode a hundred thousand miles in this seat,” he said. “We brought three of our four kids home from Carle in this car. Your aunt Linda included.”

I had not known that. I had ridden in this car a thousand times and never once thought about who else it had carried.

“She’d like it,” he said. “Her knowing it’s going to carry one more baby home. She’d like that a lot.”

I promised him then. I shook his hand the way I should have made Kyle shake it. Hard and true.

Then I did a thing I had not done since I was a small boy.

I hugged my grandfather in that cold machine shed, and I cried into the shoulder of his coat, and he let me. He thumped me once on the back with his flat old hand and said that was enough of that, and we went to work.