The Buick We Brought Our Boy Home In

The Buick

We spent the whole afternoon getting it ready, him and me. It was the best afternoon I had had in a long time.

He showed me everything. Where the spare rode. How the headlight stalk had a little quirk where you had to jiggle it.

He had the maintenance records in a manila folder in the glovebox. Every receipt since 1998, in order, oldest in the back.

Carol down at the diner could have gone through that folder with a magnifying glass and not found one thing out of place.

We checked the tires. We topped the washer fluid. We ran it up the road and back.

The 3800 started on the first turn of the key, quiet as a sewing machine. Warm air came off the vents in about ninety seconds.

Ninety seconds. The Cobalt took the whole length of the county road just to quit blowing cold.

I ran it through the car wash in town and vacuumed it out, even though it did not need it. I just wanted my hands on it.

Then I went to the parts store and bought a brand-new car-seat base.

I spent forty minutes in the Casey’s parking lot reading the instructions and clicking the thing into the back seat until it would not budge.

A man in a brown Carhartt coat, sweating over a plastic clip in twenty-degree weather. Learning to be a father one click at a time.

Jen saw it in our driveway that evening and put both hands over her mouth. She walked around it twice, slow, resting a palm on the roof.

“Travis,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s a thirty-year-old Buick, hon.”

“It’s warm,” she said. “And it’s ours. And it didn’t cost us our savings or our pride.”

She opened the back door and looked at the car seat clicked in tight. Then she started to cry.

I held her in the driveway in the cold, the way I had held my grandpa a few hours before. It had been a day for holding people.

That night I sent Kyle one text. “Found a vehicle. We’re all set. Thanks anyway.”

I did not say a word about the Buick, or the dollar, or Grandpa. I was not going to hand him a fight, and I was not going to hand him the story either.

Cold and quiet. That is how my people settle a thing.

He texted back a single question mark. I set the phone face down and left it.