The Two Miles I Pushed My Son

Why I let him take it

People ask me now why I ever let Chad borrow it. I ask myself the same thing at two in the morning sometimes.

Chad is Dave’s younger brother. He is thirty one and he has never once in his life had a thing go wrong that was his own fault, to hear him tell it. His truck, a Silverado he is still paying on, had thrown a rod, and it was sitting at the shop in town waiting on a part.

He wanted to take some buddies to Branson for the weekend. Three days. A bachelor thing for a man named Dylan I had met twice.

He came to me Thursday night with his mother, Judy, standing behind him in the doorway. Judy is Dave’s mama too, and she is a good woman who has a soft spot the size of a barn for her youngest.

“It’s just a weekend, Robin,” Judy said. “Eli’s got nothing on the calendar. Chad’ll put gas in it.”

Dave was already gone. He drives long haul, and he had left Wednesday with a load bound for Laredo, Texas, which is six hundred miles of nothing from where we sit. He would not be home until Thursday the next week.

I called him on his cell that Thursday night, and he said what I already knew. “It’s family, Rob. Let him take it. Just make him swear he won’t mess with the lift.”

So I made Chad swear. I stood on my own porch and I said it plain. “The lift is not a toy and it is not a forklift. Do not put anything on it but a wheelchair, and there is no wheelchair going, so do not touch it at all.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I got it.”

I handed him the keys. Judy hugged my neck and said I was a saint. Eli watched from the window and did not say anything, because Eli had already learned a thing it took me thirty eight years to learn, which is that the people who love you will sometimes hand your good things to someone who will not be careful with them.