The Two Miles I Pushed My Son

Chad

We were maybe a mile in, a little past the Hensley place, when I saw the truck I knew.

Chad borrows everybody’s vehicle because his own is always down, and that morning he was driving his mother’s Buick to his job at the lumberyard, which starts at seven thirty. His route to the yard runs right down County Road H.

I watched the Buick come up over the little rise, and I watched it slow the way all of them slowed, a stranger’s reflex, and then I watched it not speed back up.

It crept even with us. The window came down. Chad looked out at me, and at Eli in his jacket with the cardboard tank, and at the two miles of road behind us and the mile of road ahead, and I watched it land on him.

He did not say anything clever. For once in his life Chad did not have a thing to say.

“Robin,” he said finally. “What are you doing.”

“Taking my son to school,” I said. “Same as you’re going to work.”

A pickup came up behind the Buick and had to slow, and the driver, not knowing Chad from Adam, leaned on his horn and then waved big at Eli as he went around, and Eli waved back, and Chad watched his nephew wave at a stranger on a cold road, and I saw his jaw move.

“The lift,” Chad said.

“Is broke,” I said. “You broke it. Shop’s closed till Tuesday. He’s got the wax museum today. He’s Jacques Cousteau.” I kept my voice even. I did not raise it. I have found that the quiet way lands harder on a man like Chad than any yelling would. “You said he never goes anywhere. So I’m taking him somewhere.”

Chad looked down the road toward town. Then he looked at the dash clock, the way a man does when he is deciding something against his own convenience.

He pulled the Buick off onto the shoulder ahead of us and he put on the flashers and he got out.

“Get in,” he said. “I’ll run you both up there. He can’t ride in the Buick, I know, but I can, I’ll fold the chair, I’ll lift him, just let me.”

“He doesn’t fold up for you,” I said. “He doesn’t even fold up easy for me. And we’re a mile from the school. We’ll walk the mile.” I looked at him. “But you can do something.”

“Anything,” Chad said, and I believe it was the first fully true word I had heard out of his mouth in a long time.