The Enchiladas I Took to His Ex

Making It Right

The next morning was Saturday. I was still in bed when I heard the truck start.

He was gone four hours. When he came back, his eyes were red, and he did not talk about it right away. He took off his boots in the entry and came in and sat on the edge of the bed in his jacket.

“I went to Crystal’s,” he said.

I sat up.

“I knocked. She opened the door. I told her I was sorry.” He looked at his hands. “I didn’t make excuses. I told her I had lied to her and lied to you, and that she shouldn’t have had to go to the county, and that I would pay every dollar.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she’d believe it when she saw it.” He almost smiled. “Which is fair.”

“Did you see Kaden?”

“He was there.” Shane’s voice cracked a little. “I told him he didn’t do anything. I told him it was my fault, all of it. I told him that I messed up with money and I hid it, and that I was going to fix it, and that it had nothing to do with him.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked if I was still coming to his birthday.”

I laughed. I could not help it. Shane laughed too, a little wet.

“I said if they’ll have me,” he said.

Then he told me the rest. On the way home from Worthington he had stopped at the elevator and found Dale in the office doing the books, the way Dale does every Saturday morning, and he asked him for work.

“Weekends,” Shane said. “Whatever you’ve got. Loading out, sweeping bins, running the leg. I’ll do it.”

Dale knew him. Dale had known him since he was in high school. And Dale, I learned later, had heard more about our week from my face than I ever said out loud.

“We’re loading out a train the end of the month,” Dale told him. “After that, there’s bin work every Saturday through planting. Be here at six. Bring gloves.”

So that was what he did.

Saturdays

Every Saturday from then on, Shane was at the elevator by six in the morning in his insulated bibs, shoveling out corners of bins and running the auger and helping Dale’s crew load hopper cars when the railroad set them. It was cold, dusty, miserable work. He came home looking like he had been rolled in flour, and he never complained once.

The refund had covered most of what he owed, but not all of it. There was two hundred left on the arrears. And there was something else.

A few weeks after the letter, Dale’s wife, who does taxes for half the county out of her kitchen in Adrian, told me about the injured spouse form. Because the refund was joint, and part of it came from my paycheck, I could file to get my share back.

I filed it. Shane drove me to her house to sign it, and he did not argue.

“When yours comes back,” he said in the truck, “that comes off what she got. So I owe her that much again. I know that.”

“You do.”

“Then I’ll pay it.”

My share, when it came back in May, was $3,100. Counting the two hundred that was already left, that meant Shane owed Crystal $3,300. It went back on his arrears, and every Saturday paycheck from the elevator went toward it.

He paid it the proper way, through the state payment center, so it would be on the record and nobody could ever say it was not paid. But every Saturday after his shift, still dusty, he drove the eighteen miles to Worthington and handed Crystal the printed receipt himself.

The first time, she looked at it a long time and then folded it and put it in her scrubs pocket.

The second time, she offered him a cup of coffee.

The third time, I rode along, and he and Kaden threw a baseball in the little patch of yard in front of the duplex while Crystal and I sat on the concrete step and watched.