The Little White House Next Door

Dennis’s dad

I need to tell you about Ray Ross, because you cannot understand Dennis without him, and I do not want anyone thinking my husband is a fool.

He is not. He was scared, and I did not see how scared until later.

Ray worked at the grain elevator in Lyons for thirty-one years.

He drove the same 1979 Ford pickup until the floorboards rusted through, and he patched them with a sheet of tin from the elevator.

He never took a vacation. He never bought himself one thing he did not need.

He used to stop at the Chevy lot in Hutchinson when they went for parts and walk around the Corvettes with his hands behind his back.

Dennis told me that once, years ago. His dad never sat in one. He said sitting in one would only make it worse.

Ray died at fifty-two, unloading a truck in the August heat, and he was gone before the ambulance got to the elevator.

Dennis was twenty-three. He stood at the casket at the funeral home with his jaw so tight I thought his teeth would crack.

Dennis turned forty-nine that April, just before we sold the farm. I made his favorite cake, the German chocolate, and he blew out the candles and was quiet the rest of the night.

I thought he was tired. I know now that he was counting.

Three years, he was thinking. Three years until I am the age Dad was.

And then the farm sold and there was more money in that savings account than his father had ever seen at once, and something in him came loose.

I did not know any of that on Elm Street.

All I knew was that there was a red car in the driveway and thirty thousand dollars of our children’s future was gone into it.