The Pennies in My Gravel Driveway
He let the second mechanic go when the frost laws came on and the county roads went to half loads and nobody was hauling anything.
I loved that shop. I want to be honest about that. But I am a single mother of two, and their dad drives a log truck out of Tomahawk, and he sends what he can, which is not always much and not always on time.
In February the co-op on Highway 17 posted an opening at their farm store counter. Three dollars and ten cents more an hour. Health insurance for me and both kids. A retirement match.
They called me back in March. I gave Dale my two weeks the first Monday in April.
I wrote him a letter because I was afraid my voice would go if I said it, and I left it on his workbench with a cup of coffee on top of it.
He read it. He folded it in half. He did not say anything to me for the next two weeks except what part he needed and what time the tow call was.
On my last day he came out of the back at noon and said, “Go on home. I’ll get your check to you.”
I thought he meant he would mail it. I hugged him at the door, and he stood there like a fence post.
That was four hours before the pennies.
The first thing I did was get the kids in the house. The second thing I did was call their dad, Kyle, who picked up on the third ring with his engine running and the radio going.
“He did what,” Kyle said.
I told him about the buckets and the paper taped to the last one.
“I’m empty right now, coming back from the landing,” he said. “I can be there by seven. I’ll shovel the whole mess back into those buckets and set them on his front step. Let him count them.”
“No,” I said.
“Becky.”
“No. You’ll lose a day’s pay, and he’ll call the sheriff, and then it’s a story about you instead of him.” I was standing at the kitchen window looking at the pile. “I’ll figure it out.”
He was quiet a long minute. Then he said he was off Sunday, and he would be there with both hands, and I knew he meant it.
I did all the things you would do. That night I looked it up on the computer at the kitchen table after the kids were in bed.
On Monday morning I called the wage line at the state, and a very kind woman listened to the whole story without laughing once.
“Was the amount correct?” she asked.
“I haven’t counted it yet,” I said. “But I’m guessing it will be.”
“Then I’m sorry, but there isn’t much we can do,” she said. “Coins are legal tender. If you were paid in full and on time, he met the law. There’s no rule against being rude about it.”
I could have put his name and a picture of that pile on the town page by dark. But Dale had been good to me for five and a half years before he was bad to me for one afternoon.
And Noah was watching me. He was eight, and he watched everything I did that spring, and I knew it.
Saturday morning I went out to look at it in daylight.
I picked up a handful. They were cold and heavy and they left my palm gray.