Five Thousand Dollars At The Elevator Scale

Nobody said anything for a while. The kids were asleep before we got to the end of Main Street.

Amber reached over and took my hand on the seat between us. Her hand was warm. Mine was still cold from the yard.

“Did he take it?” she asked.

“He took it. Then he tried to give it back.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he couldn’t take it. Not after he said that.” I looked out the window at the dark fields going by. “I think it hurt him, Amber. I didn’t want to hurt him.”

She squeezed my hand. “You didn’t hurt him. He hurt himself in August. You just gave him the bill.”

We carried the kids in from the pickup one at a time.

Jace woke up halfway up the steps and asked if the last truck was all the way empty, and I told him it was, and he went back to sleep on my shoulder.

I lay awake a long time that night. Not because I was sorry. Because I didn’t know if I’d lost a brother-in-law to save a word.

Curtis didn’t call on Thursday. He didn’t call on Friday. I went to work, and I came home, and for the first night in four weeks I ate supper with my kids at the table, which was its own kind of strange.

Jolie wanted to know where Uncle Curt was. Amber told her he was resting because the corn was all done.

Jolie accepted that, the way two year olds accept things, and went back to putting peas on her spoon one at a time.

On Friday night, I almost called him. I had my phone out in the garage. Then I put it back in my pocket.

I’d said what I had to say. If there was a next word, it had to be his.

Amber didn’t call him either, though I know it cost her.

On Sunday we went to church and came home and Amber put a roast in.

About one o’clock I looked out the front window and saw Curtis’s pickup pulling up to the curb, and Gail in the passenger seat.

Curtis got out slow. He had on a clean shirt and his good jeans and he wasn’t wearing the seed cap, which made him look younger and more like Amber.

He came around and opened his mother’s door and helped her down.

I met them at the door. Gail hugged me first, hard, which surprised me. Gail is not a hugger. She’s a pat-on-the-arm woman, and she held on to me a good long time.

Curtis stood on the step with his hands in his pockets. “Can I come in,” he said.

“You know you can.”

We sat at the kitchen table. Amber put coffee on without asking.

The kids were in the living room watching a tractor video, and Jace hollered hi to Uncle Curt but didn’t get up, because the combine was unloading and he couldn’t miss it.

Curtis sat with his hands around the coffee cup and didn’t drink any. He looked at the table.

Gail looked at him and waited.

“Mom called me Wednesday night,” he said finally. “About ten minutes after midnight.”

I looked at Gail. She folded her hands.

“Dale Hendricks lives across the alley from me,” she said. “He stopped on his way home. My light was on. I’m always up late in harvest, I always have been, since Gene.” She looked at Curtis. “He told me what he saw at the scale.”