The Forty Redbuds Along His Road

Wayne nodded without looking up. Then he said, so low I almost did not hear it, “I’m sorry, Brianna. I’m so sorry. I knew it was wrong when I was doing it. I knew it the whole time.”

I set the shovel down. “I know you did,” I said.

“The bank was going to take the skidder. I told myself you’d never miss them. I told myself everybody calls them a weed tree.”

He wiped his face with the back of his wrist and left a streak of red clay across his cheek. “I drove past this fence every day since Christmas and I couldn’t look at it.”

“You’ll be looking at it now,” I said. It came out gentler than I meant it to. Maybe that was right.

He laughed, a wet, broken little laugh, and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I reckon I will.”

Then he got up and walked over to the tailgate. Megan stepped aside, slowly.

Wayne stood there with his muddy hands at his sides and looked down at Beau for the first time, really looked, at the hat and the fists and the little face sound asleep in all that cold.

“He’s bigger than I thought,” he said.

“He was two pounds and eleven ounces,” I said. “He’s eight now.”

Wayne reached out with one finger, and stopped, and looked at his dirty hand, and pulled it back.

Kayla, bless her, poured warm water from her thermos into the lid and held it out, and he washed his hand in it and dried it on his shirt, and then he touched Beau’s fist.

Beau did not wake up. He just closed his fist around his great-uncle’s finger in his sleep, the way babies do, and held on.

And Wayne stood there at that tailgate in front of the whole road with his finger in that tiny fist, and I watched a fifty-eight-year-old logger come apart.

Dustin got home around two that afternoon, after the lights were back on past Addie. Megan and Kayla had gone home to sleep by then.

I had told him on the phone what happened, all of it, and he did not say much.

That evening, Wayne came down the road and pulled in our drive for the first time since before Beau was born.

Dustin went out to meet him. I watched from the kitchen window with the baby on my shoulder.

They stood by the fence for half an hour. I could not hear what they said. At one point Wayne put his hand over his eyes.

At one point Dustin put a hand on his uncle’s shoulder. When Wayne left, they shook hands, and then Wayne pulled him in and held onto him.

Dustin came in and washed up at the sink. I asked him what Wayne said. He dried his hands slowly, the way he does when he is putting words in order.

“He’s paying it back,” he said. “All four thousand. He said it’ll take him the summer, but he’ll do it. He said he talked to the bank about the skidder and they’ll give him till fall if he takes the Hensley job, and he’s taking it.”

“Did you tell him he had to?”

“No,” Dustin said. “He told me. I didn’t ask for a dime. He said he wasn’t asking us to forgive him. He said he just wanted to be able to drive down this road again.”