The Road I Plowed for My Brother in Law

The snow was up to her knees where the drive met the bank, and she came straight through it without looking where she was walking, and by the time she got to the grader she was out of breath and her face was wet, and it wasn’t from the cold.

She held up the thermos. I came down off the step and took it. It was hot in my bare hands. “Coffee,” she said.

“It’s not much. I saw you coming at seven. I watched you the whole way. I couldn’t think what else to do.”

“Thank you,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say either.

She stood there with her arms wrapped around herself. Then she said, “We were going to have a baby.” She said it to the snow, not to me.

“We found out in August. After six years, Wade. Six years of trying. We didn’t tell anybody. Not Kirsten, not his mother. We were going to wait until Christmas and tell everybody at once.”

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

“I lost it in October,” she said. “Fifteen weeks. Darrell drove me to Bismarck in the middle of the night. He sat in the hallway outside the room for six hours. When we came home he went straight out to the barn and didn’t come in until after dark. He hasn’t said a word about it since. Not one word. Not to me, not to anybody.”

She wiped her face with the back of her mitten.

“Then Hank came. And Darrell couldn’t go to the hospital. He couldn’t go see him. He tried. He got as far as your corner twice and turned around. He sat in the truck at the end of your road one night for an hour. He told me he couldn’t make himself go in.”

“And then you were at the door,” she said. “At one in the morning. With the baby. And I was standing right behind him in the hall. I saw his face, Wade. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. And the money came out of his mouth because it was the only thing he could think to say that wasn’t the truth.”

I stood there holding her thermos. I thought about Darrell on his front step, the look that went across his face when he saw the bundle in Kirsten’s coat.

I’d thought it was something like pain. It was pain. It was the worst thing a man can carry, and he’d been carrying it alone since October in a house without a word said.

“Where is he?” I asked.

She looked back at the house. “In the kitchen. He’s been at the table since you turned onto the road. He watched you the whole two miles out the window. He won’t come out.”

She looked at me. “He’s ashamed, Wade. He’s so ashamed he can’t stand up.”

“Tell him the road’s open,” I said. “Tell him the propane truck can get in now.” I held up the thermos. “And tell him thank you for the coffee.”

Lori nodded. She put her hand on my arm for a second.

Then she turned and walked back up through the snow to the house, and I climbed back up on the grader and drove the other two miles home.

I opened our drive, checked the basement for frozen pipes, and went on north to the dairy and the rest of my route. I didn’t get back to the station until after two that afternoon.

I told Kirsten in the meeting room with Hank asleep on her shoulder. I told her everything Lori had said.