Counting Out the Rest at Dad’s Table

The Drive Home

Jasper rode home with me in the truck with the window down and his arm out, the way I used to ride with Dad. He had the forty dollars folded in his fist. He did not put it away.

We were past the Methodist church and the feed mill before he said anything.

“Did I do something wrong, Dad?”

I told him no. I told him he had done a good job and I had looked at the fence rows on my way in and they were cut clean, right down to the wire.

“Then why did Grandpa only give me ten?”

I did not have a good answer, so I gave him the true one. I told him I did not know, and that I was not going to guess at what was in his grandpa’s heart.

“Are you mad at him?”

I thought about that for about a mile.

“No, bud,” I said. “I’m not mad. I just want you paid for your work.”

Andrea was out in the side yard pulling weeds out of her tomato bed when we pulled in. Jasper went inside to put the money in the coffee can on his dresser, and I told her the whole thing standing at the edge of the garden.

She sat back on her heels and wiped her forehead with her wrist. She did not say anything for a while.

“Did you say anything to him?” she asked.

“Not a word.”

“Good.” She pulled another weed. “Don’t you dare raise your voice to that man, Dwight. He’s seventy-two and his heart’s bad.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“I know you weren’t.” She looked up at me. “You’re going to keep counting, aren’t you?”

I said I was. She nodded like she had already known.

Saturdays

The next Saturday I drove Jasper back out to the farm at seven in the morning, before the dew was off. Trina dropped her boys off ten minutes after us on her way to work.

Trina is my older sister, forty-six. She works the Saturday shift as a nurse’s aide at the nursing home on the edge of town. She works most weekends, because the weekend shifts pay a little more.

She has done that for two years now, ever since her husband Kevin packed a duffel bag one night in March and drove to Knoxville with a woman from his work. He sends a check most months. Not all months.

Trina waved at me from her car and I waved back. She did not know about the ten dollars yet. Her boys had not told her. I learned later they did not know how to.

The boys mowed. I stayed and helped Dad patch a board fence down by the barn, because there is always a fence that needs patching on a farm and because I wanted to be there at the end.

At a little before eleven, the mower shut off and the three of them came in through the screen door, red-faced and soaked through. Dad was already at the table. He had his straw hat beside his elbow.

He laid a ten in Jasper’s hand. Then he counted out two twenties to Reid and two to Corbin, out loud, like before.

I pulled out my chair and sat down. I took out my wallet.

“Hold out your hand, bud.”

“Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Thank you for your work.”

Dad drank his tea. Nobody said anything. Reid looked at the floor. Then everybody got a pop from the refrigerator and went out on the porch, the same as every Saturday.

It went that way the third Saturday, and the fourth. The ten from Dad. The chair. The wallet. The count, out loud, one bill at a time.

I never raised my voice. I never said the word fair. I never said one word about Reid and Corbin, who had done nothing wrong but stand there. I just counted.

I want to be honest that it was not easy to do. Some Saturdays I sat down in that chair with my stomach in a knot, because I love my father and I did not want to hurt him.

But every time I thought about letting it go, I remembered the way Jasper had looked at me that first day. Like he was trying to figure out what was wrong with him. I was not going to let him carry that home.