Counting Out the Rest at Dad’s Table

The Screen Door

The Saturday after Dad’s birthday, Jasper ran the push mower, and Reid had the weed eater, and Corbin had the riding mower. They came in at a quarter till eleven with grass stuck to their shins.

Dad was at the table in his new straw hat. He took it off and set it on the table beside him, crown up, the way he always does.

He laid a ten in Jasper’s hand. He counted two twenties to Reid and two twenties to Corbin.

I sat down and took out my wallet, and I counted, out loud. “Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Thank you for your work.”

Dad looked at the table. He did not drink his tea that time.

The boys got their pops and started for the porch. And at the screen door Reid stopped and turned around.

He walked back to the table. He took one of his twenties, unfolded it, and set it down flat in front of Jasper.

Corbin looked at his brother for a second. Then he came back too, and laid one of his twenties down next to Reid’s.

“What’s this?” Jasper said.

“Your half,” Reid said. “We all pushed the same grass.”

Jasper looked at the money and then at me. He pushed both twenties back across the table.

“Dad already makes me even,” he said. “I got forty. You keep yours.”

Reid did not pick it up. He was sixteen and a head taller than Jasper and he had his mother’s chin.

“It’s not about even,” he said.

He said it to Jasper, but he said it loud enough for the whole kitchen, and I do not think he meant it only for Jasper.

Dad sat there with his hands flat on the table on either side of his new hat. He looked at those two twenties in the middle of his own kitchen table, and then he looked at his grandson Reid.

Nobody moved for a long minute. The refrigerator hummed. Out in the yard a mourning dove was calling.

Then Reid turned around and went out the screen door, and Corbin went after him, and the door slapped shut behind them. The forty dollars stayed on the table.

Jasper looked at me. I shook my head a little. “Leave it,” I said quietly. “Let your cousins do what they think is right.”

Dad got up and went to the sink and ran the water.