Counting Out the Rest at Dad’s Table

The Porch

That night Dad called me at the house. Dad does not call. In twenty years he has called my house maybe a dozen times, and every one of them was about a cow out or a funeral.

“Come out to the farm a minute, would you,” he said. “Just you.”

I drove out there at nine o’clock with the windows down. It had cooled off some and the fog was starting to come up in the low places along the creek.

He was sitting on the front porch in the dark in his new hat. I sat down in the other rocker. We sat there a long time without saying anything, the way Ebner men do.

“Trina’s boys been splitting with yours?” he finally asked.

“That was the first time,” I said. “Jasper tried to give it back.”

“I saw.” He rocked a while. “Reid had his granddad’s look on him when he said that. My daddy’s. I hadn’t seen it in sixty years.”

The bullfrogs were going down at the pond.

“You want to know why I been doing it,” Dad said. It was not a question.

“I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”

He took the hat off and turned it in his hands in the dark.

“When Kevin left,” Dad said, “I went over to Trina’s that first week. Corbin was out in the yard trying to start their push mower, and he couldn’t get it to go. Thirteen years old. Pulling that cord and pulling it.”

He stopped. I waited.

“Kevin always started it for him. I could see it on his face, that he was waiting for somebody to come out of that house and start it for him, and nobody was coming. I went over and started it and that boy cried.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“Nobody did. I told him not to tell.” Dad set the hat on his knee. “Those boys don’t have a daddy anymore, Dwight. Not one worth having. I figured I owed them something. I figured I’d put a little extra in their pocket and they’d know somebody was looking out.”

“I understand that, Dad.”

“And your boy,” he said, and his voice went rough. “Your boy has got you. I figured he didn’t need it. I figured you had him covered.”

I sat with that a while. I did not want to say the wrong thing. I could hear Andrea in my head telling me not to raise my voice to that man.

“He’s got me,” I said. “That’s why I’m counting, Dad.”

Dad did not answer.

“I didn’t want him going home thinking he was worth a quarter of his cousins,” I said. “That’s all it ever was. I didn’t do it to shame you. I know it felt that way. I’m sorry it did.”

“It did feel that way,” Dad said. “Every Saturday. Every time. Twenty, thirty, forty. I’d hear it in my sleep.”

“I know.”

“You never once raised your voice.”

“No, sir. You taught me that.”

He laughed a little, low in his chest. “I didn’t teach you to be this stubborn.”

“Trina says I learned it from you.”

“Trina’s right more than she lets on.”

We sat out there another hour talking about cattle and hay. We did not talk about the money again that night. When I left, he walked me to the truck, and he put his hand on the door after I shut it.

“Bring him out early on Saturdays,” he said. “Before the others.”