Counting Out the Rest at Dad’s Table

The Third Saturday In July

He still laid a ten in Jasper’s hand the next three Saturdays. I still sat down and counted out the thirty. Neither one of us said a word about that night on the porch.

It was ninety-four degrees by one o’clock that Saturday, and the air was so wet you could wring it. The old kitchen held the heat like a smokehouse, and nobody had the energy to complain about it.

I had been bringing Jasper out early every Saturday, like Dad asked. Dad gave him a biscuit and sausage and a glass of milk, and they sat at the table and talked about baseball while the dew dried. A thunderstorm came through around nine and soaked everything, so the others did not start mowing until the grass had dried, close to eleven.

I helped Dad move a round bale with the tractor. Then I came in and washed up at the sink, still in my gray co-op T-shirt, and sat down at the table and waited.

The boys came in at about a quarter past two, in the worst heat of the afternoon. Jasper pulled out the chair next to mine and sat down. He was sunburned all over again across his nose and his freckles had come out thick. His white T-shirt was green with grass stains down the front, because he had run the weed eater along the creek bank.

Reid and Corbin came in behind him in sweaty T-shirts and stopped by the screen door, the way they always did, with the bright afternoon light coming through the screen behind them.

Dad was across the table from me in his overalls, with his white hair sticking up from the heat. His new straw hat sat on the table beside him.

He took out his wallet and laid a ten on the table near his hat for Jasper, the same ten as every Saturday. Jasper did not reach for it.

Then he looked at me.

I pulled out my wallet. I opened it. I said, “Hold out your hand, bud,” and Jasper held out his empty palm across the corner of the table.

Before I could say twenty, Dad put both his hands flat on the table.

He pushed his chair back. It scraped on the linoleum. He stood up, slow, the way he stands up now, with one hand on the table for his heart.

“Put your wallet up, Dwight,” he said.

I put it up.

Dad reached down and picked the ten back up off the table. Jasper looked at me, scared, and I shook my head a little. Wait.

Dad folded the ten and put it back in the front pocket of his overalls. Then he took his wallet back out and opened it and took out two twenties.

“Hold out your hand, son.”

Jasper held out his hand.

Dad laid the first twenty in it. “Twenty,” he said, out loud.

He laid down the second one. “Forty.”

He stood there a second with his hand over Jasper’s hand.

“Thank you for your work,” Dad said.

Jasper did not say anything. His mouth was working, but nothing came out of it. He looked down at the two twenties and then up at his grandpa.

Then Dad turned around to the screen door.

“Reid. Corbin. Come here.”

They came. Dad counted out two twenties to Reid, out loud. “Twenty. Forty.” Then two to Corbin. “Twenty. Forty.”

“Same job,” he said, “same pay. From here on out. All three of you. I should’ve done it that way from the start, and I didn’t, and that’s on me.”

Reid looked at him a long minute. Then he nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“And next time,” Dad said, “you keep your own money. You hear me? You don’t need to be making up for your granddad. That’s not your job.”

“Yes, sir,” Reid said again. He did not smile, but something in his shoulders let go.

Dad sat back down. He let out a breath like he had set down something heavy. He picked up his tea and drank half the glass.

Then he looked at me.

“I owe you some money,” he said. “Eleven Saturdays at thirty dollars.”

“You don’t owe me a thing, Dad.”

“I owe you three hundred and thirty dollars, Dwight.”

“No, sir,” I said. “I paid my son. That was my money and it went where I wanted it to go. You just pay him from here on.”