The Crib Under My Mother’s Window

He was standing at the table with that receipt in his hand, in his work clothes, with sawdust in the creases of his sleeves.

He stood there a long time. Long enough that Mama reached over and took my hand on the quilt.

Then his boots came down the hall, slow. He filled up the doorway the way he always has.

He looked at the crib, and the window, and the yellow blanket, and Mama’s red eyes, and me.

I stood up. I was not going to apologize. I had decided that in the parking lot in Alma. But I was not going to fight him either.

“Daddy,” I said. “I paid it. It’s done. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you first. I didn’t want us to fight about it at the supper table again.”

He did not say anything. He walked over to the crib and put his big hand on the rail and shook it, gently, the way he tests a fence post.

It wobbled. Just a little. I had not gotten the last two bolts all the way tight on the far side.

He went out of the room without a word. I heard the back door, and the shed door, and then the back door again.

When he came back he had his own screwdriver and the little ratchet set he keeps in a coffee can of his own.

He got down on his knees on the floor, with a grunt, because his knees are forty-seven years old and have stacked a lot of oak.

He found the two loose bolts without looking for them, the way he finds everything.

He tightened the first one. Then the second. Then he shook the rail again, and it did not move.

“Slow is fast,” he said, not looking at me.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “You told me that.”

“I know I did.” He sat back on his heels, right where I had been sitting, with the late light on his face. “Who taught you to put a crib together?”

“You did,” I said. “On Davey’s bed. With the muffin tin.”

He nodded. He looked at the crib a while longer. Then he looked at me, and his eyes were wet, and I had seen my father’s eyes wet exactly once before, at Granny’s funeral.

“I’m proud of you, Hope,” he said. “I should have said it when the letter came. I should have said it a long time before that.”

I did not trust myself to say anything, so I just nodded.

“We’ll get the van,” he said. He said it to Mama, mostly. “I’ll go see Earl in the morning about Saturdays. He’s been asking for somebody on the Saturday crew since Christmas. I told him I was too old.”

“You are too old,” Mama said, and laughed through her tears.

“Then I’ll be too old on Saturdays too,” Daddy said, and got up off the floor by holding onto my shoulder.

That is mostly the story. But I will tell you how it came out, because I know if it were me reading, I would want to know.

Daddy took the Saturday shifts at the mill starting the next week. It was hard on him.