The Farmhouse Down the Road

“I cashed them Thursday.” He set a cut potato in the bucket. “All five. I figured if he was man enough to write them, I ought to be man enough to take them. He’s earned that.”

I nodded. Seth had told me Friday night on the phone, his voice cracking.

Dad cut another potato. Then he set down the knife and wiped his hands on his jeans.

“I was wrong,” he said. “I charged you because you could pay it. That’s the only reason. Because you were the strong one and he was the scared one, and I was scared for him. That’s no reason to make my daughter pay for it.”

I didn’t say anything. I let him finish.

“Your mother would have skinned me,” he said. “She’d have skinned me alive the first month.”

“She would have,” I agreed, and we both laughed, and then neither of us was laughing.

“I paid heat on that house all winter,” he said. “And taxes. I had your brother out there shoveling both walks like a fool. I kept thinking you’d come back. Every time I drove by here, I thought, she’ll come back.”

“I’m not coming back, Dad,” I said gently. “I like it here. The kids like it here. Mary keeps them, and I drive her, and it works. It works better than anything has worked in a long time.”

He nodded slowly. “I know it,” he said. “I can see it. They look good. You look good.” He picked the knife back up. “I’m going to rent that house to one of your nurses. Seth gave me a name. Fair rent. Same as anybody.”

“That’s good,” I said. “That’s good, Dad.”

“And Seth pays the same as her,” he said. “Same as anybody. I told him so. He said it was about time.”

That was all either of us said about it, then or ever. But that afternoon was when the thing I’ll keep the rest of my life happened.

Around noon, Abe and Joe came across the road with Pepper hitched to her little cart, to bring Theo a bucket of rotted manure for the garden. Mary had sent it, the way she sent everything, without asking whether I wanted it.

The boys unhitched Pepper and slipped her harness off to let her graze at the edge of the yard while they dumped the bucket, and then they ran back across the road to get the second load on foot.

And Theo, who was five, decided to show his grandpa how it was done.

“Grandpa, come here,” he said, pulling Dad by the hand. “I’ll show you how to hitch her. Abe showed me. You have to do it in order, or Pepper gets mad.”

Dad looked at me over Theo’s head. He grew up on a dairy farm outside Loudonville. His father drove a team until 1961.

He had probably hitched a hundred horses before he ever learned to drive a car. He didn’t say one word about any of that.

“Okay, buddy,” he said. “Show me.”

Theo was very serious about it. He stood beside the pony with his red hat crooked and explained every step: the collar first, then the harness, buckled careful, then you back her into the shafts slow and talk to her the whole time so she isn’t scared.

“You have to talk to her,” Theo said. “Abe says she can’t see behind her. So you tell her where you are.”

“That’s right,” Dad said quietly. “That’s exactly right. My dad used to say that.”