The Sack Race I Ran Behind the Barn

The Ribbons Given

When the last heat ran out of runners, I climbed up on the hay wagon and clapped my hands. Dale put two fingers in his mouth and whistled the yard quiet.

“We’ve got ribbons,” I said. “And the man handing them out is the one who built this whole thing. Bo, come up here.”

He came up the wagon wheel red and proud, the cigar box of ribbons under his arm, those little blue flowers catching the light.

He read the names off the heat sheet in his careful voice, the way he reads in church.

He gave first to the Petersen girl and second to the Hoff boy and third to himself. The yard laughed and cheered him for it.

Then he worked down through every kid there. A flowered ribbon for each one, first racer and last, winner and faller alike.

He said “good race” to every single child, the same way I say it to him. He meant it every time.

He gave the last two to Tyler and Maddie. He pinned Maddie’s on himself because her hands were full of caramel.

“You hopped good,” he told Tyler. “You didn’t bust your lip.” Tyler lit up like it was Christmas morning.

That was when I saw Lorene’s car at the end of the lane.

She had stopped at the mouth of the drive. She was standing by her open car door, not coming in, just watching.

She watched the whole thing over the roofs of forty cars that had turned in where she would not.

Kim went stiff beside me. The yard did not go quiet. Nobody but me and Kim even knew who she was.

Forty strangers’ children hopped and hollered in the sun on ground she had decided my boy did not belong to.