The Yards My Boy Raked for Nothing

Rick Comes Back

Rick came back on a Sunday afternoon near the end of the month. I was expecting him to and dreading it both.

He pulled up in that truck he could not afford and sat in it a minute before he got out. The way a man does when he is building himself up to a thing.

I met him on the porch. I did not let him in. Not out of meanness. I just was not ready to have him at my table yet.

“I heard,” he said. He could not look at me. “Whole town’s talking about Cole raking. I heard why.” He swallowed. “I heard it’s because of me.”

“Nobody’s said your name,” I said. “I never said it.”

“You didn’t have to.” He put his hand over his mouth.

I watched my big brother, the one who taught me to ride a bike, come apart on my front steps.

“I took it, Connie. I took the boy’s money. I was three months behind and I had the crazy idea I’d put it back before anybody counted it, and I never. I’m sick over it. I’ve been sick over it for a month.”

I could have said a lot of things. I had rehearsed some of them, hard ones.

I did not say any of them. He was already saying worse to himself than I ever could.

“I know you took it,” I said. “I knew that night.”

“Why didn’t you call the law.”

“Because you’re my brother. And because Mama.” I let that sit. “And because I decided I’d rather Cole learn how to lose something and stay good than watch me get even.”

He cried then, the real kind, the kind a grown man hates.

When he got himself back he reached in his jacket and took out a fold of bills, worn, not much, and held it out. “It’s forty,” he said. “It’s all I’ve got right now. I’ll bring the rest. I swear I’ll bring the rest, ten and twenty at a time, I don’t care how long.”

I did not take it. “Don’t give it to me,” I said. “Give it to him. And then I want you here Saturday with a rake.”

He looked up.

“You heard me,” I said. “You want to make it right, you don’t do it with forty dollars on my porch.”

“You do it on your knees in Alma Pruett’s flowerbeds where the whole street can see you work, same as him. That’s the price. You rake.”

And the next Saturday, he did. He showed up at eight with his own rake and he worked beside that boy all day and did not say much.

The women came out with cocoa for him too, because that is who they are. I think that cocoa shamed him and healed him both.

Cole did not forgive him with words. He just handed his uncle a full bag to carry to the curb. That is a boy’s whole way of saying I will let you back in, a little.