And he pushed our father down the ramp he’d built two summers earlier, slowly, steady, his weight behind it, the first time it was ever used for what he said it was for.
Hal walked beside them the whole way. At the car, the two of them lifted Dad into the front seat together so carefully that I didn’t have to do a thing but fold the chair.
I drove home with the sun going down orange over the beans. Dad slept most of the way. Near Iowa Falls he woke up and said, “Pretty lake.” Then he went back to sleep.
The VA’s misuse letter came the second week of July.
The VA had found that Terry misused Dad’s benefits, ninety-three thousand dollars over thirty months, and that he was responsible for paying it back.
I read the letter at the kitchen table. Jeff read it after me. Neither of us said anything for a while. Then Jeff said, “It’s in writing now. That’s something.” And he went out to mow.
Jolie called me on a Thursday at the end of July. I almost didn’t recognize her voice.
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
She told me she hadn’t known. I told her I believed her, because I did. She was quiet a long time.
“He sleeps on the couch at the lake most nights,” she said. “I don’t make him. He just does. He says he can’t sleep in a bed that Earl paid for.” Then she started to cry, and I let her.
“Jolie,” I said, after a while. “Dad asked about you. He wants to know if you’ll bring peanut butter bars at Labor Day. He means it.”
She laughed through the crying, a little. “Tell him yes,” she said. “Tell him two pans.”
In August, Terry called me. It was the first time he’d called in four months that wasn’t an apology.
His voice was steady. It sounded like the brother I grew up with, the one who handled things.
“I listed it,” he said. “The cabin. The realtor says it’ll go fast, lake places do. Everything over what we owe on it goes back to Dad. Every dime. And I’m starting payments now, before it sells.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you, Terry.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Just tell me what he needs.”
The first check came three days later. It was made out to Dad, in care of me as his fiduciary. Thirty-one hundred dollars. On the memo line, in Terry’s square handwriting, it said, “Month 1.”
I took Dad to the farm store in Marshalltown that Saturday. Megan helped me with the transfer, and she told Dad to get something with some color in it for once.
The men’s clothing section is way at the back, past the boots and the dog food. I pushed Dad down the aisles slowly.
He looked at everything, the fishing lures and the bird feeders and the tool chests, like a man on vacation.
At the flannel shirts, I stopped and set his brakes. “Dad,” I said. “It’s your money. All of it. Pick whatever you want. As many as you want.”
He looked up at me. “As many as I want?”
“As many as you want.”
He took his time. He reached up with his good hand and touched the sleeves one by one, feeling the cotton between his fingers.
He held two of them up to his face to see the plaid better.
He picked a red one first. Then a blue and green one, like the kind he wore to the plant.
Then a brown one he said looked like a hunting jacket he had in 1975.