The Breakfast I Carried at Seven

Ivo folded his hands on the table. I bowed my head and waited for the five words.

“Lord, make us thankful,” he said. And then he stopped. And I waited. And he said, “And thank you for Mindy, who comes at seven. Amen.”

I kept my head down a long time. Then I looked at the curtains, and then at the frost on the window, and then anywhere but at him, because I did not want him to see me cry over his eggs.

“Well, eat,” he said gruffly. “It’s getting cold.”

I ate.

That afternoon, before my shift, I put the notebook in a big yellow envelope with a short note on top.

I had found Burl’s address on an old Christmas card on Ivo’s refrigerator, and I wrote it out careful, and I mailed it from the post office in town.

The note said: “Mr. Kiel, I live across the yard from your dad. I thought you would want to know about his mornings. Everything in here is true and I have tried to be fair to everyone. He is all right. He is a wonderful man. Mindy Stroud.” And my phone number.

I did not tell Ivo I had sent it. I did not tell Joelle. I told Clint, and he nodded and said, “Good,” and that was all.

Burl Kiel is sixty-six. He is a retired machinist, thirty-four years at a shop in Tulsa.

His wife passed three years ago after a long illness, which I did not know until later, and which explained a lot about why he had not been up to see his father more than a few times a year.

Tulsa is about three and a half hours from our road, if you take the highway through Siloam Springs and come across.

I did not know when the envelope would get there or what he would do with it. I thought maybe he would call. I thought maybe he would not.

He did not call.

On Saturday morning, two days after I mailed it, I crossed the yard at seven like always with a plate of eggs and a biscuit.

Ivo was at the table, hands folded, cups out. I set the plate down in front of him, and the kitchen door opened behind me.

A tall man in a canvas work jacket stood in the doorway. He had his father’s long face and his father’s big hands, and he was holding my spiral notebook.

He had driven up from Tulsa before daylight. I could see it on him.

“Daddy,” he said.

Ivo looked up, and his face did something I will not forget as long as I live. “Burl,” he said. “Well, I’ll be. Burl.”

He tried to get up, and Burl crossed the kitchen in three steps and got down on one knee and put his arms around his father in that chair.

They stayed like that a long time. I stood by the stove with my hands in my cardigan pockets and did not know what to do with myself.

Burl’s shoulders were shaking. Ivo patted his back, slow, the way you pat a child.

When Burl finally stood up, he looked at me. “You’re Mindy,” he said. It was not a question.

“Yes sir.”