The Call I Made to My Brother First

He did not deny it. Bert has never been able to lie to me with his face. He could not do it when he broke my record player in 1996, and he could not do it in that parking lot.

I went in.

Dad was in a curtained bay with a white blanket up to his chest and a paper cap on his head. They had already shaved two patches of his hair. He looked small. He has never once in my life looked small.

He opened his eyes when I came in, and he smiled the old crooked smile, and he reached for my hand.

“Ann,” he said. “There you are. I fed already.”

Ann was our mother. She has been gone six years this past August.

I did not correct him. I sat down on the rolling stool and held his hand, his big rough hand with the split thumbnail he has had since he caught it in a gate in 1988, and I said, “I know you did, honey. You always do.”

He patted my hand and closed his eyes and said, “Don’t let them keep me long. Those calves need weaning.”

Dr. Ellison came by at 10:40. He was younger than me, which I am still not used to, with big careful hands and a voice like a country preacher. I asked him if he had a minute and he gave me five.

I asked him the same questions I had asked in Morehead. He answered every one. He said the scans were better than he had feared. He said the small operation had a good chance of being the only one Dad needed.

“And if it comes back?” I said.

“Then we go back in, and we’d talk about the bigger one then. Your brother asked me the same thing.” He looked at me a moment. “He asked me a lot of things, actually. He’d written them down.”

I did not know what to say to that, so I thanked him.

They took Dad back at 11:04. I walked beside the bed as far as the double doors and then I had to let go of his hand.

I sat through the whole surgery in the surgical waiting room on the second floor with a crossword I never finished and a cup of coffee that went cold in my hand.

Bert did not come inside. I kept watching the door for him. He never came.

About noon I went outside to call Otis, because there was no signal in that waiting room worth anything. I walked out past the bench and into the visitor lot.

Bert’s truck was parked in the third row. I could see him sitting behind the wheel with the engine off, just looking straight ahead at the brick wall of the parking garage.

Otis picked up on a break. I could hear the bucket truck idling and men yelling behind him. I told him all of it, the tires, the caps on the pavement, Percy, the six hundred dollars.

Otis was quiet for a long moment. Otis is a quiet man. When he gets quiet like that it means he is angry and does not want to say something he cannot take back.

“I can be home by tonight if I leave now,” he said.

“No,” I said. “Finish your lines. There’s people with no heat. I’ve got this.”

“Greta.”

“I’ve got it, Otis.”