The Cradle From the Last Board

What Wilbur said

I found out later what Wilbur had done. He did not tell me himself. Burl told me, standing in our driveway the week before Thanksgiving, with his hands in his jacket pockets and his eyes on the street.

The Sunday after the fire, Wilbur had driven out to the farm and sat with his mother on the porch steps for an hour. He did not raise his voice. Wilbur doesn’t.

He told her that what she’d said about the baby was the cruelest thing anyone had ever said to his wife, and that she had said it on purpose. He told her he loved her and he wasn’t going anywhere.

And he told her that until she could look me in the face and own it, she would not be eating Thanksgiving at our house, the way she had every year since we married.

“She cried for two days,” Burl said. “I’m not telling you that so you’ll feel sorry for her. I’m telling you so you know it landed.”

“She didn’t have a lot growing up, Alice,” he said finally. “Two room house down by Long Lane, eight kids. Her mother kept every rag and can and bottle, stacked to the ceiling, and the kids at school called them names for it. She was ashamed every day she walked out that door.”

He kicked at the gravel. “She’s burned things ever since. Anything that looks like a pile. I should have said something about those boards. That’s on me too.”

“It’s not on you, Burl.”

“Some of it is,” he said. “I’m the one who told you to bring them out.”

The front yard

We spent Thanksgiving with just the two of us that year. Wilbur smoked a turkey breast in the backyard and I made Dad’s cornbread dressing, and we ate it on the back steps in our coats because the day turned out warmer than anybody expected.

The cradle was finished the Saturday after.

I loaded it in the bed of Wilbur’s truck on a moving blanket, wrapped another blanket over it, and strapped it down like it was glass. Wilbur drove so slow on Highway 32 that a man in a grain truck passed us on a double yellow.

Jenny and Chris had the family over that Sunday afternoon for the baby’s first real visit. It was one of those late November days that is cold in the shade and warm in the sun. Chris had a fire going in a steel ring in the front yard, and Burl was grilling burgers on a little kettle grill by the porch steps.

Beth was sitting on the top step with a cup of coffee, watching the door. Waiting on the baby.

She saw our truck come up the lane, and she stood up. Then she sat back down.

Wilbur backed up to the front walk. I got out. My hands were cold and I didn’t care.

Jenny came out the front door with Cora on her shoulder, wrapped in one of Beth’s knitted blankets, a little yellow one with a scalloped edge.

“What on earth is in the truck?” she called. “Wilbur said you two were bringing something.”

I let the tailgate down. I climbed up into the bed and took hold of the corner of the moving blanket.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Beth set her coffee cup down on the step beside her. She stood up again. This time she stayed up.

I pulled the blanket off.