The Fifty I Laid On His Desk

Vernon picked it up and counted it, slow, wetting his thumb, the way a man counts who has sold cattle at a sale barn.

When he got to the end he put it down and took his glasses off and wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist.

“That’s the casket,” he said. “That’s the whole casket. They told me the plain steel one was seventeen and change.” He looked at me. “You tell those men that’s the casket.”

“I’ll tell them,” I said.

“Our church is doing the lunch,” he said. “No charge. Pastor Lund called and said the funeral fund will cover the opening of the grave. Kyla’s mother and I can do the rest on time with the funeral home.” He breathed out. “We’ll get there. We’ll get there now.”

Wyatt came padding out from the back in his pajamas, rubbing his eyes. He climbed straight up onto Kyla’s lap like he always did and looked at me across the table.

“Lyndon,” he said, “is my dad’s truck fixed yet?”

Kyla closed her eyes. Jodi put her hand over her mouth. I looked at that little boy and I could not think of one single thing to say that would be right.

“Not yet, bud,” I said. “Not yet.”

He nodded like that made sense, and put his head down on his mother’s shoulder, and she rocked him, and nobody at that table said anything for a long time.

The funeral was the next Wednesday at the Lutheran church north of town, a white country church with a gravel lot and a cemetery out back behind a chain link fence.

Sully and Kyla had been married there. Both boys had been baptized there.

The crew came in our good clothes, which for most of us meant the shirt we wore to weddings and a pair of jeans without concrete on them.

We sat together in two pews on the left side. Somebody’s wife had gone around and ironed shirts for the guys who did not have anybody at home to do it.

Pastor Lund preached on the Twenty-Third Psalm. He was a tall, gentle man near retirement who had buried half the old farmers in that township, and he did not say anything fancy.

He said Sully was a man who did good work and loved his family, and that God does not waste a life like that.

Then we stood up and sang “Abide With Me.” I have sung that hymn at every funeral I have ever been to. I got through the first verse fine.

On the second verse I looked down the pew at fourteen grown men, and not one of us could get the words out.

Colt, the little one, sat on his grandma’s lap in the front pew.

Halfway through the hymn he got loose and stood up on the pew, and he waved at the casket with his whole arm, the way a two year old waves at a car going by.

His grandma pulled him down gently, and he waved again over her shoulder.

I have seen a lot of hard things in my life. I do not believe I have ever seen anything harder than that.

We carried him out, six of us from the crew. Juddy took one corner with his bad shoulder and would not let anybody spell him.