The Graduation Check He Took Back

January

It was the second week of January when I found him at the mailbox.

It had sleeted the night before and then frozen hard, and the county road was polished like a skating rink.

I was creeping along at fifteen miles an hour with my flashers on. I came around the bend by Silas’s place and saw something dark by his box.

It was Silas. He was on the ground in the ditch by his mailbox post, on his side, one arm hooked around the post. His cap was off in the snow beside him.

I don’t remember stopping. I remember I was out of the car and down in that ditch on my knees before I’d even turned off the engine. The ice went right through my pants.

“Silas. Silas, look at me. Are you hurt? Did you hit your head?”

“I’m fine,” he said, through his teeth. “I came out for the paper. Feet went right out. I’ve been trying to get up for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

He didn’t answer, which was an answer. His hands were white and his lips had gone a bad color.

I got my coat off and put it around him and I called the squad from my phone with one hand and held him with the other.

Then I got behind him and got my arms under his and we got him sitting up against the post.

He was shaking so hard his teeth clicked. I sat in that ditch with my arms around my father-in-law and held on.

The squad came from Greensburg in eleven minutes. Nothing was broken. He had a bruised hip the color of a plum and he was cold to the bone.

They kept him overnight at the hospital to warm him up and watch him, and I went to see him after my route.

He was sitting up in the bed with the television on and the sound off. When I came in he turned it off.

“You lost a whole morning of mail on account of me,” he said.

“I’ll deliver it this afternoon. People will live.”

He looked at his hands on the blanket for a while. Then he said, “Does she still plan to come out the first Saturday?”

“She’ll come,” I said. “If you’re up to it.”

“I’ll be up to it,” he said. “You tell her I’ll be up to it.”

February

Nadia cut his hair the first Saturday in February on the porch, because the yard was all ice and he was still walking with a cane.

It was cold enough to see her breath. She kept the cape tucked around his neck tight so the wind couldn’t get under.

Halfway through, he said, without turning around, “How many hours now?”

“Seven hundred and ninety.”

“You’ll be on the clinic floor soon. Customers.”

She stopped with her shears in the air. “How do you know about the clinic floor?”

“I called the school,” he said. “I asked them how it works. A man can call and ask.”

Nadia looked at me over his head. I was sitting on the porch swing with a blanket over my knees. I shrugged. I had no idea.

“After so many hours, you work on the public,” Silas said. “Real customers. They pay the school less than a barber. A teacher watches you. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Nadia said.

“Well,” he said. “All right then.”