The Supper for Dad’s Hired Man

The stroke

Dad had his stroke on the ninth of February, in the machine shed, with a grease gun in his hand. Clem found him.

Clem drove him to the hospital in Sheldon himself because he said the ambulance would take too long to find the lane in the snow.

They flew him on to Sioux Falls. He was there three weeks and then in rehab another five.

He came home to the farm in April with a walker, a speech therapist’s worksheets, and a left hand that would not close around anything.

His words came back, but slow. He would start a sentence and you could see him going to get each word, one at a time, like a man fetching tools from the far end of a shop. He hated it. He hated being waited on even more.

Somewhere in those weeks in Sioux Falls, a social worker sat my brother and me down and said Dad needed someone to handle his affairs.

Dad had signed a durable power of attorney years ago, after Mom died. It named Garrick.

I was not hurt by that. Garrick does paperwork for a living.

I clean teeth at a dental office in Sheldon four days a week and I have three kids and a husband who drives truck for the co-op. Dad picked the son with the filing cabinet. It made sense.

So in March, Garrick took over the checkbook. He paid the hospital. He talked to the Medicare people and the supplemental insurance people.

He set up a woman from home health to come three mornings a week once Dad was home.

And the first week he had the power of attorney, he let Clem go.

What Garrick said

I drove to his house that night, after I left Clem’s. Garrick lives in a split-level on the east side of town with a basketball hoop over the garage.

He came to the door in his reading glasses with a pile of statements under his arm.

“I know why you’re here,” he said. “Come in before the neighbors hear you.”

“I’m not going to yell,” I said. And I didn’t. I sat at his kitchen island and he spread the papers out in front of me like he was walking a customer through a policy.

He showed me. The air ambulance bill. The hospital in Sioux Falls. The rehab. What Medicare paid and what it did not. The home health.

The equipment loan Dad had taken out for the new combine head two years ago. The land payment on the eighty Dad bought from the Kuiper estate.

“Corn’s under four dollars,” he said. “Beans aren’t much better. I’ve run it every way I know. The biggest line on this sheet that isn’t a loan payment or Dad’s care is Clem. Thirty-eight thousand dollars plus the house and the utilities.”

“Clem is the farm,” I said.

“Clem is an expense.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I’m not saying he isn’t a good man. I’m saying I’m the one who signs these checks, Marnie, and I’m the one who lies awake at three in the morning doing the math.”

He looked tired. I want to be fair to him. He looked like a man who had been carrying something heavy for six weeks and had nobody to hand it to.

“What about the crop?” I said.

“I’ve got a custom operator lined up for planting. Spraying too. It’s cheaper by the acre than a full-time wage.” He stacked the papers. “I’m going to find Clem something. I know people. Somebody always needs help in the spring.”

“You gave him a hundred and forty-six dollars.”

“That’s what he was owed through the day.” He did not say it meanly. He said it the way you say the deductible on a policy. “I’m not going to give away money Dad doesn’t have.”

I sat there a long time. My brother had a legal right to do what he did.

That was the plain fact of it. The power of attorney said he could hire and fire for Dad, and he had.