The Supper for Dad’s Hired Man

Seconds

We ate. People talked. The room got loud the way a room full of farmers gets loud after a rain, everybody talking about how much they got and whose beans were up and who had been out spraying when they shouldn’t.

Ladies came around with the green beans and seconds on the roast beef. Dad ate slowly, with the fork in his good hand, and Clem let him, because Dad did not want help with the rest.

I sat just past Clem, in my green sweater, and watched him. I could see something working in him again. The same look as the night in the recliner.

He kept looking out over the room, at all those caps and all those faces, and then at Clem beside him.

Then, before the pie came out, Dad leaned forward and caught my eye past Clem.

“Up,” he said.

“Dad, are you sure?”

He looked at me. “Up.”

The toast

Clem stood first. He did not need to be told. He stepped in behind Dad’s chair and took hold of his left elbow, the bad side, firm, the way you would steady a calf on wet concrete.

Dad got up. It took a while. The walker was behind him and he did not reach for it.

He stood at the head of that long folding table with Clem holding his elbow and he picked up his coffee mug in his right hand, his good one.

The room went quiet. Not all at once. Table by table, from the front to the back, people stopped talking and turned around in their folding chairs. You could hear the pop cooler humming in the kitchen.

I looked up at my father. I was afraid. I am not ashamed to say it.

I was afraid he would get three words in and lose the rest, and stand there in front of a hundred and fifty people with the words stuck behind his teeth.

Dad lifted the cup a little higher.

“Thirty,” he said. He stopped. He breathed. “One. Years.”

Nobody moved.

“Never. Once.” He stopped again, a long time. Somebody’s chair creaked. “Late.”

A man at the second table laughed, softly, and somebody else said “That’s right.” Clem looked at the floor.

“Never. Said,” Dad said. His face was working. His good hand was shaking a little on the cup. “Never said. Thank you.”

He turned his head, slow, and looked at Clem holding his elbow.

“Saying. Now,” Dad said. “Thank you. Clem.”