The Apron I Took to My Brother

The drive

I did not sleep much on Mom’s couch that night. It was the only furniture left in the front room that was not sold.

At six in the morning I drove into town and got two coffees at the gas station on the highway.

Black for Webb, the way Dad drank it. Cream and sugar for me, the way Dad said a grown man should not.

Then I drove north on Highway 167 toward Cave City with the apron folded on the passenger seat. The fog was lying low in the creek bottoms and the hay was rolled in round bales along the fence lines.

I had about twenty minutes to decide what I was going to say. I spent the first ten rehearsing a speech about Mom’s deposit and Mr. Hughes and the way he had shamed her in front of the whole road.

I spent the second ten throwing that speech out the window, piece by piece. Mom had said not one word of anger. She does not say that kind of thing lightly.

Webb’s place sits on a couple of acres off a gravel road east of town, a brick ranch house with a metal carport and a two-car garage.

When I pulled in, his truck was in the driveway with the tailgate down.

He was sitting on the tailgate in a jacket, with his elbows on his knees, looking at nothing. Every box was still in the bed behind him. He had not unloaded a single one.

When he saw my truck, he stood up. He planted his feet like a man bracing for weather. I knew that stance. Dad used to stand that way when the bank called.

I got out with the two coffees and walked over. I held out the black one first.

He looked at it. He did not take it.

So I set it on the tailgate next to him and went back to the truck for the apron. When I brought it over and held it out, he did not take that either, not for a long time.

“Mom sent this,” I said. “She said it goes with the tools.”

He reached out finally and took it. He turned it over in his hands, once, twice. His thumb went straight to the front pocket, the way you reach for a light switch in a house you grew up in.

He sat back down on the tailgate, slow.

“You want to know why I did it,” he said.

“I do,” I said.

He looked over his shoulder at the boxes, and then back at me, and I saw that his eyes were wet.

“Brandon, I didn’t come over there to steal from Mom.”