The Green Truck in the Driveway

The Paint

The fourth week, on a Thursday evening, Dad came down the lane with something in the back of his pickup besides the thermos.

He backed up to the shop door, got out, and dropped the tailgate.

There were two gallons of implement enamel in the bed, the real stuff from the implement dealer, and a quart of hardener. One can was John Deere green. The other was John Deere yellow.

Ethan stood in the doorway and stared at the cans. “Grandpa,” he said.

“I know what color a Ford’s supposed to be,” Dad said, and he was a little gruff about it, the way he gets.

“But I figured if the boy’s going to drive it, it ought to look like somebody loves it. Green for the body. Yellow for the wheels.”

I looked at the label. I knew what that paint cost, and it was not cheap, and my father does not spend money on anything without thinking it over for a month.

“Dad, you didn’t have to do that,” I said.

“I know I didn’t have to,” he said. “I wanted to. It’s my money. I’ll spend it on my grandson if I want to.” He turned to Ethan.

“Unless you’d rather have it some other color. It’s your truck. I won’t be hurt.”

Ethan walked over and put his hand on top of the green can like it was something holy. “No,” he said. “This is it. This is the color.”

Dad nodded once and looked away fast, out at the cornfield across the road. I saw his chin work.

He cleared his throat and said he’d better get going, and then he didn’t go anywhere for two more hours.

We painted on a Saturday, a clear dry day with almost no wind. We rolled the big shop door up for air and set two big box fans in the back to pull the fumes out.

Ethan and I wore respirators. Dad watched from his bucket out on the gravel, well away from the overspray.

I laid on the first coat and let Ethan lay on the second. His hands were steady.

He moved down the side of the box in long even passes, overlapping each one halfway, the way Reid had shown him, and the green went on smooth and deep and wet.

When he finished, he stepped back and lifted the respirator off his face and just stood there looking at it.

The whole truck was shining in the light from the open door. It didn’t look like a feed truck anymore.

Dad came over to the doorway. He didn’t come in, because of the fumes. He just stood there with his hands in his coat pockets and looked at it a long time.

“Well,” he said finally. “Look at that.”

We did the wheels the next Saturday, on their own, sanded and primed and shot with the yellow. We put on four new tires Ethan paid for himself, the last of his mowing money.

When we put the wheels back on and let it down off the jack stands, it looked like it had rolled out of a John Deere dealer’s lot in 1976.

Driver’s Ed

Driver’s ed started the second Saturday in October, nine in the morning, at the high school in town.

The school runs it on Saturday mornings in the fall for the kids who cannot fit it in after practice.

That morning came up bright and sunny, one of those October mornings when the sky is so blue it almost hurts.

The frost was gone off the grass by eight. The corn across the road stood tall and tan, ready for the combine, and it rustled in the sun.

Dad came out early. He had said he wanted to see the boy off.

He was wearing his tan chore coat and his green seed cap, the same cap he has worn every fall I can remember, and he stood by the truck with his coffee.

I had the shop door rolled up and was standing by the truck wiping my hands on a red shop rag, pretending I wasn’t watching him.

Ethan came out of the house in his gray hoodie, walked across the gravel, and opened the driver’s door.

He didn’t get in. He just stood there at the open door with one hand on top of it, looking down at the seat.

We had put a new seat cover on it that week. The truck smelled like new paint and old Ford.