The Tailgate
Finn drove out to his dad’s place the next afternoon. It is eighty acres now on a gravel road east of town, the house and the barn and a hayfield and one strip of beans.
It used to be four hundred acres and a flock of two hundred ewes.
I went with him because he asked me to, but I stayed by our truck.
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Garth was out in the barn lot fixing a gate hinge, and the two of them ended up sitting on the tailgate of Garth’s old Chevy with the sun going down behind the hayfield.
I could not hear most of it. I could see it. Finn talked for a long time with his elbows on his knees. Garth looked at the barn.
Once Garth put his hand up to his face and held it there, and Finn put his hand on his father’s back and left it there.
When Finn came back to our truck, his eyes were red. “He knows,” was all he said at first.
Then, after we were out on the gravel, “He’s not ready to say why. He said he’ll tell her himself. He said it’s not mine to tell and it’s not yours, it’s hers to hear.”
“Did he say he was sorry?”
Finn nodded, slow. “To me. He said it to me. I told him I wasn’t the one he owed it to.”
We drove home past the onion fields on the old marsh, the dirt so black it looks wet even in August. Finn did not turn on the radio.
When we pulled into our lane, Juanita was in the side yard throwing a tennis ball for the dog, and Finn sat in the truck a full minute watching her before he got out.