“Mr. Mercer sold this camper to my lot on the sixteenth of September,” Vern said to the room, as if he were reading the weather. “He had a power of attorney. My buyer paid him twenty-four thousand dollars, and the paper he signed is right here. It says Douglas Mercer, attorney in fact for Arlen Hanes. My buyer should have called the owner first. That is on me, and I am saying so in front of this family.”
Nobody moved.
“Mr. Hanes,” said Vern. “I sold you this camper in April, and my lot bought it back in September without one phone call to you, and I am more ashamed of the second sale than I ever was proud of the first. I am returning it today at the price my lot paid, not a nickel added. And I would like to know where you want it parked.”
My husband set his napkin beside his plate and stood up very slowly, one hand on the table. He did not look at Doug. He looked through the window at the camper on its pad in the November sun, and I saw his mouth work.
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“Right where it was,” said Arlen.
Merle had not taken his eyes off Doug. He did not shout. He folded his hands on the edge of the table and looked at my daughter’s husband across the roast and twenty-three silent relatives, and said nothing at all.
I have never seen a man be looked at like that. It was not hatred. It was a terrible patience, the way a man looks at a field he planted wrong.
Janelle had put down her fork. My daughter, who has her father’s quiet and her mother’s temper, said very low, “Doug. How much is in the fund?”
He opened his mouth.
“The kids’ fund. You said twenty-four thousand went into it. How much is in there?”
I saw him swallow. I saw his hand come off the knife.
“Nine,” he said.
It fell on that table like a dropped plate. Janelle turned in her chair and looked at the window, at the camper, at her father in his birthday vest, and put one hand over her mouth. I would have given anything to spare her that. It was the one price in all of this I never meant to charge.
Then Peggy Estes came up the porch steps with Ron behind her, carrying a coffee can with a slit in the lid.
“Arlen,” Peggy said, and her voice cracked. “Happy birthday, honey. Some of us got together.” She set the can on the table beside the birthday cake. It made a sound like a stone on the wood. “Vern was paid this morning, in full. That’s the camper. What’s left is the diesel.”