Craig waited until after the blessing to say it. Bob had prayed over the pot roast the way he has for fifty years, short and plain, and we had just started passing the potatoes around my kitchen table.
“Dad, I need to tell you something before you hear it at the elevator,” Craig said. He did not look at his father. He looked at the butter dish.
“The board met Thursday night,” he said. “We decided it’s time for some younger blood on the twelves.”
Bob was reaching for the green beans. His hand stopped halfway across the table, and then it kept going, and he took the bowl and spooned some onto his plate like nothing had been said at all.
“Tyler’s going to take the team,” Craig said. “Tyler Dorn. He’s got a boy coming up next year, and he’s got the time, and the board thought a fresh face would be good for the program.”
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I knew Tyler Dorn. Everybody in town knew Tyler. He sold insurance out of the little brick office next to the bank, and he was a decent man who coached nothing, ever, and could not have told you the infield fly rule if you paid him.
Bob set his fork down on the edge of his plate. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and folded it once and laid it beside the fork.
Then he looked at our son across the table, and his face did not change at all.
“All right,” he said.
That was all he said. Craig waited for more, I could see him waiting, his shoulders up around his ears like they used to be when he was twelve and had broken something in the garage.
But there was nothing more. Bob picked his fork back up and ate.
I have been married to Bob Albers for fifty years this coming August. I knew what that “all right” cost him.
I knew it the way you know the weather in your knees. It cost him more than anything Craig could have yelled.
Craig’s wife Etta reached over and squeezed my hand under the table, and I squeezed back, but I could not look at her either.
Their little boy Homer, who is five, was building a dam out of mashed potatoes and did not notice a thing.
After dinner Craig and Etta took Homer home early. Craig shook his father’s hand at the door, which he never does, and said he hoped Dad understood it was nothing personal. Bob said he understood fine and told him to drive careful.