The Plate I Set for the Man Who Rents Dad’s Hay

Saturday Night

That night I could not sleep. I got up at two in the morning and went down to the kitchen in my socks and got the Folgers can out of the back of the pantry where I kept it behind the canning jars.

I sat at the table under the light over the stove and counted what was left after the deposit.

Four hundred and eleven dollars. Enough for books, maybe, if I bought them used. Not enough for gas to Kearney and back five days a week from January to May.

Not nearly enough for a room over there if I needed one in a blizzard.

I looked at that can for a long time. Mom’s handwriting was still on a strip of masking tape on the lid, the word Buttons in her round school-teacher letters.

I put my hand flat over the tape and I prayed. Not a good prayer. Just, please, I do not know what to do, please show me what to do.

And what came to me was not an answer, exactly. It was Mom’s voice in my head, saying the thing she said every time Megan or I tried to hide a bad report card or a dented fender.

She would say, “In this house we put it on the table.” That was all. Put it on the table.

I sat there until the light came gray in the window over the sink. Then I picked up my phone and texted Wade before I could stop myself.

Come to Sunday dinner tomorrow at noon. Dad would be glad to see you. We can talk then.

He wrote back in about four minutes, which told me he had not been sleeping either. Thank you Katie. I’ll be there. I knew what he thought it meant. I let him think it.

Grace

So that is how the fourth plate came to be on the table at five minutes to noon.

I should say there were already three plates. Since Mom died I had always set one for Megan on Sundays, because she would drive over from Grand Island once or twice a month without calling, and Dad liked to see her place ready.

That Sunday she was working a Saturday-Sunday shift at her clinic and would not come. Her plate sat there anyway, across from mine.

Wade came in the back door wiping his feet hard on the rug. He had on his tan canvas work jacket over a gray t-shirt, the same jacket he wore every day of his life, and he had combed his hair with water.

He said, “Smells good, Katie,” and would not quite look at me. Dad came in from the front room and shook his hand.

“Good to see you, Wade,” Dad said. “Sit down. Katie’s been cooking since church.” He took his chair at the head of the table, where he had always sat, with his coffee mug at his right hand where Mom always set it.

Wade took the chair across from my place, beside Megan’s empty one.

I set the roaster on the table with the lid off. The steam came up in the light from the window.

Dad laid his hands flat on the table, one on each side of his plate, the way he always did before grace, and bowed his head. Wade bowed his. I stayed standing.

Dad started the way he always started. “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,” he said, “and let these gifts to us be blessed.”

He paused there, the way he always paused, so he could add whatever was on his heart that week. He opened his mouth to add it.

And I said, “Dad.”

He looked up. I do not think anybody had ever interrupted his grace in that kitchen. Wade looked up too, and I saw him go pale under the sunburn, and his hand went to his fork like it needed something to hold.

Nobody had served anything yet. His plate was empty. He just held the fork over it.

I put both hands on the back of my chair, because I needed something to hold too. And I told my father everything.