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

On the Table

I told him about the entrance exam in March and the Walmart lie. I told him about the letter under my winter socks and the six hundred dollars out of Mom’s Folgers can.

I told him the January class started the twelfth and that I had already done my shots and my paperwork and my background check.

I told him I was sorry I had lied. I told him I had not told him because I could not stand the thought of him alone in this house, eating supper at this table by himself, coming in from the cows in the dark with nobody to say anything to.

Then I told him the rest. I did it in a plain voice, the way you would read a list off a feed bill.

That Wade saw me in Kearney. That Wade asked me to supper. That I said no. That Wade said if I did not stay home and go out with him, he would tell Dad at the co-op that I was sneaking off and leaving him alone.

I did not call Wade a name. I did not look at him while I said it. I said, “I am not telling you this to get anybody in trouble, Dad. I’m telling you because it’s true, and because Mom always said in this house we put it on the table. So I put it on the table. That’s all of it.”

Wade started to say something. “Dale, I never,” he said, and then he stopped, because there was no end to that sentence that was going to be true.

He set his fork down. He put his hands in his lap. He looked at his empty plate.

Dad had not moved the whole time. His hands were still flat on the table. His face did not change.

He just looked at me with his gray eyes under his short gray hair, listening the way he listens to the cattle market on the radio, like every word was going to matter later.

When I was finished, the kitchen was so quiet I could hear the clock on the stove. Dad picked up his fork from beside his plate, the way a man does when he does not know what to do with his hands.

He looked at it for a while. Then he set it back down, very carefully, and cleared his throat.