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

What Dad Said

“We didn’t finish grace,” Dad said.

That was the first thing. Not a word to Wade. Not a word to me about lying. He folded his hands, finally, and bowed his head again, and after a second Wade and I bowed ours too, because what else was there to do.

“Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,” Dad said again, “and let these gifts to us be blessed. And thank you for my girl, who has her mother’s hands and her mother’s backbone. And be with Wade, who is having a hard year. Amen.”

I could not say amen. My throat would not do it. Wade said it, barely.

Then Dad looked across the table at Wade. He did not raise his voice. I have never in my life heard my father raise his voice.

He said, “Wade, you’ve been a good neighbor to this family for a long time. You put up my hay when Ellen was dying, and I’ve never forgotten it, and I’m not going to forget it now.”

Wade nodded at his plate. He did not look up.

“But the hay ground’s not for rent next year,” Dad said. “I’ll get somebody else to put it up. You’ve got this year’s second check coming and I’ll take it when you’re ready, and that’ll be the end of it. I think it’s best for everybody.”

Wade said, “That’s fair.” His voice cracked on it. He cleared his throat and said it again. “That’s fair, Dale.”

Dad pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’ll walk you out,” he said, and that was all. He did not tell Wade to leave.

He just stood there by the back door, holding it open, and waited the way he waits for a cow to make up her mind about a gate.

Wade got up. He stood at the table a second, like he wanted to say something to me. He did not.

He went out the back door in his canvas jacket, and Dad went out behind him, and the screen door clapped shut, and I was alone in the kitchen with the pot roast going cold.

At the Truck

I watched from the window over the sink. I am not proud of that either, but I could not have looked away if the house had been on fire.

They stood by Wade’s pickup at the end of the walk for a long time. Dad had his hands in his pockets.

Wade had his arms crossed and his head down. Dad talked. I could not hear any of it through the glass.

Wade did not say much. Once he wiped his face with the heel of his hand, and I had to look away for a second after all.

Then Dad took his right hand out of his pocket and held it out. Wade looked at it for a while.

Then he shook it. Dad held on, and put his other hand on Wade’s shoulder, and said one more thing, and Wade nodded and got in his truck and drove off down the lane slow, not throwing any gravel at all.

Later, a long time later, I asked Dad what he said out there. He said he told Wade he was sorry about Pam leaving, and that he knew what it was to come home to an empty house.

He said he told Wade that a lonely man can talk himself into almost anything, and that he did not think Wade was a bad man, just a man who had gotten lost for a while.

And he said the last thing he told him was, “I’ll be praying for you, Wade. I mean that.” Dad does not say things he does not mean. Wade knew that as well as anybody in the county.