The Purple Heart Came Home to Main Street

In June, Jared lost his apartment in Galena. Mom called Grandpa and asked if Jared could stay in the spare room for a few weeks while he got on his feet. Grandpa said yes. Grandpa has never said no to anybody Mom asked for, because she is my dad’s widow, and in his mind that makes her his.

A few weeks became four months. Jared had a job for part of it, hauling scrap for a man in Columbus. Then he did not. He was always polite to Grandpa. He mowed the yard when he remembered. He also ate Grandpa’s groceries and borrowed Grandpa’s truck and never put gas in it.

I had noticed some things. A twenty missing from the coffee can over the fridge where Grandpa kept his cash. The good socket set gone from the garage. Grandpa said he must have misplaced the money. He said he loaned Jared the sockets.

I let it go. I am not proud of that. I told myself Grandpa was a grown man who could run his own house. I told myself it was not my business. Standing in his bedroom looking at that empty blue case, I knew it had been my business for a while.

Jared’s truck was in the driveway, so I knew he was home. I went out the back door. He was sitting on the tailgate of Grandpa’s old trailer by the woodpile, smoking, with his phone in his hand.

It was a nice morning. Sunny and cool, the kind of fall day where you can smell somebody burning leaves three blocks over. I remember that because I remember thinking it did not seem right for the weather to be that nice.

“Where’s Grandpa’s medal?” I said.

He looked up at me. He did not ask what medal. That was the first thing I noticed. He did not pretend.

“Cody,” he said.

“Where is it?”

He looked at the cigarette for a while. Then he put it out on the trailer bed and flicked it into the grass.

“I pawned it,” he said. “Sixty bucks. I owed a bar tab in Joplin and the guy wasn’t going to let it ride anymore.”

I stood there. I had a lot of things I wanted to say and none of them would come out in order.

“Sixty dollars,” I said.

“I was going to get it back Friday,” he said. “I get paid Friday. I was going to drive over and get it before he ever knew it was gone.”

“You don’t have a job, Jared.”

“I’ve got some work lined up.”

“Where did you pawn it?”

He rubbed his face with both hands. “That’s the thing,” he said. “I don’t know. I lost the ticket. It was a while ago and I’d had a few. It was over there somewhere. Joplin, maybe. Could have been Webb City. I was driving around.”

“When?”

“September. Early September.”

That was almost two months. I did not know a lot about pawn shops then, but I knew they did not hold things forever.

“I’m sorry,” Jared said. “I am. I know what it is to him.”

“Do you?”

He did not answer that. He looked at the back door of the house. I think he was afraid Grandpa was standing behind it. Grandpa was not. Grandpa was still at the kitchen sink, looking at the bird feeder.

The first thing I wanted to do was call the sheriff. I had my phone out of my pocket before I got back in the house.