The Teeth Dad Waited a Year For

“Pop. You haven’t been behind the wheel since February.”

He thought about it, and I saw him lose the argument with himself. “Pick me up at ten after six,” he said. “Don’t be late. I want the good chair.”

I pulled into the elevator lot at twenty past six on Saturday morning, in the gray before sunup, with every grain truck in the county already lined up at the scale. Dad had on his good flannel shirt, the one that hung loose, and he had combed his hair with water. He sat for a moment with his hand on the door handle, looking at the feed office windows, where the yellow light was on and I could see the shapes of the men.

“Bev,” he said.

“I’m here.”

“When we go in, I’ve got something to say to that table. Whatever I say, you let me say it. Don’t you stop me and don’t you look at me like you’re going to.”

“Yes, sir.”

We got out. He stood in the lot a moment and straightened his collar. I had my hand under his elbow, and he let me. Behind us I heard a truck turn off the road and onto the gravel, and I knew the sound of it before I looked. It was a white Ford with a dented tailgate, and my brother Gary had not been through that door since April.

Dad did not turn around. He put his hand on the push bar of the feed office door, and he went in.

The talk at the table stopped, and then it did not stop, which is the kindest thing a room of men can do for another man. Roy Tessmer said, “Morning, Walt,” as if my father had walked in every morning of his life, and slid a plate toward the chair at the head of the table. The chair with the arms. On the plate was one caramel roll, still warm. Somebody had been baking.

My father sat. He took a bite. He chewed, slowly, a little carefully, the way you test a plank, and the whole table watched him do it without once appearing to. When he had swallowed, he laid the roll down and wiped his fingers on a napkin, one at a time.

“Boys,” he said. “I’d like to say something before my coffee gets cold.”

Nobody moved. Out at the scale, a truck backed up and beeped.

“I know what went around in that cap. I’m not going to insult any of you by saying thank you. Roy’s daddy used to say a thank-you is something you give a stranger.” Roy laughed, once, in his throat. “But I want it said right the first time, so it doesn’t get said wrong later. The money I put by for these teeth went to my son Gary last January. He needed it worse than I did, and I let it go. I signed the paper that made it possible, and I’d sign it again. That’s all of it. It’s nobody’s business but ours, and it’s settled.”

I heard the front door open behind me. I did not turn. I did not have to.

“That’s not all of it, Pop.”

My brother stood just inside the door, still in his seed-company jacket, with the dust of the field on his boots. He is a big, fair man who looks like our mother’s side, and that morning he looked ten years older than he had at Easter. He held a long white envelope in one hand, and it shook a little.